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On Fri, 5 Sep 2008 09:14:13 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

>On Sep 5, 6:52*am, Don Gabacho > wrote:
>> Food Crisis in Mexico: A US Policy Disaster That Bodes Increased
>> Immigration
>>
>> by Robert M. Saper
>>
>> Worldwide, people are suffering the effects of skyrocketing food
>> prices. Mexico -- where over half the population are poor -- is part
>> of this global disaster that, according to the World Bank, has already
>> impoverished an estimated 100 million people. As Frances Moore LappÃƒ©
>> of Food First indicates, this is perhaps the largest human rights
>> crisis in decades; however, it is altogether avoidable because it is
>> the product of bad policy. Mexico's vulnerability and the impacts on
>> its population are easily anticipated as the result of eroding Mexican
>> food security under U.S.-backed trade liberalization and the legacy of
>> policies in the U.S., such as the recently approved 2008 Farm Bill,
>> that grant unfair advantages to large agricultural corporations and
>> prioritize profit over the basic rights of people.
>>
>> In January 2006, a Mexican consumer needed about $74 to purchase the
>> items in a market basket, a selection of basic products necessary for
>> survival. By April 2008, the same items cost about $117 -- a
>> staggering 58-percent increase in only 27 months. While food staples
>> such as beans, rice, condensed milk, and eggs rose in price 79 to 114
>> percent over the course of 2007, there was only a 4.5-percent increase
>> in wages.
>>
>> The urgency of the issue is heard in the voice of a poor indigenous
>> shopkeeper in Oaxaca: "I hope to God that prices come back down --
>> there is no hope otherwise." She then lamented, "Another one from our
>> family will have to emigrate to the U.S."
>>
>> This is a crisis, however, that has been in the making for over two
>> decades. Wages for Mexican workers lost 82-percent of their purchasing
>> power since 1982, the year when trade liberalization, privatization,
>> and market deregulation were first imposed on Mexico by the U.S.-
>> dominated International Monetary Fund. The same IMF structural
>> adjustment programs, in conjunction with the 1994 North American Free
>> Trade Agreement, plowed under Mexico's food security by mandating the
>> privatization or dissolution of state-regulated grain reserves and
>> price-support programs, sweeping reductions in farmer credit and
>> subsidies, the deregulation of commodities markets, and the
>> elimination of tariff and quota protections on imported agricultural
>> products. These radical changes to Mexico's largely self-governed food
>> system and the precipitous fall in real earning power, compounded by
>> the dumping of U.S. agricultural commodities that were heavily
>> subsidized under previous Farm Bills, made it utterly impossible for
>> almost all Mexican small producers and most medium-size growers to
>> maintain an internal market for their goods.
>>
>> Mexicans can no longer produce the basic food their country needs, nor
>> can they afford the products sold to them by U.S. agribusiness giants
>> such as Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland. Twenty years of this
>> "silent food crisis" have resulted in increased undocumented
>> migration, rising crime, unplanned urbanization, and many more people
>> trying to make their way in the informal economy - trends that are
>> likely to amplify given current policy and the mounting issues
>> affecting global food prices.
>>
>> The new Farm Bill (approved in May), despite having been praised for
>> domestic nutrition programs and financial support for small farms,
>> maintains the unfair practice of designating the majority of its
>> billions in subsidies to large agricultural conglomerates. As a
>> result, large U.S. firms will keep the upper hand in setting the price
>> for Mexican consumers.
>>
>> Moreover, as it governs U.S. agricultural policy through 2012, the new
>> law will continue subsidizing corn-based ethanol (now mandated to
>> supplement every gallon of U.S. gasoline), furthering the trend of
>> increased scarcity in corn -- the main staple in the Mexican diet --
>> and also raising the cost of other grains by diverting cropland for
>> ethanol production. The World Bank recently stated in a leaked
>> internal report that biofuel production accounts for 75 percent of the
>> current rise in global food prices, a finding which brings further
>> subsidization of corn-based ethanol into serious moral question.
>>
>> The potential for windfall profits in the biofuel sector, combined
>> with other factors such as the mass surge of unregulated investment
>> coming out of the collapsed housing market, has created a bubble in
>> agricultural commodities that is driving up prices. Rising costs of
>> oil, which inflate fertilizer and transportation prices, as well as
>> supply shortages due to overexploitation of groundwater and the
>> devastation of harvests by floods and droughts, also contribute to the
>> sudden, meteoric increases.
>>
>> Having an integrated global food economy means that these alarming
>> issues and their consequences hit the poor without restraint, and free
>> market policy leaves little room to change local laws to safeguard
>> people's economic rights. The food crisis many are confronting is the
>> direct result of a failed U.S.-backed trade model and policies like
>> the Farm Bill that rob Mexico -- and many other impoverished countries
>> -- of their sovereignty in feeding their own people, potentially
>> starving millions and distending people's need to migrate just to
>> survive.
>>
>> Robert M. Saper, originally from West Sunbury, PA, is a member of the
>> Witness for Peace international team based in Oaxaca, Mexico; Witness
>> for Peace is a Washington, DC, based non-profit organization that
>> monitors and seeks to change U.S. military and economic policy in
>> Latin America in support of peace, justice, and sustainable economies
>> in the region.
>
>Is Uncle Suckemoff too pussified to seal our border with Mexico?
>
>mitch

Americans are responsible for the failure of the worthless government
in Washington, DC. Obama would encourage more immigration. McCain
is a previous supporter of amnesty. Citizens posses and patrols, with
arms, may be the solution if government continues to cut and run.
ted

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