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FOOD FIGHT
MARCH 28, 1996
TRANSCRIPT
Tom Bearden reports from Florida on an international food fight that's testing the strength of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
TOM BEARDEN: Teena Borek is letting her tomato crop rot in the field because it would cost more to harvest it than she could get selling it.
TEENA BOREK, Farmer: It's very devastating, to grow a field like this and then to have it just left in the field because I can't afford to harvest it or take it to market, and, uh, we worked very hard to get our crop in and to keep it in and to bring it through two freezes, and we have nothing to show for it.
TOM BEARDEN: Nothing like this has ever happened to Borek's family, even though they've been growing vegetables in South Florida for three generations.
TEENA BOREK: Forklift driver, take that pallet and put it up there, and then--
TOM BEARDEN: They've abandoned their crop this year because tomato prices are at historic lows. Borek blames that on Mexican growers who sell their crops for less than half of what it costs her to grow the same produce. She says the gap is because U.S. and Mexican farmers play by very different rules.
TEENA BOREK: I have many, many rules and regulations, labor rules, all the rules our government puts on us, and it's a different government over there.
TOM BEARDEN: Small farmers aren't the only ones that are hurting. Packing houses like the DiMare Company her in Florida City say they've seen dramatic declines. Paul DiMare says he's lost 65 percent of his business.
PAUL DiMARE, Farmer: In the wage base of Mexico in agriculture right today, they're paying $3 a day for wages. We're paying those same people 60 and 70 dollars a day. You can't have that. How would we compete? I mean, there's no way to compete against somebody that pays twenty to thirty times less than you do.
TOM BEARDEN: DiMare says lower Mexican wages are only part of the problem. He accuses the Mexican government of actually dumping vegetables at prices below the cost of production, deliberately trying to drive Florida farmers out of business.
PAUL DiMARE: Because once we lose Florida's growing of winter vegetables, it's over for the United States' winter vegetables. You'll have to buy 'em from foreign countries. And if that's what they want to do, put the food in the hands of foreign people to grow, then good luck, because they're going to lose this industry.
TOM BEARDEN: Florida once shipped 95 percent of all the winter vegetables consumed in the U.S.. Now, Agriculture Department statistics show Mexico has 68 percent of the U.S. market, up 48 percent last year. What happened? Both Borek and DiMare blame NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. Signed into law two and a half years ago, it began reducing and will eventually remove all American tariffs on Mexican produce. DiMare believes the Clinton administration failed to live up to its agreement to protect Florida agriculture, an agreement made in return for the votes of the Florida congressional delegation in passing NAFTA, which only barely squeaked through Congress.
PAUL DiMARE: I think the United States Government has abandoned us.
TOM BEARDEN: Florida Democratic Senator Bob Graham agrees.
SEN. BOB GRAHAM, (D) Florida: We were very concerned, the Florida delegation and the Florida agricultural industry, about what NAFTA might mean to the future of a very important part of not only the economy but also the way of life of Florida. And we had strong statements from the President and other representatives of the administration that this wouldn't happen, that the Florida industry would not be pushed to the wall as a result of NAFTA and we'd be given a period of time to assimilate the changes. And frankly, that hasn't happened. And we're very mad about it.
TOM BEARDEN: So Sen. Graham introduced legislation to make it easier for seasonal farmers to petition the International Trade Commission for relief. The Senate passed the measure. It's still pending in the House. And in an unprecedented move, Florida has placed 50 additional state agricultural inspectors at highway checkpoints. That's in addition to U.S. Customs inspections on the border. They check for pesticide residue and insects, tally the shipments, and charge a $70 fee. Florida says it's to protect consumers. The Mexican Consul General in Miami, Luis Ortiz- Monasterio, find the inspection program and Sen. Graham's legislation troubling.
LUIS ORTIZ-MONASTERIO, Mexican Consul General: The message is very clear. The message is that a certain kind of protectionism is taking place, and that's really very concerning.
TOM BEARDEN: Economist Gary Hufbauer agrees the increased inspections send the wrong message.
GARY HUFBAUER, Institute for International Economics: This is harassment.
