Thread: NAFTA prompts Mexican farmers to rattle scythes

Final stage of NAFTA prompts Mexican farmers to rattle scythes
By JEREMY SCHWARTZ

Palm Beach Post-Cox News Service

Sunday, December 30, 2007

MEXICO CITY — Farmers and activists are planning a series of protests as NAFTA enters its final stage on New Year's Day, when the last tariffs and quotas on corn, beans, milk and sugar melt away.

Opponents of the North American Free Trade Agreement warn that the final lifting of trade barriers could spark even more migration from Mexico's devastated countryside and leave Mexico dependent on the United States for corn and beans, staples since the age of the Aztecs.

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At least one peasant group has said the NAFTA expansion could spark armed rebellion in the countryside if President Felipe Calderón's government doesn't do more to protect small farmers.

Corn and beans were considered especially sensitive to the Mexican economy when the United States, Canada and Mexico signed NAFTA in 1993, and officials buffered them with 15 years of gradually dwindling protections.

Government officials insist that the Jan. 1 opening is largely symbolic because corn and bean tariffs mostly have been phased in already.

NAFTA supporters in Mexico say protesters are exaggerating the effect in an at tempt to wrest more aid from the government.

"It's an important date because it marks the end of the process," said Luis de la Calle, a Mexico City economist who helped negotiate the original agreement in the early 1990s. "But in terms of the market, there will be very little impact."

But members of Mexico's left-leaning Democratic Revolution Party the second-largest party in Congress, have called on Calderón to renegotiate the final opening and remove corn and beans from the list of unprotected trade goods.

Calderón, however, has shown no inclination to tinker with the agreement.

José Romero, a NAFTA expert at the College of Mexico, said, "The government is scared of renegotiating (corn and bean tariffs) because renegotiating part could mean renegotiating the whole thing. And they worry renegotiating could send bad signals to international financial markets."

Mexican farm associations contend that their farmers are woefully unprepared to face an onslaught of U.S. corn and they decry the large subsidies that U.S. corn farmers receive.

In December, the World Trade Organization launched an investigation into whether the U.S. has surpassed international limits on so-called trade distorting subsidies for its farmers by billions of dollars since 1999.

U.S. farmers are far more productive than their Mexican counterparts.

According to the Mexican Institute of Competition, U.S. farms produce an average of 22 tons of corn an acre, compared with 6 tons in Mexico.

Cruz López, president of Mexico's National Farmers Confederation, said domestic corn producers fear they will go out of business, unable to compete with American imports, and leave Mexico reliant on the U.S. for its basic food needs.

"There is an abyss between the (subsidies) that we receive and those of the Canadian and U.S. farmers," he said. "For us, it is very important to guarantee to the Mexican people that we can produce corn and beans."

Mexico imports about 10 million tons of corn annually, adding to the 22 million tons it produces domestically.

Mexican farmers are pushing for more subsidies from their government and predicting dire consequences if they aren't helped.

"If this refusal to protect the national producers continues on the part of the government ... the countryside could take the path of weapons and the guerrilla," Max Correa, leader of the Central Campesina Cardenista Peasant, a farmers advocacy group, told the Mexican press recently.

Since Mexico entered into NAFTA, it has lost nearly 3 million farm jobs and seen a massive migration from the countryside to the U.S. An estimated 80 percent of the 400,000 Mexicans who migrate to the U.S. annually are from rural areas.

Many experts say that the great bet of NAFTA - that peasant farmers would find jobs in a burgeoning Mexican manufacturing industry - hasn't been realized.

"The U.S. doesn't want them, the manufacturing industry can't absorb them, so where do they go?" Romero said. "They don't have the political strength to influence policies."

Experts say the high worldwide price of corn, attributed partly to the increased ethanol production, should provide a buffer for Mexican farmers, but that could prove temporary.




Find this article at:
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/business/c ... _1230.html

It's about time Mexicans revolt to save their own country!!!

Added to Home Page
http://www.alipac.us/article2829.html

What the farmers need to do is to downstream instead of trying to compete selling a bulk commodity, use the corn and beans as raw material at the village level then ship out higher value added goods.

