It's Time to Defeat CAFTA

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It’s Time to Defeat CAFTA

As the Bush administration works to garner congressional support for the Dominican Republic–Central American Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA), grassroots groups throughout the Americas continue to rally in opposition.

Since negotiations ended in 2004, the agreement has been ratified by Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador; ratification is still pending in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, and the United States. Under “fast-track” trade promotion authority, the U.S. Congress can only approve or reject—not amend—trade agreements. DR-CAFTA supporters estimate that an additional 25 to 40 supporters in the House of Representatives are needed to ensure DR-CAFTA will pass.

Supporters of DR-CAFTA include the Business Coalition for U.S.–Central American Trade, which represents an array of corporate interests from high-tech to agribusiness. Opposition to the agreement comes from grassroots groups focusing on agriculture, workers’ and consumers’ rights, the environment, and even traditional supporters of free trade such as the U.S. sugar lobby. The diversity among DR-CAFTA’s opponents reveals how many people face significant hardship if the agreement is ratified.

The threat DR-CAFTA poses to the 5.5 million Central Americans who earn their livelihood in agriculture goes beyond U.S. dumping of highly subsidized agricultural goods: under the agreement Central American countries would be required to adopt U.S. patent rules, including patents on plants, that would remove farmers’ traditional right to save seed and pave the way for biotech corporations to sue small farmers if the farmers’ seed is contaminated with biotech products.

Comparing DR-CAFTA to Food First’s Trade Principles, which outline the conditions under which trade would benefit all sectors of society, reveals why ratifying DR-CAFTA would be such a setback. For example, Food First asserts the principle that trade should involve no food dumping at below the cost of production. But changes to the U.S. sugar program under DR-CAFTA would turn sugar into a dumped commodity on international markets, and would lead to a price drop for sugar farmers in over 41 countries—a deadly blow to some of the world’s poorest countries, who aren’t even party to the agreement. To see how DR-CAFTA’s provisions would violate Food First’s Trade Principles, go to www.foodfirst.org/CAFTA_trade_principles . For more information about Food First’s Trade Principles, go to www.foodfirst.org/pubs/backgrdrs/1999/f99v5n2.html.

Food First Trade Principles	DR-CAFTA Provisions
True participatory process	CAFTA countries agreed that negotiating texts would not be released, and would be classified to protect national security. Civil society has no input.
No corporate welfare	DR-CAFTA includes an even stronger version of NAFTA’s “Chapter 11” foreign investor protections, allowing corporations to sue for future lost profits.
No coercion	USAID is providing US$37.9 million in “technical assistance and cooperation” to help Central America with the negotiations. With past agreements these funds have been used to push U.S. areas of interest.
Sovereignty over basic economic policy	DR-CAFTA’s procurement policy removes the right of municipal and city governments to use selective buying, such as giving preference to locally produced, recycled, or environmentally friendly goods.
No food dumping at below the cost of production	Changes to the U.S. sugar program under DR-CAFTA will turn sugar into a dumped commodity on international markets, and would lead to a price drop for sugar farmers in over 41 countries—a deadly blow to some of the world’s poorest countries, who aren’t even party to the agreement.
Human rights and national constitutions take precedent over trade agreements	DR-CAFTA would open the door to privatization of public services such as water and education, which are enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and would grant rights to corporations that trump citizens’ rights.
No sweatshops	DR-CAFTA has no overarching labor rules—states are only bound to their existing labor laws, many of which are below ILO standards. It also overrides labor protections attached to current trade agreements.

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Brazilian Landless Workers to President Lula: Do the Right Thing!

On May 1st over 12,000 landless workers set out on a 200-kilometer march from Goiânia to Brasilia, to demand the Lula administration institute genuine land reform, formulate economic policies that prioritize the poor, and prosecute crimes against landless workers and their supporters.

Peasants from the Landless Workers Movement (MST) spent a year planning the march. Participants ranging in age from babies in strollers to a 97-year-old man marched approximately 15 kilometers each morning, and spent afternoons in discussion groups and workshops that incorporated local residents from each town they stopped in. Raising public awareness and creating a venue to debate the pressing need for land reform is a key focus of the march, to counter the strong ties between the rural elite and the media that result in few positive stories on the MST. Food First and the U.S.–based organization Friends of the MST worked together to co-sponsor fundraising events and solidarity action outside the Brazilian consulate in San Francisco.

Family agriculture accounts for 70 percent of the food consumed in Brazil, yet small farmers are disappearing from the rural landscape at an alarming rate due to unfavorable government policies. If the four million landless peasant families in Brazil were given fifteen hectares of land each, they would only occupy half of the currently unproductive land in the country. In 2003 the Lula administration agreed to settle 400,000 families during its remaining three years in office, yet fewer than 15 percent have been settled in the last year and a half.

To learn more, visit the MST’s official website, www.mst.org.br (in Portuguese), or the Friends of the MST site, www.mstbrazil.org (English), for updates, photos, and articles about the march and the MST.

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Global Small-Scale Farmers’ Movement Developing New Trade Regimes

Via Campesina, the global coalition of small-scale farmer organizations, is moving beyond critiquing the World Trade Organization (WTO) to developing new trade mechanisms altogether. Via Campesina continues to stand firm on its platform of “WTO Out of Agriculture,” in order to allow more representative national-level political processes to determine crucial rural development policies.

