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NAFTA

Mike

Well-known member
ALABAMA - Down on the Farm: NAFTA's Seven-Years War on Farmers and Ranchers in Alabama

DWINDLING INCOMES FOR SMALL FARMERS IN ALABAMA;
LOST FARMS AND RURAL CRISIS IS NAFTA's LEGACY

Read the Full Text


EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
In the summer of 2001, family farmers and ranchers throughout North America are struggling.

During the 1993 debate over the fate of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Alabama farmers and ranchers as well as farm communities across the U.S. were promised that NAFTA would provide access to new export markets and thus would finally bring a lasting solution to farmers off-and-on struggles for economic success.

Now, seven years later, the evidence shows the income of independent Alabama farmers and national farm income has declined, consumer prices have risen and some giant agribusinesses have reaped huge profits. Total net income for farm operations in Alabama increased between 1993 and 1999 but all of the income gain was in corporate farms, when corporate income increases are eliminated farm income drops steeply in Alabama. Total Alabama net farm income grew by 31% between 1993 and 1999 to $1.2 billion. However, net farm income for non-corporate Alabama farm operations fell 74% between 1993 and 1999 from $51.4 million to $13.4 million. In Alabama, 2,000 farms have disappeared during the seven years of NAFTA. Nationally, farms have disappeared faster since NAFTA went into effect than in years that preceded it, but in Alabama, the number of farms grew before NAFTA was enacted but that gain was doubly reversed in the years since NAFTA. The total number of Alabama farms grew by 2.1% in the years before NAFTA (1988-1993) but fell by 4.1% after NAFTA went into effect between 1994 and 2000. These outcomes are defining the growing national debates over President Bush s proposals to establish Fast Track trade authority and to expand NAFTA through the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).

This report documents the basis for farmers concern about NAFTA and its model of export-oriented agriculture with a special Alabama supplement which examines the impact of NAFTA on Alabama farmers. For the past seven years, the jewel of Alabama s agriculture, the state s peanut crop, has been decimated by NAFTA. Alabama farmers raising beef cattle have seen prices decline since NAFTA. Alabama Tomato acreage and prices have declined significantly, facing significant import competition from Mexican tomatoes. Alabama wheat and soybean growers also have seen farmgate prices decline significantly since NAFTA went into effect. Alabama lumber mills have faced unfair competition from cheap imports of Canadian softwood lumber.

The same conditions are plaguing farmers and ranchers throughout the country. For the past seven years, Midwestern and Plains states wheat farmers; ranchers in Montana, Texas and other states; vegetable, flower and fruit growers in California; lumber mill owners in Louisiana, Arkansas and Washington; vegetable growers in Florida; chicken farmers nationwide and others have suffered declining commodity prices and farm income while a flood of NAFTA imports outpaced U.S. exports to Canada and Mexico.

Yet it was not farmers in Mexico or Canada who benefitted from Alabama s farmers woes. Millions of campesinos throughout Mexico have lost a significant source of income and left their small corn farms. Some became farm laborers working in squalid conditions for poverty wages on large plantations growing produce for export to the U.S. Others moved to Mexico s cities where unemployment is high. Canadian grain and dairy farmers also face steeply rising debt during the NAFTA era.

NAFTA has brought seven years of good fortune to many of the agribusinesses that pressured Washington, Ottawa and Mexico City to negotiate and ratify NAFTA's corporate- managed trade terms. For example, Tyson Foods operates five chicken plants in Alabama and has 6,500 contracts with chicken farm operators across the U.S., undoubtedly including the operators in Alabama that supply Tyson s plants,** which dominate the entire process of raising and selling chickens locally to operate internationally. Since NAFTA stripped away many safeguards for the folks who produce raw agricultural products, relative power and leverage has grown for large agribusiness conglomerates to exert pressure on both farmers and consumers.

In Washington, D.C., the Bush Administration is pushing forward with an ambitious plan to expand the NAFTA model throughout the hemisphere through FTAA. President George W. Bush and his principal trade policy advisors have stated that they intend to make the debate about NAFTA expansion and Fast Track (which they want to rename "Presidential Trade Promotion Authority") a referendum on NAFTA.

Public Citizen agrees that the debate over NAFTA expansion indeed, the national conversation about the premises and direction of U.S. trade policy should be decided on the basis of the real-life results of NAFTA and the model on which it is based.

In this report, we show how Alabama independent farmers and small and medium-sized farmers throughout the U.S., Mexico and Canada have seen agricultural prices plummet, farm incomes collapse and critical domestic agriculture safety net programs dismantled. International free trade agreements and the domestic policies which furthered implementation of the export-oriented model, such as the U.S. "Freedom to Farm Act," have proved to benefit only the largest agribusinesses while the majority of farmers and consumers have lost.

http://www.citizen.org/documents/ACF182.pdf
 

alabama

Well-known member
Dang Mike: You sure know how to make a fellow feel bad. It ain't enough that bull prices were way off this year, fertelizer is 400 a ton, a drought for the second year in a row and now NAFTA is eating my lunch. What's next?

I think I need to borrow that bottle in front of you.
 
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