Mexican farmers block border with U.S. to protest free trade accord


2008-01-02 10:23:49
Editor: Yao Siyan
MEXICO CITY, Jan. 1 (Xinhua) -- Some 200 Mexican farmers blocked on Tuesday the Cordoba-Americas bridge linking the country with the United States to protest the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

The farmers demand a revision of the agreement among Mexico and its northern neighbor of the United States and Canada, which lifts tariffs for U.S. and Canadian exports of corn, beans, sugar and milk powder.

The measure will damage Mexico's corn and bean farming, two basic food for local people, said Victor Quintana, head of the Farmers' Democratic Front that organized the protest.

The farmers closed the bridge that links Ciudad Juarez in Mexico and El Paso in the U.S. state of Texas at 0:00 a.m. Tuesday (0700 GMT) and the blockage was expected to last 13 hours, Quintana said.

Many farmers in the country believe the tariff lift will deal a fatal blow to the already fragile agriculture in the country.

Following several years of negotiations, the United States, Canada and Mexico agreed to launch a North American Free Trade Agreement in Jan. 1994.

The agreement will remove most barriers to trade and investment among the countries. Under the NAFTA, all non-tariff barriers to agricultural trade between the United States and Mexico were eliminated.

In addition, many tariffs were lifted immediately, with others being phased out over periods of five to 15 years.

Corn, beans, sugar and milk were granted special 15-year import protection when the NAFTA was negotiated in 1993, time that was supposed to be used to prepare Mexico for competition. Tuesday should be the end of the adjustment period.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008- ... 351780.htm

NAFTA has only helped big business.
~~

Mexicans Protesting NAFTA Block Ciudad Juarez-El Paso Bridge

By Andres R. Martinez

Jan. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Mexican protesters blocked all but one lane of the bridge linking Ciudad Juarez and El Paso, Texas, today to protest the opening of Mexico's market to U.S. corn and sugar as part of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

About 1,000 people have walked to the halfway point of the Cordoba bridge since a minute past midnight, said Carlos Ramos, a spokesman for one of the organizing groups. Farmers and supporters held protests all across Mexico today as tariffs on sugar, corn, milk and beans were lifted.

The protesters, who argue Mexico hasn't done enough to protect them from cheaper U.S. commodities, may block the bridge until tomorrow, said Enrique Perez, spokesman for the National Association of Commercial Field Producers.

``This is the most important, symbolic protest, here on the border,'' Perez said.

Mexico, the U.S. and Canada agreed to delay the opening of the markets for the four commodities until today, 15 years after NAFTA was signed.

A spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection at the bridge didn't return phone calls.

The National Confederation of Farm Workers will meet with government ministers in Veracruz state starting Jan. 4 to discuss how the government will help farmers compete with U.S. companies, said Guillermo Correa, spokesman for the workers group.

The Agriculture Ministry said in a statement Dec. 29 that it is willing to try to make Mexican commodities more competitive with U.S. imports.

About 6,000 delegates representing 5 million farm workers will meet in Veracruz with Agriculture Minister Alberto Cardenas, Economy Minister Eduardo Sojo, Finance Minister Agustin Carstens and other government officials, Correa said.

Thousands of protesters are expected to occupy the Zocalo, Mexico City's main square, on Jan. 31, Correa said.

www.bloomberg.com

Doesn't the increasing demand for ethanol support the price of corn and beans? All I have heard from the farming community is that we can't grow enough corn for food, feed, and fuel. And the Mexican corn farmers are worried about losing their market? There's a disconnect in the market somewhere.

These, as I understand, are not big time farmers as we think of farmers here in the US. These are smaller farmers who grew enough to sell and feed their families.

Many were put out of business years ago when American dumped subsidized corn into Mexico. That is one reason so many came to this country, some with the attitude we owed them.

I don't think these farmers 'ship out' low or high dollar stuff.

If this were only a matter of a market driven thing, it might be different. But it isn't.


Just me, but I have respect for these people. It is a symbolic gesture, but at least it is something - and remember, these are the ones who want to stay in their own country. I wish more of them had seen fit to demonstrate and stay home.