Ironically, small-scale farmers make up the greatest numbers of people suffering from hunger in the world, and the flow of desperate rural migrants to cities fuels urban poverty, low wages, and sweatshop conditions. Rural development policies that help small-scale farmers gain access to the land, water, credit, and markets are key to ending poverty.

At a recent meeting of Via Campesina’s Food Sovereignty Network, which links the farmers’ movement with supportive NGOs, Food First helped strategize how to establish new trade rules for agriculture that benefit the majority of the world’s farmers and consumers.

Held in the picturesque Basque farming town of Aulesti, the strategy meeting reflected the breadth and strength of the Via Campesina coalition. “It is very powerful to meet peasants from India, Latin America, and Thailand and hear that we all have the same problem,” noted Ibrahim Coulibaly of Mali. “Working with Via Campesina gives our organization more political power back home.”

The concept of “food sovereignty” was originated by Via Campesina members in 1996 as a platform for rural revitalization at a global level based on equitable distribution of farmland and water, farmer control over seeds, and productive small-scale farms supplying consumers with healthy, locally grown food.

The implications of the food sovereignty platform for trade are that sovereign nations need to maintain the ability to protect themselves from dumping, the practice of selling products for less than they cost to produce. New agricultural trade regimes need to allow nations to develop their internal agricultural markets according to their priorities, while continuing to trade for foods needed from other countries.

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Farm Workers’ Organization Wins Groundbreaking Concessions from Taco Bell

In March 2005, fast-food industry leader Taco Bell Corp., a division of Yum! Brands (NYSE: YUM), agreed to work with the Florida-based farm worker organization, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), to address the wages and working conditions of farm workers in the Florida tomato industry.

CIW had been boycotting Taco Bell for three years, demanding an additional penny per pound of tomatoes picked and an improvement in working conditions in Florida’s tomato fields (Taco Bell bought 10 million pounds of Florida tomatoes in 2004). During the boycott, the CIW sponsored annual multiple-day marches on Yum! brand headquarters in Irvine, California—for the last two years with media support and solidarity from Food First.

Taco Bell will fund the penny-per-pound wage increase through its suppliers, and has pledged to “play a leadership role” within the fast food industry to address human rights violations and poor working conditions among Florida tomato farm workers. Some of the most egregious rights violations have been documented and fought by the CIW, which has aided the Justice Department in prosecuting five farm worker slavery cases in Florida, freeing over 1,000 enslaved agricultural workers.

Food First salutes the membership-led CIW for its smart, fierce, and successful fight against worker abuses in U.S. agriculture. For more about the CIW and their victory, visit www.foodfirst.org/action/2005/ciw.html .

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Food First Releases New Report on on North Korea’s Food System

In her new report, “Famine and the Future of Food Security in North Korea: In the Spirit of Juche,” Food First Fellow Christine Ahn provides insight into the history of North Korea through the lens of its food system. Occupied by the Japanese in 1910, involuntarily partitioned from South Korea in 1945, and beset by war, periodic food shortages, and a dearth of arable land, North Korea has long struggled to feed its people and retain its dignity among nations. Ahn gives a sensitive and cogent analysis of the cultural, ecological, economic, and political forces driving North Korean agricultural policy before, during, and since the recent devastating famine.

North Korea’s food system is at a turning point: the country’s soils are depleted after years of industrial overfarming in North Korea’s valiant attempt to wring enough food from its mountainous terrain. And its international pariah status makes it extremely difficult for North Korea to trade for the food it needs. But, Ahn points out, there is hope. Agroecological techniques can redeem exhausted soils and provide sustainable harvests. Rapprochement between North Korea and South Korea (with its vastly greater percentage of arable land) may lead to the reunification so many Koreans long for, bringing stability to the peninsula’s food system. Finally, the report calls for greater attempts to understand and engage North Koreans in meaningful trade and dialog, not vilify, isolate, strong-arm, or exploit them. Read the report at www.foodfirst.org/pubs/policy/pb11.html.

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What Does Food First Mean to You?

This year is the thirtieth anniversary of the Institute for Food and Development Policy, commonly known as Food First. The Institute’s first book was Food First: Beyond the Myth of Scarcity, published in 1977.

Over the past thirty years many people around the world have been influenced to change how they live and what they do after reading a Food First publication or hearing a Food First speaker.

In 1975 many people thought that getting food aid to hungry people was the answer to hunger. Today we have just as many hungry people as we did then. But now many people know that hunger is a social problem—not a problem of production. It is heartening to know that people in thousands of organizations worldwide are working to change the social conditions that prevent people from feeding themselves.

Please tell us your personal story. How has Food First’s analysis changed how you live, personally and professionally? We will collect your stories and post them to our web site, in celebration of our three decades of fighting to expose the roots of hunger. Your story can motivate others to change how they live.

Email to marbor@foodfirst.org, or write to Marilyn Borchardt, 398 60th Street, Oakland, CA 94618. To donate online, go to www.foodfirst.org/donate and click on the Donate button in the upper right. We could not do all we do without you. Thank you.