AGRICULTURE-MEXICO: Anti-NAFTA Farmers Hold Talks with Government

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Pilar Franco

MEXICO CITY, Jan 7 2003 (IPS) - Organisations of peasant farmers in Mexico are holding talks with the government of Vicente Fox in search of a national agreement to rescue the country’s farm sector, amidst a climate of impatience and division among rural groups.

Rural activists complain that the new North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) provisions that lifted Mexican tariffs on imports of nearly 80 agricultural products from the United States as of Jan 1 will be fatal to Mexico’s farmers, due to the competition with heavily subsidised U.S. farm goods.

Discussion panels to assess the situation in the rural sector were formally installed Monday, while thousands of small farmers staged symbolic closures of ports around the country and held protest demonstrations, which included the declaration of a hunger strike, in the capital.

Farm leader Víctor Quintana urged authorities to announce, in the agreement that is to be signed on Feb 5, that the new rules put into effect this year under NAFTA – which links Canada, Mexico and the United States since 1994 – would be renegotiated.

In the name of the ”The Countryside Can’t Take it Anymore” movement, Quintana warned that if the NAFTA agriculture provisions are not renegotiated, Mexico’s farmers will hold ”unprecedented” protests.

But Fox promised that his government ”is not going to leave the campesinos on their own,” and will work to safeguard the country’s farmers.

Mexico’s secretary of foreign relations, Jorge Castañeda, outlined the government’s position on the NAFTA provisions at a conference on the rural sector held over the weekend in the eastern state of Veracruz.

”Allow me to be clear: the solution to these problems does not lie in a renegotiation of NAFTA as some have called for in an overly simplistic manner, without carrying out a comprehensive evaluation of the implications and benefits for Mexico,” said Castañeda.

He suggested instead that the peasant farmers forge an alliance with his ministry, ”to reach a migration agreement with the United States to protect our fellow countrymen with sure sources of jobs and to guarantee that the Mexican countryside will not end up empty” of people.

An average of 600 Mexican peasants a day migrate to cities in Mexico and to the United States, according to official statistics.

”We already have a diagnosis of the grave problems facing the sector,” said Alvaro López Ríos, the head of the National Union of Agricultural Workers (UNTA). ”This is the time for making decisions. We do not believe that there is any more time to lose.”

Since Jan 1, food imports from the United States and Canada enter Mexico without paying duties, with the exception of beans, corn and powdered milk.

UNTA and other organisations argue that because of the imbalances between the members of NAFTA, the implementation of the agricultural provisions – described by López Ríos as ”the last offensive against Mexican agriculture” – should be delayed.

The activist told IPS that ”there is no time for more analysis” and debate, and expressed his fear that the negotiating process that got underway this week ”will only bring a ‘light’ agreement that leaves intact the policies which are devastating the farmers.”

For that reason, UNTA decided not to take part in the dialogue with the government.

”The authorities believe that simply urging farmers to behave as efficient businesspersons will resolve the problem of the ravages to agriculture caused by decades of structural adjustment measures and the liberalisation of price supports, as well as the reduction of public spending on the countryside,” he said.

One of the pledges Fox made in the campaign that led him to the presidency in July 2000 was to review the agricultural provisions of NAFTA, in order to renegotiate them, said López Ríos.

Dozens of farmers, including members of UNTA, declared a hunger strike Monday in front of the Independence monument on Reforma Avenue in downtown Mexico City, while other groups of peasants symbolically ”closed down” ports on the Pacific ocean and the Gulf of Mexico.

In the meantime, representatives of rural organisations sat down to discussions with government delegates to debate possible legal reforms and financing aimed at reviving the depressed rural sector.

The debates are to culminate in a National Convention on farm activity on Feb 2 and the signing of an agreement to shore up the agriculture sector three days later.

The Permanent Agrarian Congress, the Barzón, and the Ayala Plan National Coordinator initiated the talks with the government, which they described as ”a historic event” that marked the creation of a consultation process in which all concerned actors are involved.

Mexico already imports 95 percent of the soy beans, 58.5 percent of the rice, and 40 percent of the beef consumed domestically.

In the five years prior to the implementation of NAFTA, Mexico’s farm output grew by 4.24 million tons, compared to an increase of just 2.29 million tons in the five years after the trade agreement entered into effect.

Between 1995 and 2001, farm imports from the United States increased from 3.3 to 7.4 billion dollars, while Mexico’s agricultural exports to the United States only grew from 3.8 to 5.3 billion dollars in the same period.

From 1985 to 1999, the international prices of corn and beans, staples of the Mexican diet, fell 64 and 46 percent, respectively, although retail prices paid by consumers in Mexico did not drop.

According to official statistics, the price of the basic basket of essential goods rose nearly threefold in that same period.