(please forward widely)
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FOOD AND RESISTANCE
April 17th, 2003
International Day of
Farmers' Struggle
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Join the demo...Bring your pots & pans!
----> 1pm Meet in front of the Stock Exchange (Métro Square Victoria) to march towards Archer Daniels Midland flour mill (950 rue Mill).
----> 2pm Speeches, food and creative actions outside ADM (beneath the giant Farine Five Roses sign). Free organic picnic with corn tortillas.
Free trade out of agriculture!
Repeal NAFTA! Stop the FTAA!
Stop Food Dumping!
No to forced migration and repression!
Moratorium on GMOs! No to GE Wheat!
FOOD SOVEREIGNTY NOW!!
This is a callout to groups and individuals concerned about the devastation caused by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the FTAA, and other neoliberal policies regarding food and agriculture systems in North America, including:
- the attack on peasants' and farmers' livelihoods, lands and culture, and
the repression of movements who struggle and defend their autonomy;
- the forced bankruptcy and displacement of millions of rural Mexicans and
Latin Americans;
- the corporatization of food production for an ever-expanding agro-export
industry;
- the systematic denial of peoples' rights to food sovereignty and food
security;
- the contamination by GMOs of our food supply and the agricultural
biodiversity it is based on.
NAFTA, often held up as a model for other trade agreements (such as the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas-FTAA), has proven the disastrous effect 'free trade'. can have for farmers, peasants, and consumers, and the environment. Every day in Mexico, over 600 campesinos are forced off their lands because of cheap imports that are being dumped onto Mexican grain markets by transnational agribusiness, and because of expropriation for neo-liberal 'development' projects. Over 1.8 million people have lost their jobs in the countryside in Mexico since 1994, when NAFTA came into effect.
This is nothing less than genocide. Land is not just a source of income, it forms the base of identity and way of life for an enormous sector of rural Mexicans.
NAFTA was supposed to 'level the playing field' between Mexico and its neighbours to the north, but it has only made matters worse. Cheap imports from the US are being dumped at prices way below their cost of production, undermining the market for locally produced crops. On average US farmers receive 30 times more subsidies than their Mexican counterparts. Furthermore, US-based agribusiness such as ADM, Cargill and ConAgra receive billions of dollars in corporate welfare, in the form of export subsidies and in the millions of dollars that is funnelled through 'food aid' programs. Corn that costs on average $3.41 a bushel to produce in the US is dumped on the international market for $2.28 a bushel. The subsidies received by Mexican agriculture, on the other hand, come largely in the form of unpaid labour by farmers and their families, and the $9 billion sent home by friends and relatives who have migrated to the US, many of whom toil at low wages to support US agribusiness.
Since NAFTA came into effect, Mexico's countryside has been emptying out rapidly. The constant flood of displaced peasants has driven the number of deaths at the US border to over 2000, since the Border Patrol's "Operation Gatekeeper" began in 1995 (the year after NAFTA). A system of legal slavery is developing, where Mexican workers are allowed legally to enter the US and Canada to work temporarily, but with fewer rights than 'legal' citizens.
Though humans are not free to cross its borders, the US is ensuring that its genetically modified crops are spreading around the world, even to countries like Mexico where growing it is supposedly illegal. GE corn sent as foodstuffs has been replanted and has now contaminated an alarming proportion of fields in areas in the state of Oaxaca, an area very rich in corn genetic diversity. This rich agricultural heritage, the product of centuries of seedsaving and collective plant breeding, has historically served as the genetic backbone for crop development in the US and around the world.
