home > education center > agriculture How the FTAA could affect agriculture How would you like a handful of Global Corporations to decide what you and everyone else in this hemisphere will eat for breakfast? Imagine: Organic agriculture disappearing because of genetic contamination of crop seed varieties. Banned carcinogenic pesticides re-introduced in the U.S. and imported on foods grown elsewhere. Factory meat producers and processors legally protected to pollute our water supplies, foul our air, and exploit migrant workers. Massive migration into the U.S. of impoverished farmers from across the hemisphere, a direct result of the dumping of cheap, heavily subsidized grains, dairy products, and other commodities on regional markets. A continued loss of food purity and nutrition as chemical fertilizer, pesticide and transgenic seed dependence soars, and sustainable practices are economically marginalized. Increased health threats from outbreaks of diseases (such as 'mad cow') among animals raised by industrial farming practices under sanitary deregulation. A continued decline in the number of viable family farms in the U.S. Global trade talks under way would strengthen the hand of corporations engaged in this 'race to the bottom.' These new trade agreements--the FTAA (Free Trade Area in the Americas), GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services), and CAFTA (Central America Free Trade Agreement)--are now being negotiated behind closed doors. But we have time to stop them--between now and 2005. Learn about the campaign and see what you can do by contacting the People's Consultation at 773-583-7728 or info@peoplesconsultation.org. How could global trade agreements speed the day when agribusiness and seed monopolies control our food supply? The Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), based on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), would impose throughout the hemisphere a legal framework that favors multinational corporations as they search for cheaper labor, less environmental restrictions, greater 'intellectual property rights' and monopolized markets. Clauses regarding intellectual property rules and patenting would allow a handful of corporations to extend their market control further over agricultural seeds, trees and plant-based medicines. This would further drive small seed companies out of business, erode diversity and contaminate native seed varieties through cross-pollination by wind and insects. As has already happened in Canada and the U.S. under free trade accords like NAFTA, farmers across the hemisphere could find themselves in the position of having to 'rent' seeds belonging to a mega-corporation, unable by law to save their seed for the following year's planting. Privatization requirements could do away entirely with collective land ownership practices. Indigenous and subsistence farming cultures have typically survived by holding and working their lands in common. Privatization makes it possible to break up such communities and even entire indigenous cultures by allowing outside interests to buy out individual landowners one by one. National and regional laws banning toxic pesticides could be overridden under trade accords, as obstacles to trade. Similarly, laws banning the importation of foods with pesticide residues could be declared illegal. In the context of the ongoing consolidation of agro-chemical seed companies (five mega-corporations have now cornered world markets for commercial agricultural seeds and pesticides), an FTAA accord would allow these corporations to crush any attempt to limit the movement of their agricultural chemicals and seeds, regardless of concerns over their safety or monopoly control. Thus, the food security of the native peoples or farmers in the 34 nations negotiating the accord would be threatened. An FTAA tribunal, meeting in secret, would judge any disputes between corporations and governments. (Note: To date no NAFTA trade dispute has ever gone in favor of a government defending against a foreign corporation.) The idea of 'national sovereignty' would no longer have meaning. The growing organic and locally-grown food movement across the U.S. could be neutralized as corporations across the hemisphere race to the bottom to out-produce and out-market each other, in effect pitting farmer against farmer from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. When choice is threatened by monopoly control, are we still free? For more information, contact the Latin American Liaison for Agricultural Missions, Stephen@ncccusa.org.