Report on the USA~Mexico Farmers Forum
Des Moines, Iowa
October 13, 2003

The October forum among U.S. and Mexican family farmers explored agriculture and trade issues in the context of the ten-year-old North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The forum was an effort not only to share experiences, but also to create a culture of solidarity amidst schemes of economic globalization. The Bi-National Farmers Forum was sponsored by the National Catholic Rural Life Conference, Catholic Relief Services/Mexico Office and the Social Pastoral Commission of the Mexican Episcopate.


FORUM PROGRAM

Welcome and Introductions
Most Reverend Joseph Charron, Bishop of Des Moines, Board of Trustees, Catholic Relief Services
Brother David Andrews, CSC, Executive Director, National Catholic Rural Life Conference
Erica Dahl-Bredine, Mexico Director, Catholic Relief Services
Reverend Antonio Sandoval, Director, Social Pastoral Commission, Mexican Bishops Conference

Farmers Panel:
Mexican Farmers Social Movement: El Campo No Aquanta Mas
U.S. Farmers: American Corn Growers Association; Iowa Farmers Union; National Family Farm Coalition; Women, Food and Agriculture Network; Defenders of Family Farms; sustainable/local agriculture advocate

Journalists and social scientists:
Patricia Munoz Rios, La Jornada; Alan Guebert, independent farm reporter;
Armando Barta, Mayan Institute for Rural Development Studies;
Thomas Lyson, Department of Development Sociology, Cornell University


SESSION DISCUSSIONS:

Changes in the Countryside: What's happening?
An examination of hunger and poverty in the countryside

Building a Common Agenda
U.S. Midwest and Mexican farmers: common trade concerns

What Do We Need To Do About Trade?
Fashioning a common response to NAFTA, FTAA, WTO

The forum concluded with a better sense of many problems and concerns in common:

How farmers on both sides of the border need off-farm income: US farmers often hold multiple jobs; Mexico farm families depend on cash from family members in the US.

Food is the most basic need where we should be able to organize people. Develop local food systems to avoid concentration and healthy safe food systems.

There is a sense that farmers can and should organize at the local level as well as the international level (perhaps work towards production controls on the farm).

Highlight and make the public better aware of the multifunctional benefits that farmers contribute to the public good (food, stewardship, landscape, families, hardwork).

At a national level, participants discussed food sovereignty and the need for a food reserve. Surplus crops and grains should not be dumped on foreign markets.

There is a need for a price floor for farm commodities. There is a need for supply management (national and global) and a way to guarantee cost of production.

However, none of this will make any difference until there is effective enforcement of antitrust laws the world over.

How can farmers and farm groups move toward greater collaboration on these common points?

We need to do something besides just holding forums and talking. (For instance, the landless movement in Brazil (MST) is actively putting farmers back on land.)

We have many allies (consumers, environmental groups, faith groups) to better inform and a public to better educate.

We can reduce the many parallel tracks now in place and work for convergence so that the networks already in place can become stronger and "make the soup thicker."

We can look for opportunities and mechanisms to develop a common platform on policy changes; to create and set policy for sustainable agriculture and local food systems.

We need to continue a presence at trade negotiations and to show a united front, both across borders and among a diversity of interests.

Overcoming stumbling blocks and thinking creatively:

US and Mexican farmers have been divided because they haven’t known the realities of each other country very well.

"Before I came here (to Iowa), I was blaming Americans for their subsidies. Now I see it’s not the other’s side fault. It’s the policies that hurt us."

Many farmers propose to renegotiate the agriculture chapter of NAFTA. But farm groups have not decided what part to work on or fix. In any case, farmers should be a part of trade discussions.

"We don’t have a chance of overturning NAFTA." The idea of a "compensatory fund" was intriguing: .01% of GDP would go into this fund to compensate farmers displaced by NAFTA. The compensation would actually be an investment: a new opportunity for farmers otherwise left landless or jobless. This is just an example of creative proposals; need further discussion.

We need to work together to find alternative marketing channels and structures that buy farmers’ production.

We need to strengthen agriculture "culturally" and make it more a part of the fabric of the country. Stress the importance of rural life. Sensitize our populations to the many positive contributions that agriculture makes and can make.

People have a choice when they purchase food. They can act in a way in which impact the lives of farmers and their families.

Women should be a priority group. They care about family life; the food their family eats; how animals are raised; the type of production system in use. They prefer family and local over industrial and global. Women are the primary workers in agriculture.

Whether consumers groups or farm groups, mass media is the way to get change. So need to get out the message that wherever people buy food, that is where change is going to take place.

Important comments about institutions:

There is a common belief that "technology can be used to solve any problem." The closer to hard science you are, the more legitimate you are: American farmers have bought into this belief. Rather than automatically adopt the latest technology to come along, it is sometimes better to hold onto tradition ways. Technology causes changes that are not always for the best.

Many farmers also think solutions can only come from universities. But universities are becoming too close to corporations, and we know that corporate interests have hurt farming. How can we take a critical look at science, universities and corporate interests? How can we turn these institutions so that they respect the common good, not private interests?

Governmental regulatory systems are another factor: Normally when waste occurs, we regulate it. But governments are not properly regulating factory farms or confined animal feeding operations. If CAFOs were strictly regulated, then this would probably wipe out many problems in industrial agriculture.

In regard to crop chemicals, Iowa contributes a great deal to the problem of a "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico. Petrochemicals are poisonous. We need to extend laws regulating other types of industry into large-scale agricultural practices.

How to stay connected?

Go back to respective members, talk about our forum and share our new understandings...
Go church leaders; lay out NAFTA shortcomings and remind them to "eat what they preach"…
Go to youth, teach them what we love…
Go to universities and rope them back in…
Go to consumers and show them how to make new choices…
Go to legislators and wipe out CAFOs … extend environmental laws and other regulations into agricultural concerns…
Raise up women; acknowledge their primary role in buying or growing food for their families and communities…

NCRLC/Br. David Andrews:
U.S. Catholic Bishops have issued a new statement on agriculture, food and farmworkers. This is a policy and action platform: www.usccb.org/bishops/agricultural.htm

Community Food Security Coalition: Building a movement around food in this country. A concrete way for people to gather: www.foodsecurity.org

Agribusiness Accountability Initiative: www.agribusinessaccountability.org


CRS/Erica Dahl-Bredine:
Develop a shared platform on Catholic rural services and our basic principles.
Consumer education program in Mexico + church sponsored campaign along lines of Ethics of Eating: www.ncrlc.com/cards.htm
In February 2004, there will be a meeting of the Catholic Committee; they will hold several sessions on international trade: www.usccb.org/sdwp/csmg04.htm
Continue to create partnerships within the faith community. Examine trade issues and invite representatives from other countries to see the justice movements this country.
For Mexico, it has been a "wake-up call"; the countryside cannot take it anymore.
Our dialogue started here in Iowa can be framed under the call issued by John Paul II, a call of all people of faith to build a church of the Americas: We are a Church without borders and we are a church that walks with the poor.