In today's Victual Reality column, I note that California's organic farms are struggling with a labor shortage.
Farmers there claim that tighter security at the Mexican border is leaving them bereft of workers; in the nation's organic fruit-and-vegetable basket, produce is rotting unpicked on the vine.
If in California there aren't enough farm hands, in Mexico, there are too many. In an excellent recent San Francisco Chronicle story, Monica Campbell and Tyche Hendricks report that, "An estimated 1.5 million agricultural jobs have been lost since Nafta went into effect in 1994." And the situation is expected to get worse as Nafta strips away what's left of the Mexican government's protection for its corn farmers by 2008.
Where do I begin to tease out the ironies at play here?
First, let's look at this allegedly "free" trade treaty. Under it, the U.S. gets to drop some $4 billion per year propping up U.S. corn farmers, allowing them to sell for less than production costs ... but Mexico can't enact a tariff on the stuff?
It's no wonder that crappy, genetically modified U.S. field corn is overrunning the birthplace of domesticated corn, the land of tortillas. According to the S.F. Chronicle story:
American corn exports to Mexico -- now one-fifth of the corn consumed there -- have more than tripled in NAFTA's first 10 years, and the USDA predicts they will double again in the coming decade.
(Emphasis bitterly added.)
Over the same period, the flavor of tortillas at taquerias and tortillarias has declined perceptibly, I'm sorry to report.
Further, it must be added a "free trade" treaty that allows capital and goods to flow freely, but tightly restricts the movement of labor, is a farce. I'm told there are red-faced pundits who thunder and bellow on TV against the "invasion" from the south. Do they also claim to worship at the alter of free commerce? If so, they should be horse-whipped (metaphorically, of course). If capital must be free to zip across borders to seek its highest return, then so must labor.
So what sort of world is current U.S.-Mexico trade and immigration policy creating? U.S. vegetable farming, under pressure from a labor shortage caused by the tightly guarded border, declines; more and more of the veggies we consume here, organic and otherwise, come from Mexico.
Mexican corn farming, under pressure from cheap U.S. corn, withers. Small holders continue to be forced from the land. The S.F. Chronicle piece claims that Mexico has 2 million corn farmers, "two-thirds of whom subsist on 12 acres or fewer and 90 percent of whom lack irrigation." Note that their competitors in the U.S. Midwest are highly consolidated and lavishly capitalized. It doesn't seem far-fetched that 1 million or more Mexican corn farmers -- and their families -- will be knocked off the land over the next several years.
And what do we get, for all this misery? A food system on both sides of the border increasingly reliant on long-haul travel, and ever more homogenized, flavorless food.
Sounds pretty insane to me.
Comments
View as Flat
LegumeSam Posted 9:54 am
23 Aug 2006
Welcome to capitalism
where vulnerability to "market forces" is trumpeted as a virtue.
http://ecosocialism.blogspot.com/
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Jason D Scorse Posted 3:16 pm
23 Aug 2006
NAFTA has very little to do...
with the loss of jobs in the Mexican ag sector- this is largely a myth, but a persistent one- people are leaving agriculture in Mexico because of consolidation and extreme poverty, not trade- there is no advanced economy in the history of the world that has not transitioned AWAY FROM AGRICULTURE.
J.S.
Assistant Professor Monterey Institute of International Studies http://policy.miis.edu/faculty/faculty.html?id=171
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plantface Posted 10:57 pm
23 Aug 2006
minimum wage
I'm going to focus on a tiny chunk of your commentary here and ask a question about the basic premise: If the workers were here legally and paid the minimum wage, would the farmers be able to hire them? Or do farmers rely on being able to pay lower wages to undocumented workers? In other words, if we set up a guest worker program tomorrow, would it solve the problem of food rotting in the fields and orchards?
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Tom Philpott Posted 12:21 am
24 Aug 2006
Jason D
That Nafta has dismantled Mexico's corn-support program, even as the U.S. corn-support program has reached dizzying heights, is no myth. Mexican corn farmers are leaving the land because the price for their goods has plunged--for reasons undeniably related to U.S.-Mexico trade policy.
You declare that "there is no advanced economy in the history of the world that has not transitioned AWAY FROM AGRICULTURE."
OKAY. But how advanced are these economies, really? Are they sustainable? Last time I checked, they were burning up prodigious amounts of fossil fuel--and making the planet quite a bit hotter.
Rather than using economic policy as a shotgun to drive farmers off the land, maybe the quote-unquote advanced economies should figure out a way to lure them back.
