CAFTA: The New Race to the Floor
by John Kinsman
August 2005, Acres U.S.A.

   In June, the U.S. Senate voted 54-45 in favor of the Central America Free Trade Agreement, after intense lobbying by the White House. It now moves to the House of Representatives, where it is expected to face stronger opposition. The winners under CAFTA are giant transnational corporations such as Cargill, Monsanto, ADM and the like, reaping huge profits at the expense of the millions of farmers who are starved off the land.
   CAFTA will undermine the growing Fair Trade movement by providing subsidies for maquila sweatshops and plantation-type factory farms. Peasant groups and rural cooperatives that promote fair trade coffee and chocolate could be outlawed as being an impediment to free trade. In other words, any pricing structure that inhibits the flow of constant low world prices for products is deemed a trade barrier. In this race to the bottom in producer prices and worker wages the destruction of livelihoods cannot be taken into account.
   CAFTA’s predecessor, the North American Free Trade Agreement, includes the United States, Canada and Mexico. Now ten years old, NAFI’A has been a dismal race to the bottom in farmer prices, worker wages and environmental destruction. Profitable production of basic crops of certain countries has been destroyed by “dumping” of a highly subsidized crop from a developed country into a country that cannot afford to subsidize. As an example: Subsidized corn from the United States was “dumped” into Mexico and decimated their corn prices, forcing many farmers to migrate to the United States in an effort to feed their families. Millions of farmers in the three countries have been forced from the land as a result of these trade policies. CAFTA will expand these disastrous policies to five more Central American countries with even more damaging trade demands: privatization of water resources, credit, education and other common resource rights.
   This past December, I was part of a U.S. farmer delegation which spent a week in El Salvador meeting with farm leaders, heads of the country’s agricultural industries, producer groups and public officials. Two Mexican farmers, representing organizations from their country, were part of our delegation.
   The people we met with were shocked to hear that we in the United States and Mexico had suffered great losses as a result of NAFTA. They had been assured by officials from both of our governments that we had all prospered. Also, they had been told that under CAFTA experts would be the solution to their poverty, when in reality it would force more exodus from the land to the maquilas and migration to the United States. El Salvador has a population of 6 million people, yet another 2 million have already been forced to migrate to the United States.
   In a meeting with USAID officials in the U.S. Embassy, we did not find agreement in our opposition to CAFTA. No surprises here — earlier USAID had awarded a $700,000 grant to a pro-CAFTA business group whose membership included the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the chambers of commerce for Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. Several members of Congress have signed a letter to the USAID Inspector General, requesting a thorough investigation as to the appropriateness of this grant, which uses U.S. tax dollars to finance questionable promotional tactics focused on an existing trade agreement.
   Other than USAID, we found enthusiastic agreement around the principle of food sovereignty. Food sovereignty is the right of every person to produce healthy, sustainable food and fiber at a profit, and the right of all persons to be able to purchase these products at a fair price. Nations and regions must have the power to protect these rights. It is of vital importance to understand the relationship between CAFTA and food sovereignty. By importing goods made with slave labor, Americans have ourselves become dependent on imported cheap food and other goods. We are severely damaging our own ability to produce food in our own country. What incentive is there for farmers to continue to produce food at a constant loss? Prices have remained below the cost of production for several years as we suffered the results of NAF’TA policies.
   Food security is being lost. Regions and countries are becoming dependent on those few dominant corporations as they lose their freedom to produce food for their own populations. Ongoing communication and farmer visits between the United States and El Salvador will focus on the principles of food sovereignty as we continue to work together.
   In the meanwhile, citizens in both the United States and Central America need to continue to voice their opposition to CAFTA. In particular, members of the U.S. Congress need to hear from constituents that free trade deals like CAFTA do more harm than good.

   John Kinsman is president of National Family Farm Defenders, P.O. Box 1772, Madison, Wisconsin 53701, website <www.familyfarmdefenders.org>.