Image courtesy of SXC.HU
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was passed in 1994. With the formation of the world’s largest free trade area, economic growth was soon to follow. Farmers would be exporting more than ever before, and consumers would be paying less. It would mean easier, cheaper trade for everyone involved! Well, that was the plan.
So, what happened? Why are farmers losing money every single year, while larger corporations are reporting higher profits? One of the side effects of the agreement was that many of the laws that protected farmers no longer held true. Instead, huge farming conglomerates now set prices with which local farmers have no chance of competing. The small farming families are slowly being pushed out of the business—a business they’ve been cultivating their entire lives.
Since NAFTA, the number of Canadian farms claiming bankruptcies has increased 500%. Farmers’ income declined 19% by 1999, even though prices skyrocketed. Something wasn’t working. The plan didn’t live up to its hype. Who was pushing this thing, anyway?
Another interesting part of the agreement includes patents. Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. now have to issue patents on seed and plant varieties, since they now count as intellectual property. Large agribusinesses can now subjugate the local farmers and consumers in an even more underhanded way. If a corporate bio-prospector collects a seed and patents it, anyone using that seed must pay an annual license fee. There are several cases where indigenous farmers have had to pay to use their own seeds, saved for generations, because they were collected and patented.
This led to a huge mess in 2004, where a company called Monsanto sued 68-year-old farmer Percy Schmeise for illegally growing their genetically modified seeds. Schmeise claimed the wind blew it onto his fields.
The genetically modified seeds produce plants immune to the company’s own herbicide. So, they can thrive in an environment saturated in the stuff, killing everything other than Monsanto’s plant. The catch? It costs farmers money each and every year for the seeds—they’ve been made entirely sterile. Turns out, Schmeise was more than just an aging farmer fighting an uphill battle against commercial farming companies. He had some spunk left in him. After all, he had made three separate attempts to climb Mount Everest. The courts eventually forced Schmeise to surrender the seeds and plants, but he did not have to pay the company anything.
It was an historic case: an epic battle. It also raised issues as to whether one could patent an organism.
So, how has all of this affected us all the way over here in 2008? What does the slow, eventual death of local farmers mean for the average consumer? What’s wrong with buying produce that has been modified and mutated to get the greatest yield per harvest?
The answers should be clear. Aside from buying your produce at farmers markets in your city, if you can find them, there really is no easy way of knowing where the food you’re eating comes from.
There is little support for local farmers, although agriculture is something we should be thriving on as a country. Agriculture is one of our biggest industries.
In 2000, Canada spent about $4.6 billion on support for the industry, but most of that money went into areas that didn’t directly enhance the economy, such as disaster relief or research. A large portion of the money also went into subsidies worth less than 5% of the value of the crops they were intended for.
So, while it would appear money is going toward the farming industry at first glance, it’s not going to the right people or places. Our neighbours to the south are even preparing to dump $700 billion in order to bail out large financial corporations. How long have the smaller, local workers been drowning because of policies and changes that only benefit the big fish? Why is the U.S. government so quick to consider this strategy of a nation-wide bailout, when it was the shady practices of some of these Wall Street firms that caused the problem in the first place? It would cost only $1 billion to bail out the family farms in the States.
Instead, we are ignoring the issue. Farmers are still struggling, corporations are still thriving, and consumers are still being squeezed for more and more every year. Let’s quit shoveling tax dollars into the laps of the irresponsible, and let’s begin putting it into the hands of the irreplaceable.
