EMAIL SIGN UP!
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Christmas, Inc: Thanks to NAFTA, US-Subsidized Trees Flood Mexico
Farmers and politicians protest invasion of taller foreign trees
MEXICO CITY, Mexico — In a crowded market in this seething mountain capital, Christmas shoppers elbowed and tussled past each other to a busy stall selling festive trees.
US and Canadian Christmas trees have flooded into Mexico in recent years, along with increased North American trade in everything from avocados to artisan liquor. Some Mexican farmers and politicians complain they are fighting unfair competition from the wealthy subsidized US plantations. (File) On the left were trees that were smaller, greener, softer, and grown in forests close to the city.
On the right were drier, taller and sharper trees, which had been imported from the United States and Canada.
US and Canadian Christmas trees have flooded into Mexico in recent years, along with increased North American trade in everything from avocados to artisan liquor...[But] not everyone sees the southward flow of pines as a welcome present.
Some Mexican farmers and politicians complain they are fighting unfair competition from the wealthy subsidized US plantations.
Read the full article at GlobalPost
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
10 Comments so far
Show AllExporting our carbon to Mexico is one form of carbon sequestration.
My plastic indoor tree is celebrating its 33-rd Xmas.
I have thousands of ponderosa/lodge-pole/pinyon/juniper pines on my property if I want a tall tree, but I'd rather leave them in the ground.
Subsidizing Christmas tree growers is tax dollars supporting a religion.
yeah well i too am making a list of businesses we need to do without if we want to save our planet. and now the xmas tree industry is on it. you can get along without cutting down millions of trees. try it.
NAFTA has to go. Period.
I am not completely understanding. When you claim that Christmas trees are subsidized, what is the subsidy and how is it applied? What states get this money?
NAFTA has a lot of things that are wrong with it but we must be careful in picking what we want to complain about. As long as we import we need to have something to export. The other aspect of this is that in Oregon much of the harvesting of the trees is done by Mexican labor. Not sure how that works out for everyone!
Both of my own points/questions. I also would like to know this and to note the irony of Mexican workers harvesting these US trees bound for Mexico to disrupt trade there. Then add the plastic from China.
Haven't you heard about the billions the US dept. of Agriculture pays farmers to promote the growing of certain crops - or they pay farmers for 'not' growing certain crops to keep the prices high on the word market.
We do have 'something' to export. Murder and mayhem, haven't you seen the billions that Raytheon, Boeing and the rest of the 'war profiteers' send to the Middle East and the EU countries?
Way to ignore the question, AZCowboy. The question posed by byronpdx is "When you claim that Christmas trees are subsidized, what is the subsidy and how is it applied?" I, too, wondered about this, and I'm still wondering. You mention "the billions the US dept. of Agriculture pays farmers to promote the growing of certain crops," but this is irrelevant to the question at hand.
They flooded Mexico with subsidized corn and put Mexican farmers out of business - then they bitch because the farmers quit farming and went north to look for work. They complain about Merxico's drug exportation into the US and then they buy every ounce that crosses the border and demand even more. The US sends billions into Israel and then complains that the money is used to build apartheid walls and expansion settlements. The US pushes Monsanto's 'Frankenstein' seed into Latina America but offers no help where the insects (Monarch butterflies in Mexico among the many) are disapprearing and children are coming down with strange skin dieseases on their feet and legs where they play in the 'Roundup' insecticide sprayed fields. Who needs America anyway?
All I could think about was those poor trees. Dead. I know that a lot of them are farmed, but still....