"Free trade has been a disaster for us, says Tirso Alvares Correa....Farmers said that entire towns are emptying because thousands of small farms have gone out of business. As many as 2 million farm workers have lost their jobs — the vast majority headed north across the U.S. border looking for better pay....
July 1, 2006, "Is NAFTA Good For Mexico's Farmers?" cbsnews.com, Amy Clark
"In the heart of Mexico's breadbasket-where plowing the land is still done the old fashioned way-farmers like Tirso Alvares Correa worry about their corn crops....
Corn from abroad is taking a toll on us, he says. We can't sell our corn anymore. Where are those products coming from?...
The
United States and Canada have been selling tons of corn in Mexico for
over a decade, thanks to NAFTA-the North American Free Trade
Agreement. It eliminated tariffs on most agricultural trade and was
supposed to be a win-win for the United States and Mexico.
For
Alvares Correa, NAFTA has been a disaster. While the trade agreement
opened up U.S. markets to Mexican corn farmers, they haven't been able
to sell any corn in America.
Meanwhile, American farmers have
flooded Mexico with cheap corn thanks to generous U.S. government
subsidies-subsidies left unchecked by NAFTA. A U.S. corn grower
receives an average annual subsidy of $20,000 a year. The Mexican
government gives their farmers just $100.
No one questions that Mexico's small corn farmers are
hurting--due in large part to the impact of NAFTA....Millions of corn growers have no choice but to grind their crop to a pulp and feed it to cows.
In
two years (2008) NAFTA will lift the last limits on U.S. corn exports, which
could put even more farmers out of business — and trigger a new wave of
migrants headed north across the U.S. border.
Free trade has
been a disaster for us, says Tirso Alvares Correa. But his worst fear
is that soon there won't be anyone left to work the land that has been
in his family for generations."
