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Nebraska Farmers Union |
1305
Plum Street • Lincoln, NE 68502 Contact
John Hansen Office: 402-476-8815, Fax: 402-476-8859, Cell: 402-580-8815 |
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 30, 2005 Lincoln, Nebraska
NEBRASKA FARMERS UNION SAYS CAFTA DIGS ECONOMIC HOLE DEEPER
Lincoln,
NE. The Nebraska Farmers Union (NEFU)
is strongly urging Nebraska’s House and Senate members to vote no on the
CAFTA-DR trade proposal. The NEFU Board
of Directors voted unanimously at their recent summer meeting in Lincoln to
vigorously oppose CAFTA.
NEFU
state Secretary Vern Jantzen of Plymouth said, “Our nation’s current disastrous
trade policies that continue to force family farmers and ranchers out of
business and hurt our state economy must be changed. That won’t happen if our Congressional representatives continue
to approve one fundamentally flawed trade agreement after another. NAFTA did not work as promised. CAFTA is nothing more than NAFTA policies
moved further south. Every time a free
trade agreement comes up, farmers get lots of promises about getting new
markets, but all that ever happens, it is that we give our own domestic markets
to our competitors. How many times can
we be lied to before we wise up? CAFTA
will hurt our sugarbeet growers for sure, and likely hurt our ethanol
industry. The agribusiness processors
always make out like bandits, and the farmers and ranchers take it in the neck
with lower commodity prices. Our nation
is not only losing our domestic manufacturing base, we are dismantling and
outsourcing our own food production.
That is both wrong, and foolish,” Jantzen concluded.
NEFU
Board of Director Don Hansen of Hemingford said, “Western Nebraska is in an
extremely vulnerable economic position because the low average annual rainfall
and declining surface water irrigation allotments limits the crops that can be
grown. Sugarbeets is by far the most
profitable crop we can grow. The sugar
growing and processing industry is absolutely critical to the economy of
western Nebraska. I can’t believe that
any public official that genuinely cares about western Nebraska would vote for
CAFTA, which will do nothing but erode the economic viability of our largest,
most profitable crop, sugarbeets,” Hansen said. “CAFTA will hurt our sugar industry, and our sugar growers know
it.”
NEFU
State President John Hansen sited the collapse of the agricultural balance of
trade, the collapse of marketplace values for the primary six crops grown in
the U.S., and exploding national trade deficit as the key reasons to oppose
CAFTA, which represents a continuation of failed trade policies.
“In
1996, our balance of ag trade was a positive $27.4 billion. USDA projects it to be zero by the end of
2005. That is a disaster. Using 1996 as a starting point of
comparision, the national market place value of the corn, wheat, soybeans,
grain sorghum, rice, and cotton crops has averaged $13.94 billion less,
resulting in a cumulative loss of $111.51 billion in marketplace value. If that
$111.5 billion had been paid to our farm families, it likely would have turned
over seven times, generating a mind boggling $780.5 billion in additional
economic activity, not to mention the lost local, state, and federal tax
revenues.”
The
U.S. Commerce Department reported the 2004 trade account balance, which covers
not only merchandise trade, but also services and investment, at a staggering
record $665.9 billion deficit, and projected 2005’s deficit to exceed $700
billion. “How big does the deficit have
to get before our Congressional representatives are willing to develop a new approach? We do not like the economic hole agriculture
is in. We want our elected officials to
stop digging that hole deeper by voting for one more fundamentally flawed free
trade agreement,” Hansen said.
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