Last week, trade ministers from 34 countries met in the Ecuadorian capital of Quito to discuss what some Florida citrus and vegetable growers fear could be the beginning of the end for their industry.
The representatives at the seventh summit of the Free Trade Area of the Americas were hoping to have concluded by the end of the talks a road map for future negotiations about the far-reaching treaty, which they hope to have finalized by 2005.
At issue in the Quito talks was a deal to cut trade barriers between the countries in the hope of encouraging commerce throughout the region. But the growers say some of those barriers -- particularly a 29-cent tariff on Brazilian orange juice -- are keeping them from going out of business.
"We have been targeted for extinction, all of Florida agriculture," says J. Luis Rodriguez, trade adviser for Florida Farmers Inc. in Lake Worth. "We need protection. We're a strategic, sensitive, perishable industry. You cannot survive competing against countries with $3-a-day wages."
Adds Pat Cockrell, the Florida Farm Bureau Federation's director of agricultural policy:
"We don't see anything we produce in Florida agriculture that is going to benefit from the FTAA."
The Free Trade Area of the Americas, or FTAA, is an expansion of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which was enacted in 1994. The FTAA expands the NAFTA provisions to every country in Central and South America and the Caribbean -- except Cuba.
For many of Florida's fruit, juice and vegetable producers, NAFTA is a five-letter curse word. They blame the agreement for the battering of the state's agricultural sector by produce from Canada and Mexico.
The number of tomato growers in the state has shrunk from 300 to 65 since the enactment of NAFTA, and Florida's tomato crop dollar value has shrunk from a pre-NAFTA peak of $729 million in 1991-92 to $588 million in 2000-01. Imports now account for 32 percent of fresh tomato consumption, up from 19 percent in 1994, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Other countries have watched Mexico's trade with the United States grow and want to sell their produce to the huge U.S. consumer market.
"You can bet your bottom dollar they're coming our way," said Fort Pierce tomato grower David Neill, referring to the FTAA countries. "We are the market. The market ain't in their own country."
In its stand against the FTAA, Florida agriculture has picked up a few strange bedfellows. Organized labor has said it doesn't want to lose U.S. jobs to other countries where wages are low, and environmentalists fear the loss of natural resources as countries industrialize and manufacture more goods.
Standing up for the agreement are the Bush administration -- and the Clinton administration before it -- which have pushed free trade as a way to open up economic and political freedom for other countries. Also, there are the manufacturers, foreign farmers, U.S. grain growers and others who want to cash in on the FTAA's combined market of 880 million people with a $14 trillion gross domestic product.
Of that, more than $10 trillion lies within the United States.
Agriculture is 'problem child' The FTAA took shape in December 1994 at the Summit of the Americas in Miami where the heads of state of the 34 democratic nations of the Western Hemisphere agreed to create the free trade area. By 1998, the framework was in place and negotiations began, but have progressed slowly. With "fast-track" trade promotion authority now in Bush's hands, FTAA is expected to move more quickly toward its 2005 completion goal.
Possible stumbling blocks have appeared in recent days, with analysts pointing to objections from Brazil and other Latin American countries to U.S. demands for continued import tariffs on agricultural produce and steel.
Another complicating factor is last month's election in Brazil, which catapulted leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva into the presidency. Lula, as the president-elect is known, has said he does not favor a free-trade agreement.
"The Southern Hemisphere economies have been reluctant to jump on the free-trade bandwagon," said University of Florida economist Tom Spreen. "Agriculture is the problem child in this whole thing. In every crop there's somebody in some country with political pull."
The FTAA region is diverse, stretching from the Arctic almost to the Antarctic. In addition to the giant producers of North America, the region includes the subsistence farmers of Haiti and the banana growers of Panama. There is the powerhouse citrus industry of Brazil, which grows a third of the world's oranges; Peru's seafood industry; Chile's wine-producing region; and the wheat, rice and corn crops of Argentina.
Even the Bahamas, where tourism is half the economy, produces citrus and vegetables. And then there's oil-rich Venezuela, a member of the OPEC cartel.
Those countries would form a free-trade area that "can topple the walls of prejudice, poverty and protectionism by connecting our two continents through the bonds of freedom and prosperity," U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick said last month during a speech in Miami. Just as U.S. trade policy after World War II helped secure democracy and hope in Western Europe and Japan, fragile democracies in the Americas will benefit from free trade, Zoellick said.
But speeches about democracy and dreams are far removed from realities of the day-to-day business of farming in Florida, where 44,000 farmers grow more than $7 billion worth of 280 different crops.
Despite what denizens of paved-over South Florida might think, agriculture is still big business in Florida. Its citrus industry is first in the nation, with $1.6 billion a year in cash receipts. The vegetable industry is almost as big, with receipts to growers of more than $1 billion annually.