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Jason D Scorse Posted 1:48 am
24 Aug 2006
Tom- your analysis is simply wrong...
no one is the U.S. is driving Mexican farmers off of the land-60% of Mexican farmers are subsistence and the price of corn has absolutely nothing to do with their decision-making since they don't sell it, also, U.S. corn is yellow and doesn't compete directly with Mexican white corn. The U.S. corn is going mostly to feed cattle for the middle class and the wealthy and is not competing with peasants. Also, the U.S. subsidies are mostly transfered to higher land values in the U.S. and do not affect the price of corn to the extent that would account for anywhere near the number of people leaving Mexican agriculture. There are many other things going on here that are too long to describe in a paragraph. Maybe I'll write a post about this since this is such a major error in people's understanding. Email me if you want more info and references. Also, just a quick question, since you seem so enamored with farming as a way of life would you consider transitioning to an agricultural life style yourself or do you just want it for the Mexicans?
J.S.
Assistant Professor Monterey Institute of International Studies http://policy.miis.edu/faculty/faculty.html?id=171
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Jason D Scorse Posted 1:51 am
24 Aug 2006
My error- Tom...
I see that you are a farmer so then I'll rephrase the question: Do you want advanced industrial societies to move away from higher-valued goods and services and switch back to agriculture? If so, why?
Assistant Professor Monterey Institute of International Studies http://policy.miis.edu/faculty/faculty.html?id=171
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atreyger Posted 2:04 am
24 Aug 2006
NAFTA
While I do understand that there are supposed benefits to the free trade agreements, there is no question that US heavy-hands any card deck by going and picking all the good cards, such as the consistent subsidies pumped into corn and soy as well as setting tariffs on imports (maybe not as strong in the ag sector as in others, I am not familiar).
The farmers are leaving the land in Mexico at least in part because of cheaper corn, subsidized by the US taxpayers.
JScorse: I don't understand what your argument is. If you are suggesting that these people should start making toys and computers, who is going to grow food? Soy, corn and wheat tractors and mechanized animal feeding operations? How about fruits and vegetables?
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LegumeSam Posted 2:30 am
24 Aug 2006
Here's a Mexico question for you all
As Professor Stephen Gliessman said back in 1990, "soils in the state of Tlaxcala, Mexico have been under cultivation for thousands of years." Why would we want to celebrate Tlaxcala's departure from sustainable agriculture?
http://ecosocialism.blogspot.com/
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kmp Posted 3:58 am
24 Aug 2006
Higher value?
Well, Jason, I can think of few better ways to piss off a farmer:
What exactly do you mean by "higher value?" What has higher value than providing our food, quite literally what keeps us alive, and in addition providing us the joy that comes from wonderfully tasty food?
I realize that farming is not a "status" occupation (much like teaching, nursing, police & fire workers, more's the pity) but really - where would we be without it?
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PBrazelton Posted 5:11 am
24 Aug 2006
JDS
Man, winning friends and influencing people. You first imply that Tom doesn't couldn't muster the courage to be a dirty, dirty farmer like some common Mexican, then you imply that societies should value "higher-valued goods and services" more than a sustainable and healthy food supply.
Slam. Dunk.
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caniscandida Posted 5:26 am
24 Aug 2006
ancient Mexican agriculture
Tlaxcala, just over the eastern ridge of volcanoes bordering the Valley of Mexico, indeed has always had good farmland. So too does Puebla state to its south. And until the modern urbanization, the region right around the capital, built on islands in Lake Texcoco, was bountiful. Especially fascinating in the history of agriculture is the ancient Mexicans' invention of chinampas, raised artificial islands that were used as seedbeds, and were by all accounts remarkably productive. The Spaniards filled in most of the lake, but chinampas can still be seen in the famous tourist destination on the southern edge of Mexico City, Xochimilco, the "Floating Gardens."
To the south, Guerrero, Oaxaca and Chiapas also have good farm land. And yet the people of those states are just about the poorest in Mexico today.
Jason's suggestion that Mexican agriculture is mostly subsistence farming strikes me as incredible. Mesoamerica has traditionally been urban-focused, and one of the chief functions of its cities was always to sustain markets. The conquistadors were awed by the huge market at Tlatelolco, on the northern end of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital.
So of course, farmers have always wanted to make a living by selling their corn, beans, chilis and many other edibles, both fresh-picked and as prepared foods ("value-enhanced"?), in the markets. I am especially fond of the chapulines, tiny fried grasshoppers, in Oaxaca. (A good source of protein, I believe; as I wrote on another thread, I have a vision that food made from insects can be used to feed farm-raised fish, instead of having to feed the fish other fish.)
What I have consistently heard from the Chiapas-based Zapatistas and their international allies is that NAFTA, globalization and neo-liberalism have all been bad for the small Mexican farmer. This sentiment has obviously been powerful enough to feed a significant political movement for over ten years, which perhaps affected the last election. Perhaps Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador would have clearly won, if more supporters of Subcomandante Marcos had turned out and voted for him.
