Farmworkers, farmers, organisers and activists from about 20 countries throughout the Americas spent the past two days sharing their experiences and concerns about free trade, and hammering out alternative proposals and strategies of resistance.

…Or the “Fleece and Trample All over Again”, as one Canadian dairy farmer’s eighty year old neighbor calls it. Whatever the acronym, participants in the April 17th –18th 2001 agriculture forum of the Second People’s Summit of the Americas were agreed that free trade has devastated agriculture across the hemisphere.

Amongst the 100 or so farmers, farm-workers, organizers and activists representing almost 20 countries, the common refrain was that government deregulation, over-production for export markets, and hazardous or untested new technologies have plunged environmental and labor standards and farmers’ net incomes, as well as forcing many off their land.

According to the National Farmers Union (NFU), for instance, the revenues generated by Canadian agri-food exports tripled between 1974 and 2000. During the same period, however, net farm income fell, with input suppliers scooping up 100% of farmers’ increased gross returns.

“We were promised a big, new market south of the border for our border for our grain,” said David Orchard, an organic farmer and co-founder of Citizens Concerned About Free Trade. Instead, farmers’ net income in his Saskatchewan community has dropped to ten percent of what it was ten years ago.

Similar accounts from north and south echoed throughout the two days of discussion. Amongst a host of others, Renwick Rose, a Via Campesina organizer from St Vincent, described how a World Trade Organization (WTO) ruling banning the European Union’s preferential regime for banana import has cost the jobs of more than one third of banana plantation workers on the Caribbean island.

The need to reclaim indigenous rights to land, and intellectual and cultural property rights were also repeatedly mentioned as a pressing priority at the forum. In a letter read aloud by one of its members, the Mexican National Indigenous Congress (CNI Mexico) denounced its government for opening doors to trans-national corporations to the pillage of the natural resources of the region.

“Mexico does not exist without us,” he read, “America does not exist without us.”

“We will not renounce our right to exist as communities, we can’t accept the destruction of our territories, or the projects and mega-projects that destroy our bio-diversity.”

Specifically, both the CNI Mexico communiqué and Blanca Chancoso from the Confederation
of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) expressed deep concern over Plan Colombia, a US-dominated $2 billion international aid plan aimed at settling armed conflict in Columbia through a mostly military anti-drug strategy. The Colombian military, however, is strongly allied with para-military groups who rely primarily on a strategy of attacking and eliminating grassroots civilian organizations.

Chancoso stressed the urgency of creating a common force against the plan. “The Plan Colombia,” she cautioned, “is the death of the people.”

The voices of indigenous farmers from the United States and Canada were notably missing at the forum.

Amongst those present, however, the outlook was not all bleak. Several participants spoke of organic farming as a sustainable alternative to production methods enforced under international free trade treaties.

“The fastest growing sector in the agricultural world is the organic sector,” said Orchard, describing a recent survey in which less than 15% of organic farmers in Ontario (Canada’s largest agricultural province) said that profits were a problem for them. He went on to observe that on this front, Cuba’s absence at the FTAA summit will deprive other countries of the Cuban experience with at least ten years of sustainable organic agriculture.

The forum concluded with the decision to propose the inclusion of a hemispheric referendum on free trade in the “Alternatives for the Americas” document, to be discussed at the People’s Summit closing plenary on Thursday, April 19th 2001.