Florida's sugar industry, also the nation's largest, with $442 million in cash receipts in 2000, also could be adversely affected by FTAA.
It's the citrus industry, which has some of the largest U.S. tariffs on foreign imports, that stands to lose the most, analysts say. Citrus growers say the agreement will put them out of business if the 29-cents-a-gallon federal tariff is lifted on orange juice from Brazil, the world's largest exporter of juice.
"It will destroy the Florida orange juice industry entirely," says Robert Buker, president of Southern Gardens Citrus, an orange grower and juice processor owned by U.S. Sugar Corp. in Clewiston. "We need the tariff. If they back off even a penny, we're in trouble."
Meanwhile, the state officially favors FTAA, but does not take a solid position on the tariff in its summit documents. State officials, along with Florida FTAA Inc., a nonprofit group based in Miami, are working to bring the permanent Secretariat of the FTAA to Miami. The 2003 FTAA summit is also scheduled to be held in that city.
Hugh Simon, Florida undersecretary of state for international affairs, attended the Ecuador summit along with about 30 other people in a state delegation that included officials from chambers of commerce and trade promotion boards.
"We as a state are very much in favor of FTAA, but this does not mean we forget the agricultural interests we've got here," Simon said. "FTAA would accelerate the flow of trade through Florida."
Simon said a document submitted during the Ecuador talks pointed out that Florida agriculture's experience with NAFTA has not been positive.
"The document says that Florida's agricultural sector supports strong trade laws, and the Florida citrus and winter vegetable growers believe further reductions in tariffs are unacceptable," he said.
Bad for consumers? While the Bush administration says its trade agenda goals are to increase trade and competition around the world and decrease consumer prices, Florida's citrus industry says the opposite will happen if the tariffs are ended.
"It won't help consumers. It will put the orange juice business in the hands of two wealthy families in Brazil," Buker said, referring to the Cutrale family, which owns Cutrale, and the Fisher family, which owns Citrosuco.
UF's Spreen forecasts that an end to the juice tariff will result in growers receiving 20 cents less a gallon, resulting in a $250 million loss of revenues for Florida citrus.
Industry experts say those losses would force some growers out of business.
Even the famed Indian River grapefruit region from Daytona Beach to West Palm Beach would be hurt, because along with 110,000 acres of grapefruit, the growers have 120,000 acres of oranges, says Doug Bournique, executive vice president of the Indian River Citrus League in Vero Beach.
"A lot of the men and women who own citrus have 50 percent oranges. Growers have made up for their losses in grapefruit with oranges," Bournique said.
If the orange juice tariff ended, Bournique predicts the league's 1,100 members would be devastated, along with the economies of Indian River and St. Lucie counties where more than 20 percent of the workforce is employed by citrus.
"Although the fresh grapefruit industry would not be directly impacted, there would be an impact on a lot of our growers who own both," Bournique said.
U.S. Rep. Adam Putnam, R-Bartow, said he's not against FTAA as a whole, but recognizes the need to keep the tariffs. That's why he put together a meeting with Zoellick and Florida's fruit and vegetable growers last month in Winter Haven.
Putnam said he thinks Zoellick left the meeting with a better understanding of the industry's concerns, although Zoellick didn't provide any assurances. Zoellick learned that 95 percent of Florida's oranges are squeezed for juice, and that its oranges have difficulty competing with prettier fruit from more arid regions.
"He didn't say anything specific. He can't tip his hand on his negotiating strategy," Putnam said. "There's very few pure free trade agreements anywhere in the world. There's a history of nations setting aside certain things."
A spokesman for Zoellick's office said input from Congress is required before changes can be made that would affect crops on the import-sensitive list. Sugar, citrus and vegetables are included on that list.
"I don't want to speculate on what would be the outcome of that work with Congress," said the spokesman, who declined to be identified in print. "All I will say at this point is that we will conduct that in a conscientious way."
Florida agriculture interests say they want to see import-sensitive crops such as citrus, vegetables and sugar cane dealt with on the global World Trade Organization level rather than in a regional treaty such as FTAA.
"Because of the contentious nature of the agricultural issues, we would prefer them to be looked at on the global perspective. WTO is a better way to do it," said Andy LaVigne, chief executive officer and vice president of growers' group Florida Citrus Mutual.
U.S. Sugar Corp. spokeswoman Judy Sanchez concurs.
"We have certain obligations under the WTO. If sugar is also subject to a regional agreement, it's a double whammy on Florida farmers," Sanchez said.
Simon, the state's undersecretary of international affairs, said the agriculture industry's concerns will not be overlooked in FTAA talks.
"We live in a state with sometimes competing economic interests," Simon said. "We will argue for the best position for all of Florida's interests. We don't want to abandon our citrus friends, sugar friends or winter vegetable friends."
susan_salisbury@pbpos
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