A recent segment of the PBS documentary show "Now" was about a young Mexican from Oaxaca who really did not want to come to the US, and made a go of planting a garden of chilis. But the crop froze in a late frost; so he had no choice but to pay a coyote, and cross the border illegally near Nogales. And he died on the second day of walking across the desert.
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Jason D Scorse Posted 8:16 am
24 Aug 2006
No, actually....
I am simply stating some facts:
- All modern advanced societies have a very low % of people in agriculture BUT produce way more food- in fact, there is no shortage of food in the world and all the neo-malthusians are proven wrong so many times I'm amazed they still have an audience
- Anyone who bemoans Mexicans decreasing share of farmers is almost by definition dooming Mexico to a low development status (that was my critique of Tom's sentiments, but yes, I wrongly assumed he wasn't directly involved in agriculture which I apologized for)
- Yes, I happily buy my organic food at farmers markets, but even organic farmers in the U.S. have all of the benefits of high technology, infrastructure, marketing, and wealth that comes with living in an advanced society- in addition, if it wasn't for the middle class and wealthy there would never have been a market for organic in the first place
*If facts piss people off, oh well, that's the price we pay- I'd rather deal with the truth than with feel-food fictionJ.S.
Assistant Professor Monterey Institute of International Studies http://policy.miis.edu/faculty/faculty.html?id=171
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David Roberts Posted 8:22 am
24 Aug 2006
"feel-food fiction"
That's some kind of Freudian slip, Jason!
www.grist.org
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Jason D Scorse Posted 8:42 am
24 Aug 2006
i think it's because the f and g keys....
are adjacent, but i like it- glad you caught it
Assistant Professor Monterey Institute of International Studies http://policy.miis.edu/faculty/faculty.html?id=171
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Tom Philpott Posted 9:29 am
24 Aug 2006
Response to Jason D.
It's true that the U.S. is dumping yellow corn on Mexico (i.e., selling it for less than the cost of production), while Mexico tortilla production uses primarily white corn. However, I understand from several media reports that the collapse in the price of yellow corn has put heavy downward pressure on the white corn price. And that has spelled disaster for hundreds of thousands of Mexican corn farmers.
It's a myth that so-called "subsistence farmers" somehow operate untouched by global markets. The people we call subsistence farmers grow food for their families and sell the rest, often locally, for cash. With that cash, they buy clothes, shampoo, cooking oil, gasoline, farm inputs, televisions, beer, etc.
Say you're a subsistence farmer in the state of Puebla, and suddenly the local tortilleria has gone out of business, undercut by a conglomerate. The conglomerate doesn't want to buy your corn; it can buys corn for much cheaper than you can produce, and doesn't want to deal in small quantities anyway. It's also some distance away. Even if it would buy your corn, you'd have to find away to haul it there. What do you do for cash now? After a couple of years, you likely abandon the land and look for work that can take care of your family's needs.
You wrote in an e-mail to me today: "I am all for a robust agricultural economy, but let's have one where people willingly choose to farm (such as yourself I assume) instead of it being their only choice because they are born into poverty in rural
areas away from any other opportunites."
Fair enough. What I would like, though, is a world in which people can afford to farm, if they want to. Indeed, I've met many dishwashers and cab drivers in New York, and farmworkers in Western North Carolina, who are much less than thrilled with their forced liberation from their land. They're bitter about being uprooted and separated from their families; they'd prefer to make a living farming.
Let's go back to our Puebla corn farmer, no longer able to pay his bills by farming. Where does he go now? Well, he can contract a coyote and head north, where a job is waiting for him if he can survive the rigors of the crossing. But that means exiling himself from his homeland and going to a place that, while relying on his labor to keep inflation down and the economy humming, has declared him a public nuisance. He can go to one of the Mexico City's shanty towns and try to scrape by in that city's huge informal economy -- say, washing windshields or selling gum on the subway. He can try to get a job at a maquiladora up north. The problem there, though, is that the Mexican maquiladora economy is no longer booming. In the scramble to find the lowest wages, global capital is abandoning Mexico for China and Central America.
At the very least, the neoliberals on both sides of the border who cheer as a million more Mexican farmers are "freed" from the land should at least acknowledge the poverty of choices on offer here.
Incidentally, I'd like to hear your view on what seems to me to be the inherent conflict, utterly unresolved within the U.S. right, between market liberalism and nationalism. Doesn't market liberalism demand a withering away of state boundaries -- or does that apply to capital and goods, but not labor? If so, why? What would Smith and Ricardo say about the immigration controversy?
