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News :: Miscellaneous |
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As Trade Battle Escalates, Farm State Support for "Fast Track" Dwindles |
Current rating: 0 |
by Global Trade Watch/Public Citizen
(No verified email address) |
26 Jun 2001
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Rep. Tim Johnson has signed on as a co-sponsor of Fast Track. The only question is- Why? NAFTA has been a massive failure for farmers, with commodity prices hitting new lows, making it difficult for family farmers to continue. The only people in agriculture who will benefit from the the proposed "Free Trade Area of the Americas" will be large commodity trading corporations. It will be the nail in the coffin of the family farmer and will bring an even greater economic crisis to rural America. We will follow-up on this story as it develops. ML |
New Report Documents How NAFTA has Enriched Giant Agribusinesses at Expense of Consumers, Small Farmers
WHAT: Press conference to discuss growing farmer discontent with free trade deals and to release a new report on the impact of NAFTA on agriculture. During the 1993 NAFTA debate, U.S. farmers and ranchers were promised that the pact would bring a lasting solution to farmers' struggles and benefit them by opening new export markets. Now, seven years later, the evidence shows that farm incomes have declined, consumer prices have risen and some of the largest agribusiness companies have reaped huge profits. New NAFTA food imports, meanwhile, have greatly outpaced new exports.
The report comes as Congress begins debate on whether to renew "Fast Track" trade negotiating authority for the president. The administration wants to use this authority to expand NAFTA through an agreement called the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). But the anger of U.S. farmers who produce grains, meats, vegetables and fruits over declining commodity prices and farm income could be the determining factor in these major trade fights.
WHEN: 10 a.m., Tuesday, June 26
WHERE: 121 Cannon House Office Building
WHO: Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.)
Lori Wallach, Director, Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch
Bill Christison, President, National Family Farm Coalition and Missouri Rural Crisis Center and Missouri soy and wheat farmer
Keith Dittrich, President, The American Corn Growers Association (ACGA)
Other U.S. farmers and ranchers
CONTACT: Jane English (202) 454-5102; Shannon Little (202) 588-7742 |
See also:
http://www.citizen.org/pctrade/tradehome.html
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Fast Track Opponents - Find an activist group |
by ML
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
26 Jun 2001
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Join an anti-free trade , anti-fast track group near you. Go to this site and look at the map. We must fight Fast Track and stop Bush racing through trade agreements without full public consultation and discussion as to the effects of the agreement on people's lives, jobs, and their environment.
Locate A Fair Trade Organizer Near You
Click on map to find your state here:
http://www.citizen.org/pctrade/activism/organizer_map.htm
In 1997 and again in 1998 activists organizing in the United States successfully pressure Congress to defeat "fast track" negotiating authority for international trade and investment agreements.
Join in our latest struggle against Fast Track.
Help defeat Fast Track.
"Fast track" is one means of granting authority to the President to negotiate trade agreements.
Under this process, the White House negotiates a trade agreement, and writes the "implementing legislation" needed to change U.S. laws to adapt to the agreement. Congress must then vote yes or no with no amendments within 60 legislative days.
Congress is limited to 20 hours of floor debate in each chamber.
The last fast-track authorization lapsed three years ago; the new fast-track legislation would last eight years.
Fast-track proponents argue that Congress must give up its right to fully debate and amend implementing legislation in order to provide trade negotiators with credibility that the terms they negotiate with other countries will not be reversed by Congress.
The ban on amendments permits members of Congress to accept a deal that includes many small items that will be bitterly contested by different sectors but that, proponents argue, results in the greater good.
Opponents, however, believe that the issues covered by current trade agreements are broad and affect people's lives directly.
Thus, they merit a full congressional and public debate.
Domestic food safety, environmental protections, local investment and development standards, government procurement, and consumer protections are some of the many laws in the United States and in the other signatory countries that can be changed as a result of a trade agreement. |
See also:
http://www.citizen.org/pctrade/activism/organizer_map.htm
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Here's The Report |
by ML
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
26 Jun 2001
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The link to the entire report is below. It goes in extensive detail with case studies of the broken promises of better times for farmers under NAFTA. Here is one damning quote of the failures of "Free Trade" policies.
