Posted on 06/17/2004 5:25:43 PM PDT by SJackson
MEXICO CITY (AP) - Roughly 100 Mexican dairy farmers, with cows in tow, protested in front of the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City on Thursday, saying they will be forced to migrate to the United States with their cows if the Mexican government doesn't come up with subsidies to help them stay in business.
"We are asking for visas because our business is not profitable," said Martin Solis, of the National Alliance in Defence of Dairy Farmers.
"Underfunding is causing the dairy farmer great problems."
The alliance, made up of 80,000 small and medium-sized dairy farmers from central Mexico, has been demanding the Mexican government control milk prices to no avail, Solis said.
"In the United States, they protect their producers; they have a subsidy of $40 per cow and we don't even get that per person here," he said.
In Mexico, 40 per cent of the milk consumed is imported and the market is monopolized by a few large transnational milk businesses, Solis said.
yes. but they taste like "beef". who knew?
ROFL!!!
John / Billybob
You are right. Both goverments F45k the farmers. The farmer, the true American, the ultimate frontier before a dozen or so control our food.
They produce our food for God's sake.
That works. :)
They do have a right to be angry --- that's for sure --- many of the millions of illegals now in this country were done in by NAFTA --- a decade or two ago, they had jobs and incomes in Mexico --- after NAFTA their only hope is to become cheap servants in the USA.
Poor campesinos --- they haven't caught on yet how deliberate this was, it was all meant to destroy them. The Mexican government never thought NAFTA would help them --- Salinas --- the corrupt president of Mexico who signed NAFTA spoke of how 25 million campesinos had to be gotten rid of. They knew full well the millions of farmers would be destroyed but that was the whole point of NAFTA.
ping
Looks like we are going to be shooting ourselves some steaks on this side of the border.
Great point FITZ.
Oh goody, now we won't have to pay shipping costs for the Listeria.
HAVE A COW (at the border) - ping.
"Creative Destruction" bttt
The problem for them isn't NAFTA--NAFTA should have helped them. The problem is our farm subsidy program. It gives American farmers an unfair competitive advantage.
The Mexican government knew all along about the farm subsidies and it knew the campesinos were also at a very high disadvantage because they weren't mechanized like USA farmers. NAFTA was meant to destroy the campesinos. Salinas de Gortari himself --- a signer of NAFTA discussed the need to get rid of 25 million campesinos.
We could stop sending foreign aid to these places altogether if we'd just stop undercutting their crop prices with our subsidies.
If we broke our promises so that we're destroying millions of Mexican farmers --- which we are doing I realize --- if their government had their best interests in mind, it would break off with NAFTA and let the farmers get back to their farms.
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