Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

Peru free trade agreement is disaster for farmers everywhere

The same international grain traders who dumped below-cost grain into 
Mexico after NAFTA, driving over a million farmers off the land and 
fueling illegal migration into the United States, will now do the same in
Peru.

Friday, December 07, 2007

Peru Free Trade Agreement is disaster for farmers everywhere
http://www.bilaterals.org/article.php3?id_article=10623 
By Ben Burkett
MinutemanMedia.org

American anxiety about our food system is at an all-time high. With 
every report of tainted or poisonous foreign food imports or new E. 
coli recall, consumer demand grows for locally produced, 
source-verified products. As a family farmer who grows collard 
greens, okra, watermelon, and squash and has struggled for years 
trying to obtain a fair price for my crops, I welcome wholeheartedly 
this phenomenon. However, our Congress members seem to be oblivious 
to the livelihoods of family farmers and the wishes of consumers as 
they continue to pass more disastrous free trade agreements. Instead 
of learning from the failed lessons of the National American Free 
Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the House of Representatives passed the Peru 
Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in November. The U.S. Senate is looking to 
vote on it this month. Farmers and consumers both here and in Peru 
will be the big losers. The only winners will be corporate 
agribusinesses dumping cheap grain and seeking the cheapest labor and 
most lax environmental standards.

As a family farmer from Mississippi, I actually thought NAFTA might 
be able to help farmers like me access new markets. But I quickly 
found out how wrong I was when many of the farmers in my cooperative 
lost our cucumber contracts from corporations such as Heinz and 
Vlasic, who chose to buy instead from Mexico. The Peru FTA simply 
continues this failed NAFTA-model for agriculture that destroys local 
food systems both here and abroad, while favoring industrial-style, 
environmentally damaging farm systems. The United States has 
historically had an agricultural trade surplus. We are now verging on 
becoming a net food importer and already have a $400 million 
agriculture trade deficit with Peru. Now is not the time to allow 
more cheap foreign food that would undercut American family farmers 
and ranchers and jeopardizes our food security. Since the World Trade 
Organization (WTO) and NAFTA went into effect, the United States has 
lost more than a quarter million independent family farms. Already, 
the asparagus industries in California and Washington have been 
devastated by the flood of cheap imports from Peru. Processing 
companies such as Del Monte and Green Giant have shifted their 
production to Peru to take advantage of lower farmland, labor, and 
environmental compliance costs. American ranchers will be harmed by 
the Peru FTA's failure to include food safety standards for cattle. 
Peru's beef production is growing and could soon export to the United 
States, despite a foot-and-mouth disease problem. Our family farmers 
in the South are increasingly losing out to cheap imports from 
Central and Latin America. Soon, you won't be able to find any local 
produce at your supermarket or restaurants if we continue passing 
more free trade agreements!

As harmful as the Peru FTA will be for American farmers and ranchers, 
the effects on Peruvian farmers will be just as devastating. As an 
African American farmer, I am particularly concerned about the impact 
the agreement will have on the millions of Afro-Peruvian and 
indigenous farmers. The same international grain traders who dumped 
below-cost grain into Mexico after NAFTA, driving over a million 
farmers off the land and fueling illegal migration into the United 
States, will now do the same in Peru. Many of those displaced 
Peruvian corn and rice farmers facing economic catastrophe will be 
forced to migrate or grow illicit drug crops to survive. In July, 
four million Peruvians took to the streets to voice opposition to the FTA.

Farmers at home and abroad need a new direction on trade and 
agriculture policy that protects rural livelihoods and promotes food 
sovereignty. The first step in that new direction must be rejection 
of the Peru Free Trade Agreement and the upcoming agreements with 
South Korea, Panama and Colombia. Family farmers want to produce for 
our families and our local communities, not export markets. Free 
trade directly undermines and weakens renewed consumer demand for 
local and healthy foods. We have already outsourced our energy 
security. Why are we doing the same with our food security? Food 
sovereignty, not free trade, needs to be the foundational basis of 
our policies if we are to build a more healthful and just food system.

Ben Burkett is a fourth-generation farmer from Petal, Mississippi. He 
serves as vice-president of the National Family Farm Coalition and 
belongs to the Mississippi Association of Cooperatives and Federation 
of Southern Cooperatives.

source: Topeka Capital Journal


Printed from http://www.bilaterals.org/article.php3?id_article=10623