You write: "Yes, I happily buy my organic food at farmers markets, but even organic farmers in the U.S. have all of the benefits of high technology, infrastructure, marketing, and wealth that comes with living in an advanced society- in addition, if it wasn't for the middle class and wealthy there would never have been a market for organic in the first place."
This is true enough; although, while organic farmers benefit from the patronage of the wealthy, they are not getting wealthy by farming themselves. But what next? Must Mexico now go through all of the errors and depredations of industrial food production, so that in several decades it can have a small class of people who eat organic food grown by a few organic farmers--while most people eat food treated by poisons and reliant on copious doses of fossil fuel?
You generally seem to view good food as just another luxury product available to the virtuous, ie, the well-off. The view reminds me of Oscar Wilde's definition of a cynic: someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
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Jason D Scorse Posted 2:46 pm
24 Aug 2006
My response....
Tom- I am glad that we can engage in some relevant discourse (I will ignore your jibe at me at the end- I guess now we're even). Here's my thoughts on the issues you raised:
- First off, you are correct that I don't elevate farming to any special moral status. I think the romanticization of farming and "family" farms is a great impediment to good policy since it clouds the discussion and allows all sorts of irrational and silly emotional issues to get in the way. Farmers are no more moral than teachers, fireman, soldiers, policeman, doctors, or even businessman and academics and their work is no more valuable than others. In addition, most farmers, whether they like their job or not, whether they care for the Earth or not, are out to make a profit and should not be elevated to any special status.
- That being said, I fully recognize that farming is a very difficult occupation and that farmers should be well compensated for their work as any other hard-working people. Those who pay special attention to the environment and their workers should be rewarded more. I do this by paying more for my food and I also support CSA's, which are a great way to connect people with good farming.
- I think we need to get out of the mode that says small farms are good and big farms are bad (just as many say big corporations are bad and "mom and pop" establishments are good). In reality, many small farmers trash the environment and treat their workers terribly, and many big farms do the opposite. We need to focus on metrics and outcomes, not biases about farm size that may or may not be linked to the facts. Policies are best tailored to outcomes since finding ways to arbitrarily define small or family farm doesn't make much sense. I am just as happy at a 50,000 acre farm that treats its workers well and respects the environment as a 5 acre farm- I see no rational reason why policy should be based on mythic ideals.
- As to specifics about Mexico, this is very complex, but here are some additional thoughts:
a. first off, like I said already, aside from NAFTA, there would still be a huge exodus out of Mexican agriculture because of its relative low productivity and the fact that life in rural Mexico is incredibly harsh- so much so that risking one's life to come North to work for minimum wage or less is to many an attractive optionb. while I know it is easy for me to say so, economic development takes time- generations-. I just returned from Mexico a few days ago and was actually surprised at thegreat improvements in infrastructure, cleanliness, and overall standard of living in many areas- even in the coffee areas the last 3 years of high prices has led to great advances- many pueblos are opening schools and health clinics- with Mexico near the biggest market in the world there is no reason that Mexico can't one day be the producer of very high valued goods and have a robust middle class
c. I have written quite a lot that what Mexico needs most is the break up of the monopolies that are criplling large and very important sectors of the economy- particularly communications- breaking up TELMEX would be a huge boost to the Mexican economy and average Mexicans who spend so much money on phone calls and internet access. I also talked to people who mentioned the anti-competitve policies and bureacracy that cripples entreprenueriship. For example, whereas Costa Rican coffee exporters spend $1 to ship a pound of coffee to the U.S. it costs $8 in Mexico and the red tape is enormous.
In summary, I don't have all the answers, but I think any analysis that focuses on keeping the majority of Mexicans in low productivity agriculture is essentially elitist because it dooms those people to perpetual poverty. In 50 years Mexico could easily accomodate a large educated middle class as well as a robust (but smaller) agricultural sector if the right policies are put in place.
J.S.
Assistant Professor Monterey Institute of International Studies http://policy.miis.edu/faculty/faculty.html?id=171
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Jason D Scorse Posted 3:01 pm
24 Aug 2006
One last point...
Tom- you seem to accuse me of wanting organic to remain a boutique market only for the well-off. This is incorrect:
- I want everyone to get wealthier so that they can have the option of buying those high-priced peaches that you advocate (which peasants growing small plots of corn could never afford)
- I applaud moves by Wal-Mart to make organic food available to low-income people, which surprisingly you seem to have a problem with since they don't buy from "small"/"family" farms.
Seems to me like you're playing both sides of the fence here and it doesn't add up.J.S.
Assistant Professor Monterey Institute of International Studies http://policy.miis.edu/faculty/faculty.html?id=171
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amazingdrx Posted 10:37 pm
24 Aug 2006
Robots
"California's organic farms are struggling with a labor shortage."
Use machines, they work on renewable electric power. 24/7. No more labor shortage.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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