CAFTA’s a new Disaster
Capital Times (Madison, WI)
By John Kinsman
January 27, 2005
The Central America Free Trade Agreement will be up for congressional action soon. Winners would be giant transnational corporations such as Cargill, Monsanto, ADM and the like, which would reap huge profits at the expense of millions of farmers who may be starved off the land.
CAFTA would undermine the growing "fair trade" movement by providing subsidies for maquila sweatshops and plantation type factory farms. Peasant groups and rural cooperatives that promote fair trade coffee and chocolate could be outlawed as being an impediment to free trade. In other words, any pricing structure that inhibits the flow of low worldwide prices for products is deemed a trade barrier. The consequent destruction of livelihoods is not taken into account.
The North American Free Trade Agreement includes the United States, Canada and Mexico. Now 10 years old, NAFTA has been a dismal race to the bottom in farmer prices, worker wages and environmental destruction. Profitable production of basic crops in certain countries has been destroyed by the "dumping" of a highly subsidized crop from a developed country. One example: Subsidized corn from the United States "dumped" into Mexico decimated Mexican corn prices, forcing many farmers to migrate to the United States in an effort to feed their families. Millions of farmers in the three countries have been forced from the land as a result of these trade policies.
CAFTA will expand these disastrous policies to five more Central American countries with even more damaging trade demands: privatization of water resources, credit, education and other common resource rights.
This past December I was part of a U.S. farmer delegation that spent a week in El Salvador meeting with farm leaders, heads of the country's agricultural industries, producer groups and public officials. Two Mexican farmers also were part of our delegation.
The people we met with were shocked to hear that we in the United States and Mexico had suffered great losses as a result of NAFTA. They had been assured by officials from both of our governments that we had all prospered. Also, they had been told that under CAFTA exports would be the solution to their poverty, when in reality it would force more off the land to the maquilas and migration to the United States.
In a meeting with officials of the U.S. Agency for International Development, we did not find agreement in our opposition to CAFTA. No surprises there; USAID earlier had awarded a $700,000 grant to a pro-CAFTA business group whose membership included the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the chambers for Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. Notably, however, several members of Congress have signed a letter to the USAID inspector general, requesting a thorough investigation as to the appropriateness of this grant using U.S. tax dollars to finance questionable promotional tactics for a trade agreement.
Among the people we found enthusiastic agreement around the principle of food sovereignty, which is the right of every person to produce healthy sustainable food at a profit, and the right of all people to be able to purchase these products at a fair price. Nations and regions must have the power to protect these rights. CAFTA works in direct opposition to the principles of food sovereignty.
Through NAFTA we are importing goods made with slave labor. Because these imports are cheap, we are buying more and more, severely jeopardizing domestic food production, especially at the family farm level. Whatincentive is there for farmers to continue to produce food if they suffer constant losses? Prices have remained below the cost of production for several years as we experience the results of NAFTA policies.
Food security is being lost. Regions and whole countries are becoming dependent on a few transnational corporations while losing the freedom to produce food for their own populations.
Ongoing communication and farmer visits between the United States and El Salvador will focus on the principles of food sovereignty as we work together in the coming months. In the meantime, citizens in both the United States and Central America need to continue to voice their opposition to CAFTA. In particular, members of the U.S. Congress need to hear from constituents that free trade deals like CAFTA do more harm than good.
