DEADLINE TODAY URGENT!) Sign-On Letter to US Congress Opposing CAFTA

[confludemocrat]

notice

Seeking: Organizations to sign letter to the U.S. Congress opposing CAFTA   (letter below and attached)
 
Sign on deadline: Wednesday, March 23, 2005
To sign your organization, please email [e-mail] <mailto:[e-mail]>  or call the National Family Farm Coalition at: [phone]
    Please furnish:
    1. Organization name and address
    2. Official contact person for organization, phone # and email

Organizations will be listed on the letter in alphabetical order.    

Please circulate this message to other organizations!!!

    The CAFTA (Central American Free Trade Agreement) battle is heating up. The National Family Farm Coalition, the Rural Coalition/Coalición Rural and the Western Organization of Resource Councils invite your organization to sign on to the attached letter urging Members of the U.S. Congress to publicly oppose CAFTA. The letter will be delivered to Congress at the end of March.
 
   To sign your organization to the letter, please contact us by Wednesday, March 23, 2005.
 
    Loads of material on CAFTA can be found at the Citizens Trade Campaign web site: http://www.citizenstrade.org/cafta.php <http://www.citizenstrade.org/cafta.php>
 
 
For more information, contact:  

National Family Farm Coalition: Rebecca Kessinger [phone]
Rural Coalition/Coalición Rural:  Bouapha Toommaly [e-mail] [phone]
Western Organization of Resource Councils:  Jeri Lynn Bakken  [phone]
 

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U.S. Congress
Washington, D.C. 20510
 
March 25, 2005
 
Dear Member of Congress;
 
On behalf of the undersigned rural organizations, we urge you to oppose the Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). CAFTA would expand the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to six additional nations, and contains almost identical language and provisions. NAFTA's outcomes have proved disastrous for farmers, farmworkers, and rural communities in all three participating countries. Further extending this failed NAFTA model is not acceptable.
 
Instead, future trade agreements should protect food sovereignty: the principle that all countries retain the right to develop food and farm programs that promote and respond to the needs of farmers, farmworkers and rural society and that assure that consumers' basic food needs are met.  Each nation should retain the right to establish policies based on its needs and traditions for food security, conservation of natural resources, and fair distribution of economic opportunity.


Consider the record of NAFTA: producers in the US, Mexico and Canada have  suffered significantly due to decreased prices for livestock, wheat, corn, and other commodities.  According to Mexican campesino organizations, NAFTA forces 600 poverty-stricken peasants to abandon their lands and communities every day.  In the United States, USDA data indicates that the average price of 2003 U.S. wheat exports was 28% below the cost of production.



CAFTA would lead to yet more imported food entering the United States, which is now poised to become a net food importer for the first year since 1954. Significant increases of imported commodities due to CAFTA's tariff reductions, such as sugar and livestock products, would result in even lower commodity prices for U.S. agricultural producers.  CAFTA would intensify dumping, lower farm incomes, and increase the need for taxpayer-provided subsidies to U.S. farmers.


CAFTA would exacerbate the difficulties of minority farmers and farmworkers in the U.S.  For example, African American farmers and their communities already experienced a disproportionate impact when NAFTA lifted restrictions on peanuts, fruits, and vegetables. NAFTA has also caused conditions for agricultural workers to decline drastically. At the US-Mexico border farmworkers now receive the lowest wages of any sector of the labor force in the United States, with an annual income less than $7,000 per year.
 
For Central American and Dominican farmers, the danger of NAFTA-style agricultural policies is enormous. In Guatemala and Nicaragua, for example, 60% and 44% of the population respectively are employed in the agricultural sector, the majority of whom are small farmers. Under CAFTA, the Dominican Republic and Central America would also be required to reduce tariffs, subsidies and other supports that protect these vulnerable agricultural sectors against the size and concentration advantage of multinational agribusiness imports.
 
CAFTA would limit the right of all participating countries to implement measures to ensure that food traveling across borders is safe and meets domestic food safety standards.  In addition, CAFTA’s rules requiring monopoly-style patenting of seed and plant varieties would undermine efforts to protect indigenous communities, biodiversity and farmers’ rights to control their inputs, for instance by saving seed for replanting.
 
Moreover, CAFTA’s lack of labor and environmental standards encourage multi-national corporations to move operations in search of cheaper production costs, driving down farm, processing, and manufacturing wages. The lack of such standards in CAFTA also discourages producers from adopting better labor and environmental practices, pitting farmers and small businesses in the U.S. and Central America against one another in a race to the bottom.
 
CAFTA would subject all participating nations to abide by court decisions of secretive international tribunals. Chapter 10 of CAFTA, like Chapter 11 of NAFTA, will empower foreign investors to demand compensation from national treasuries for any government action that they claim might undermine their expected future profits. This means that if CAFTA were passed, foreign corporations operating in the United States would be granted rights superior to those provided to U.S. residents and businesses by the Constitution, and legal protections to protect the environment and the health and safety of workers could then be overruled.
 
CAFTA ratification would also worsen the U.S. trade deficit. According to this month’s U.S. Commerce Department statistics, over the last year the U.S. trade deficit increased to a record high $617 billion: trade with NAFTA partners represented 17% of that deficit.
 
Congressional approval of CAFTA would be another severe blow to family farmers, farmworkers, rural communities and food consumers.  The organizations below support a trade system that strengthens democracy and health, environment, food sovereignty, working conditions and labor rights for all. We urge you to publicly oppose CAFTA.
 
 
 
Sincerely,
 
Alphabetical List of Organizations will be added here, including:
National Family Farm Coalition
Rural Coalition/Coalición Rural
Western Organization of Resource Council
_____________________________________
Bouapha Toommaly
Field Programs Manager

Rural Coalition
1012 14th Street NW, Suite 1100
Washington, DC 2005

Ph: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
Email: [e-mail]
www.ruralco.org/ www. supermarketcoop.com