Farming and justice

Last night we went to hear a remarkable lecture about the impact of NAFTA on Mexico's small farmers by an eloquent Zapotec man who laid out the impact with clarity and a perspective you won't hear in the mass media.

In a nutshell US/Mexican government policies have pushed small farmers to use pesticides, chemical fertilizers and imported seed varieties, which have decimated rural communities who can no longer support their families as in the past through their small farms. Dependence on purchasing these products (made by the big agribusiness firms in the US), depleted soils, and falling prices (as NAFTA eliminated tariffs and flooded Mexico with US products) has meant that rural communities have seen wholesale flight of their young people to the US. Farming is being abandoned or left to the women and elders who remain. I have seen this first hand during my recent visit to Oaxaca, as women and children are left to harvest the corn, some of the older women fainting from the heat.

Baldemar Mendoza Jimenez laid it out so clearly, and he did so in the context of the cultural realities of the indigenous people of Oaxaca and how the very fabric of these cultures that have practiced sustainable agriculture for thousands of years. The organic plot we've got in our front yard is in my genes, so to speak.

Federico was mesmerized, as I was.....There were moments when I felt like crying, because it would appear that these very poor people, with such limited resources, are the very David to our Goliath.

What we can do here is to advocate an end to free trade agreements that are punitive to these farmers (and to US workers!). These agreements benefit the large corporate interests, the same folks who've brought us this lovely recession.

http://www.witnessforpeace.org/article.php?id=664