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Resistance is fertile
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In December 2002, the coalition of Mexican campesino groups El Campo No Aguanta Más (The Countryside Can't Take it Anymore) organized a siege of Mexican congress, forcing open a public debate about NAFTA for the first time since the Zapatista rising in January 1994. On January 31st 2003, the coalition put 100,000 peasants on the streets of Mexico City, backed by unions, students and civil servants, once again demanding a repeal of NAFTA. This April 10th, the anniversary of the assassination of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, they will take to the streets again. And on April 17th, International Day of Farmers. Struggle, peasants, farmers, indigenous peoples and their supporters will mobilize all over the world to denounce neo-liberal agriculture policies, and demand the WTO's entire withdrawal from agriculture.
On April 17th in Montreal, we will demonstrate our solidarity with farmers and peasant movements currently struggling around the world against neoliberalism, including those in Mexico and right here in Canada.
A march is planned to confront Archer Daniels Midland at their flour mill in the old port, where we will mount a creative action to raise awareness about ADM's active participation in the suppression of people's sovereignty over their food and agriculture.
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Why ADM?
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Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) is one of the top benefactors from 'free trade', at the expense of farmers, consumers and the environment. ADM's profits have nearly tripled - from $110 million to $301 million - since NAFTA began. They are ranked #1 or #2 in the world in corn exports, flour milling, soybean crushing, soybean exports, ethanol, cacao, and terminal grain handling facilities. In other words, they are the chief benefactors of food dumping, and the displacement of mexican peasants and farmers. ADM's annual operating budget in 2002: 23.5 billion dollars.
Another NAFTA winner is Grupo Gruma (aka Maseca), which holds a monopoly on the flour used to make corn tortillas--Mexico's staple food--and who has benefited greatly from cheaper corn imports from the US and Canada. ADM and Gruma are tightly linked, with Gruma holding a 40% stake of ADM.s corn flour mills in the US, and ADM owning a 22% share of Gruma's Mexican operations.
Interestingly, former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, who signed the NAFTA agreement on behalf of Canada in 1992, joined the board of directors of ADM in 1993. Former Mexican president and renowned mafiaman Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who signed NAFTA as president of Mexico, has close ties to the Gruma empire. His brother Raul is currently in prison, accused of planning the assassination of the former governor of Guerrero, who opposed the building of a corn flour plant. In Montreal, ADM operates the largest wheat flour mill in Canada, which which still bears the name 'Farine Five Roses'--referring to a company they bought out decades ago.
Their corporate history is rife with scandal. In 1996 they were hit with the largest ever fine in Canadian and US history for price-fixing several products. Their old slogan, "Supermarket to the World", too easily adapted to "SupermarkUP to the World", was changed in 1998 to the "The Nature of What's to Come".
ADM is also a huge pusher of GMOs. In 2001 they were nailed along with Azteca Milling, which ADM co-owns with a Grupo Gruma, for using Starlink corn, a GE variety not approved for human consumption, in the making of taco shells. ADM's Montreal wheat flour operation will likely be a conduit for genetically modified wheat if the government of Canada approves application by Monsanto and Aventis for its use in the 2004 growing season.
In our long-term struggle against neoliberalism, it is essential to identify and confront the true decision-makers that crafted the WTO, NAFTA, and the future FTAA to maximize their profits at the expense of well-being of the majority of humankind. A large mobilization and collective education effort is necessary to put the FTAA back in the public arena, challenge the already signed NAFTA and concretely build an alternative to the neoliberal dynamic of social, political and environmental devastation. The march and action at ADM's Montreal operation will be part of that continental and global movement.
REPEAL NAFTA! STOP THE FTAA!
STOP FOOD DUMPING!
MORATORIUM ON ALL GMOS! STOP GE WHEAT!
ALL THOSE WHO PRODUCE AND EAT FOOD UNITE!
STOP RURAL EXODUS AND SUPPORT RESETTLEMENT OF THE LANDLESS!
Action Supported By:
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More Info:
contact: comite17avril@ziplip.com
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Info Specific to Montreal ADM Operations
Photos:
Concerning 1994-95 Strike:
Other:
Maps and General Info
Flier / Posters
Other international actions planned for International Farmers' Struggle Day...