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A group of Mexican farmer leaders and academics believe that U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's pledge to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, will be a good opportunity to review areas of the treaty that are not favorable to the sector in Mexico.
Experts say that after 23 years of its implementation, NAFTA, signed by Mexico, the United States and Canada in the early 90s, has helped dismantle Mexico's agricultural production system through neoliberal policies that have left millions of poor farmers without state support and have increased the country's food dependency on aboard, La Jornada reported Tuesday.
Since his presidential campaign, Trump has vowed to force Canada and Mexico to negotiate the trade deal saying it has been detrimental to the manufacturing industry in the United States, sending shocking waves of uncertainty for the already weakened Mexican economy.
[...] In the years that have followed the NAFT signing, the Mexican government has sold itself as a pro-business and lower-cost alternative for U.S. companies and in the process became a manufacturing powerhouse of cars, computers, aerospace technology and televisions.
However, the modernization process also helped dismantle the national agricultural system, which has practically disappeared, according to analysts and producers.
Source: teleSUR
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday December 30 2016, @05:48PM
Given their latitude, you would think that "solar powered production" like farming would be a profitable pursuit in Mexico - all else being equal.
Personally, I'd rather see the Mexicans in Mexico, with their families, producing food for domestic consumption and export, instead of working the migrant scene in the U.S. - if that means that our farmers have to pay a bit more for labor, and we have to pay a bit more for food, I'd much rather do that instead of paying for the health, education and welfare of the migrant farm workers.
Unfortunately, everyone pays for health, education and welfare, while a shift in the price of oranges or corn hits a specific few squarely in the wallet, and those few are very experienced at the lobbying game.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday December 30 2016, @09:11PM
If Mexicans should be anything, it's farmers. Their primitive state of being is well-suited to using the land for subsistence. You can see it in their culture, they sure to love their farm-animals, especially in humor and the Spanish language cartoons and textbooks for non-Spanish native speakers.
As loud people who cram 4 generations of a family into a single dwelling and breed uncontrollably, they would never be short of farm hands and their fiestas don't disturb their neighbors like they do in the 'States. And if there's one thing they do spectacularly well besides their donkey-shows, it's their food.
Make it so!