TRADE-MEXICO: Farmers Take to Streets Over New NAFTA Rules

By Stephen Leahy Reprint | | Print |

Stephen Leahy

BROOKLIN, Ontario, Jan 3 2003 (IPS) - The New Year in Mexico began with thousands of machete-wielding Zapatistas invading the city of San Cristobal De Las Casas in Chiapas, as hundreds of campesinos blocked border crossings at Juarez-El Paso and elsewhere.

The protests were in response to North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) provisions that ended Mexican tariffs on imports of nearly 80 U.S. agricultural goods. No injuries were reported.

Tariffs will remain on maize, beans and powdered milk until 2008.

“All hell is breaking loose,” said Peter Rosset, an agro-ecologist and the Chiapas-based co-director of FoodFirst/The Institute for Food and Development Policy, a U.S. non-profit group that promotes food as a human right.

Mexican farmers’ groups have complained that without the tariffs, they can’t compete with their heavily subsidised U.S. counterparts.

Anti-NAFTA protests have been a regular occurrence in Mexico, with farmers riding into the Congress building in Mexico City on horseback and blocking roads leading south from the capital last December.

At least a dozen campesino organisations, along with environmental groups and others, have formed a coalition called the “Countryside Can’t Take it Anymore” to fight for the survival of Mexico’s rural life, said Rosset. The 25 million people who live in rural areas, where 20 percent of Mexican jobs are located, are struggling for their very survival, he maintained.

One Mexican tariff that ended Jan. 1 added 50 percent to the price of imported U.S. chicken. The U.S. fast food industry only wants white meat, so wings and drumsticks are often thrown out as waste or turned into animal feed.

Now, those poultry products will be sold for pennies in Mexico. This will wipe out poultry production in Mexico in a few months unless the tariffs remain, says Rosset.

Surprisingly, American poultry farmers have agreed, fearing border blockades and other actions will cost more. Moreover, some large poultry companies have large Mexican processing plants.

The National Chicken Council said last month that it wants tariffs extended for five more years and raised to 99 percent for 2003 – the level they were in 2001. They would then be slowly trimmed by 20 percent each year.

Mexican farmers have already been hard hit by U.S. food imports of staples like maize.

“It’s going from bad to worse,” said Rosset. “The U.S. produces food cheaply thanks largely to 30 billion dollars in subsidies every year. And those subsidies will increase dramatically this year under the new U.S. Farm Bill.”

Mexico can’t compete on that basis and only farmers who supply fresh winter produce to the United States will survive, he said.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. farm exports to Mexico rose from 3.6 billion dollars in 1993 to 7.4 billion dollars in 2001. Meanwhile, Mexican farm exports to the United States nearly doubled from 2.7 billion dollars in 1993 to 5.2 billion dollars in 2001.

While NAFTA has pumped up export dollars, it has also led to depressed prices. Maize prices have fallen 45 percent in the last three years, said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, a U.S. consumer rights group founded in 1971 by Ralph Nader.

Mexico now imports many foods it once produced itself such as soy, rice, wheat and meat largely because of NAFTA, said Nettie Wiebe, a farmer and former president of the National Farmers Union (NFU) in Laura, Saskatchewan.

Wiebe, who recently traveled to meet with Mexican farm leaders, said “the NAFTA has devastated the Mexican countryside with rural impoverishment reaching a crisis point with over 75 percent of rural Mexicans living in poverty..”

An estimated 600 peasant farmers are being forced off their land every day, Wiebe said.

A Public Citizen report in 2001 projected that up to 15 million small farmers will be displaced in the next 10 years because of NAFTA’s agriculture provisions.

“As bad as NAFTA’s seven years has been in the United States, the results for poverty-stricken Mexican farmers and consumers is horrific and puts to rest that myth that these trade deals benefit people in developing countries,” she said.

The big NAFTA winners are large agribusinesses, many of which have had record profits, reports Public Citizen. Under the NAFTA time frame, Archer Daniels Midland’s profits nearly tripled – from 110 million dollars to 301 million dollars – and ConAgra’s profits grew from 143 million dollars to 413 million dollars.

An NFU study last year clearly shows NAFTA hurt farmers in all three countries. Wiebe wants to end the “forced” trade of food and replace it with “the right of all people to produce their own food in culturally appropriate ways.”

While Mexican Economy Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez said in late December his government will look at the problem, Rosset questions whether there is the political will given President Vicente Fox’s strong support for free trade.

“Peasant organisations are getting very militant,” Rosset said. “That’s not surprising since this is a life or death situation for them. 2003 is going to be a year of protest and uproar throughout the Mexican countryside.”