I recall reading about how NAFTA hurt Mexican farmers because it allowed import of cheaper grain from America. I also always had this impression that poor Mexican villagers were subsistence farmers, not commercial ones.
Well, so how can cheap food hurt subsistence farmers? If I grow my own food and have no alternative source of income (that could be used to buy the cheaper imported food) what is keeping me from continuing in my occupation? If they could feed themselves with the food produced by themselves before NAFTA, why weren’t they able to continue doing so after it?
“Subsistence” farming doesn’t mean that the farmer has a small plot with enough tomato plants to produce all the tomatoes his family will eat in a year, at the times when they will want to eat them, plus another one with rice, plus the same with frijoles, plus the same with bananas, plus the same with coffee beans, plus a hog and a cow…
It means that the farmer has just enough land that what he sells is enough to buy what he needs. Even if his crops are diverse, they still do come in at certain times and not come at all at others. You can do a lot with preseres, but still you can only do so much. And you still need to sell something in order to buy clothes and other items or services you can’t provide.
If he can’t sell his product any more because everybody has found a cheaper source and driving his prices down to make them competitive would effectively mean he has to scratch off half his shopping list, well, that sounds like something that’s hurting him greatly, doesn’t it?
Farming is practiced at many different levels here, from small subsistence farmers to large, modern operations. NAFTA protects the subsidized farmers in the US at the expense of our agriculture. There are also quotas designed to protect certain crops such as sugar in the US. Free trade does not necessarily mean fair trade.
Of you could say that fair trade doesn’t mean free trade. NAFTA was ironed out between Canada, the USA, and Mexico. Those who ratified it seemed to think that it was more or a less “fair” in the sense that it led to balance. (Personally, I’m opposed to all subsidies anywhere, and no, it doesn’t both me that tortillas could quadruple in price.)
I don’t know about Mexico, but I have read that subsidized grain hurts West African farmers who could probably out-compete us if there were no subsidies. That factoid was given as an example when trying to explain the Law of Comparative Advantage.
Sugar canes can be harvested by hand or machine. If harvested by hand, the roots are left to grow another season’s worth of canes. If harvested by machine, the roots don’t survive as well.
So a place with cheap labor can produce sugar very cheaply.
Or at least, this is the impression I got the last time I looked it up.
well so growing sugar from beets in temperate zones is inherently more expensive than growing it from cane in the tropics, especially with the cheap labor thrown into the bargain. Yeah, so?
Incidentally, the whole sugar beets project was initiated for purely political reasons by Napoleon - not because he wanted cheap sugar but because he wanted Europe to be self-sufficient in this commodity in the face of British naval blockade.
The argument was that because of the efficiency of US agriculture it was doubtful that farmers in Africa or other developing parts of the world can compete successfully. But if a sugar producer in a developing country can produce sugar at a lower price that shows that there is some other reason, perhaps tariffs, subsidies, cuotas or other government assistance that gives them an advantage.
I failed to edit in the proper time limit but would like for my last sentence to read that the US producers receive some type of assitance that gives them an unfair advantage.
This is what made Hait the dirt poor place it is today. Before 1960, Haiti did not allow food imports-their small farmers supplied the local market, and things were reasonably well. Haiti grew lots of rice (a lobor-intensive crop), and thus employed a lot of labor. Then came the “Alliance for Progress”-the USA forced haiti to open their market, and cheap American rice flooded in-and that was the end of haitian rice production. We also forced the Haitian farmers to stop breeding their native swine, in favor of American breeds-which sickended and died in the local conditions.
As Haiti sank into poverty, the USA send foreign “aid”-which the Duvalier regime SOLD to the poor.
So the farmers wound up living in slums in the capital, and the farms went to ruin (the land was denuded of trees-as people cut them down for charcoal (they could no longer buy kerosene).
So, the well-maning Alliance for Progress really messed the country up.
Beets aren’t cane. What does that have to do with anything? Yes, tropical nations growing SUGAR CANE can outdo the US in SUGAR CANE production. Sometimes a 3rd world nation can do better at growing some crops, especially those which either rely upon lots of cheap labor, or a tropical climate (both of which apply for cane) . However, neither of those apply to CORN.
Beets are also much more difficult to cultivate and grow, much more expensive. In any case, America grows Corn very very well, and most stuff is sweetened with HFCS, not sucrose.
True, American farmers get subsidies, but the subsidies here mainly serve to stabilize prices year to year. Other nations also subsidize their AG industry, it’s very common. In any case, subsidies have been deeply cut and frozen since 1996, and will likely expire completely in a year or so.
Not even close to the facts: wiki "*About 66% of all Haitians work in the agricultural sector, which consists mainly of small-scale subsistence farming,[63] but this activity makes up only 30% of the GDP. The country has experienced little formal job-creation over the past decade, although the informal economy is growing. Mangoes and coffee are two of Haiti’s most important exports.[63] Haiti’s richest 1% own nearly half the country’s wealth.[64] Haiti has consistently ranked among the most corrupt countries in the world on the Corruption Perceptions Index.[65] Since the day of “Papa Doc” Duvalier, Haiti’s government has been notorious for its corruption. Haitian dictator “Baby Doc” Duvalier, his wife Michelle, and three other people are believed to have taken $504 million from the Haitian public treasury between 1971 and 1986.[66]
Foreign aid makes up approximately 30–40% of the national government’s budget. The largest donor is the United States – followed by Canada, and the European Union also contributes aid.[67] From 1990 to 2003, Haiti received more than $4 billion in aid."
*
So most of Haiti is still in agriculture. Nor did the Alliance for Progress *force * them to buy US crops and in any case, it was only around for about 10 years.