TOM BEARDEN: But they argue that this is a legitimate exercise of protection of consumers against pesticides.
GARY HUFBAUER: Well, that's what they argue. Most of these tomatoes are destined for places like Washington or New York or Boston, and isn't it interesting that Florida, which happens to grow tomatoes, has suddenly taken the interest in these consumers in other states so much at heart?
TOM BEARDEN: Hufbauer says flatly that NAFTA is not responsible for the Florida farmers' problems.
GARY HUFBAUER: This is not a NAFTA problem. Let's just be very clear, because everything, every sparrow that falls, to use a Canadian expression, is now being blamed on, on NAFTA. And the Florida tomato farmers would have their present problem with or without NAFTA.
TOM BEARDEN: U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor agrees.
MICKEY KANTOR, U.S. Trade Representative: What NAFTA did is, of course, only lower the price of importing Mexican tomatoes by 1/2 cent a pound. What has happened really is there's been a very difficult growing season in 1995/96 for Florida farmers, at the same time the Mexican peso weakened, and so, therefore, Mexican tomatoes are much cheaper. There may be a problem of Mexican farmers dumping tomatoes on the U.S. market, but that has nothing to do with NAFTA. In the first year of NAFTA, in fact, Mexican exports of tomatoes went down, not up.
TOM BEARDEN: Is NAFTA to blame?
SEN. BOB GRAHAM: NAFTA is part of the blame, and particularly the failure to enforce the provisions of NAFTA that called for a 10-year transition period, but also the devaluation of the peso has had a major impact, and the failure of NAFTA to have anticipated those monetary changes and to have provided adjustment mechanisms is another part of the problem.
TOM BEARDEN: Ortiz-Monasterio says both countries need to keep their eyes on the real prize of NAFTA, North American competitiveness in the world market, in spite of any temporary pain on either side of the border.
LUIS ORTIZ-MONASTERIO: We know that this is going to affect a lot of industries in the U.S., a lot of industries in Mexico. As a matter of fact, almost 20,000 little enterprises in Mexico have been closing the last two years because the competition is very tough. We have to learn, all of us, that the competition is going to, to destroy a lot of industries.
GARY HUFBAUER: There are losers as well as winners, and I'm sorry to say that the Florida tomato growers are probably a losing industry. And if you're going to try to protect, you as a nation, the United States as a country, is going to try to protect all the losers, you know, we have no business in being in any trade liberalization whatsoever.
TOM BEARDEN: Kantor says despite some painful job losses, in the long run, NAFTA will more than make up the difference.
MICKEY KANTOR: Frankly, we have been able to create 291,000 new jobs in the first two years of NAFTA alone in this country. The Labor Department indicates only 17,500 jobs have been lost in two years in the whole United States of America because of companies moving to Mexico.
TEENA BOREK: (looking at vegetables) And we may have trouble with the light color.
TOM BEARDEN: But Teena Borek says the big picture is of small comfort when it's your job on the line. She thinks growing vegetables has become a losing proposition in Florida and is urging her sons not to continue in the business.
TEENA BOREK: We're afraid that everything that we do, and it's proven true in all the other crops we grow, they grow more next year. And unless there is some type of an agreement to protect our growers that are growing their crops, I don't know what we're going to grow, I don't know if we're going to grow. I don't know what we're going to do.
TOM BEARDEN: Paul DiMare is not optimistic either, despite the fact that the administration has reinstated a small tariff and sponsored talks between Mexican and U.S. growers to share marketing information.
PAUL DiMARE: My dealings with Washington has always been that it's lip service and that we're going to do something and don't worry, it's going to happen, and meanwhile, it's come to the point where it's no more lip service. You know, we're sitting out there in this raft and like I said, you know, the sharks are out there eating the raft and then somebody says, I'm going to throw you a life preserver, except he made a mistake, he threw us an anchor, and the anchor's taking us down.
TOM BEARDEN: Ironically, if the winter vegetable business in Florida literally goes South, it may be Mexican citizens who suffer the most. Tomato farming is very labor-intensive. Each tomato is picked and sorted by hand. Most of that work is done by migrant workers, and most of them are Mexican nationals.
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