Joan,
Re: I understand the players in the grain market.
Great! You're one up on me. I'm just now beginning to comprehend the devastating effect that World Bank/IMF and WTO trade decisions have had on grain producers in LDC, Less Developed Nations. Maybe you can help me understand this remarkable scam that I am catching a glimmer of.
For example, one of the effects of NAFTA is to have devastated the grain farmers, primarily subsistence maize farmers, in provinces of Mexico like Sinaloa and Oaxaca. These traditional landholdings are no longer able to support the populations in these regions for multiple reasons. One, the landholdings have gotten too small due to generational divisions of family plots. Two, irrigation tends to be controlled by absentee landlords and their diversion of water to crops such as sugar beets makes staple crops difficult to grow without adequate water and
Three, new competition from ultra-cheap maize imports from the ag-industrial American Midwest has destroyed local markets for crops in most of central Mexico.
The result is a piddling gain for the grain farmers of Iowa or Illinois, and a total devastation of indigenous cultures in central Mexico.
Have I got this about right?
Then, the displaced Mexican campesinos, facing no future at all, illegally migrate to Iowa to work in meat packing plants at breakneck paces until they injure themselves and are discarded by Armour, IBP and other multinationals as so much chaff falling out of the discharge chute of an International Harvestor.
Have I got this about right?
Oh, and I guess I ought to add that King George has recently doled out the most generous crop subsidies ever bestowed on his pals who bribe him so generously and make owning land so worthwhile because it's such a swell corporate welfare plum for the big growers and landholders. While at the same time, the small landholders in the Great Plains who've struggled for many generations are getting almost nothing at all from the government to tide them over through the current drought cylce that the High Plains is suffering because their bribes haven't been generous enough.
Have I got this about right? |