"U.S. farm income is significantly below total agriculture income before NAFTA went into effect and is projected to decline in the first years of the new century. In the U.S., farm income is projected to decline 9% between 2000 and 2001 -- from $45.4 billion to $41.3 billion in 2001. This compares to annual farm income of $59.0 billion before NAFTA went into effect in 1993 -- a 43% drop compared to the projected 2001 farm income by the Farm and Agriculture Policy Research Institute (FAPRI). In 1998, the latest FAPRI 2001 survey of actual-versus-projected-data, found that U.S. net agriculture income stood at $59.1 billion. Over the next decade, the USDA has projected that net farm income will fall from $42.3 billion in 2000 to $40.4 billion in 2010.
The gross farm income for commodity growers in the U.S. is projected to be significantly lower in 2000 than the average gross farm incomes between 1990 and 1995. Even without factoring in the expanded imports to the U.S. that an FTAA would bring according to the USDA, inflation-adjusted gross farm income per acre for rice is projected to fall from the 1990-1995 average of $725 to $656 in 2000, a 9.5% decline. Over the same periods, gross incomes per acre for cotton is projected to fall 23.4%, 16.0% for corn, 15.9% for soybeans and 15.7% for wheat."
This has led to an undermining of programs meant to protect family farms from the impact of low prices, since the "free market" would solve all of agriculture’s problems.
"The increasing supplies of imported agricultural products and crashing prices paid to farmers have had a particularly severe impact because the policy mechanism designed to temper such extreme swings had been eliminated. Using NAFTA as a sales pitch and equally as the political instrument to force policy change, interests in Washington, Mexico City and Ottawa set about to eliminate domestic farm programs aimed at stabilizing the growers situation vis a vis market forces. The deregulation theory held that with increasing exports, the safeguards that protected independent farmers and plentifulness of the food supply were no longer needed.
To implement that theory, agribusiness interests pushed the approval of NAFTA and its implementing legislation, which contained the changes to U.S. domestic farm policy required to conform with NAFTA's rules. Meanwhile, these interests pursued the same agenda with the Freedom to Farm Act, which also phased out U.S. domestic farm policies such as subsidies, price supports and loan guarantees. Proponents of the legislation contended it would make farming more efficient and responsive to market forces; in reality, it essentially handed the production of food to agribusiness, but made it extremely difficult for any but large, well-financed agribusinesses to survive. Ironically, to counteract the predictable failure of NAFTA and the similar farm deregulation policies embodied in the Freedom to Farm Act, Congress has had to appropriate emergency farm supports -- in massive farm bailout bills -- every year since the legislation went into effect.
Worse, while these emergency payments were represented as necessary to save small, independent farmers, the overwhelming majority of them have gone to the biggest farm operators. Despite the new "free market" approach embodied in NAFTA and the Freedom to Farm Act, federal agriculture spending rose to a record $23 billion in 2000. But even with these notably non-"free market" emergency support payments, the NAFTA model is killing small, independent farmers. Only 1% of all farms were eligible for any of the emergency support in 1999, and the largest operators received on average 14 times the amount of the smallest farms.) The largest 10% of farms received 56% of the emergency taxpayer assistance despite the fact that smaller family farmers have faced higher rates of bankruptcies and loan delinquencies after the implementation of NAFTA, the global WTO and the implementation of these pacts' philosophy through the Freedom to Farm Act. In contrast to the pro-NAFTA promises of an export led miracle, in 1999, direct government payments represented 48% of net farm income in the U.S."
Tim Johnson needs to make clear whether he is fighting for the family farm or to make big agribusiness more profitable while it destroys the family farm so that he can rake in big campaign contributions from Archer-Daniels-Midland (a well-known corporate felon) and other such companies, whose best interests are served by such policies. |
See also:
http://www.citizen.org/pctrade/nafta/reports/naftaAG/NAFTAAGREPORT.htm
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