Colombia, the E.U. and the U.S. Make a Grab for Milk

An Indian minister of agriculture was asked what he would like to reincarnate as after death and he answered, “as a European or North American cow, as a cow in these countries receives more money from their government than an Indian farmer does.” The sarcasm can be explained by the huge agricultural subsidies of the European Union (E.U.) and the United States, on the order of $70 billion a year in each case, and the abusive claim to regulate agriculture in other countries.

Although it may sound inconceivable, the Colombian government submitted to this regulation in the FTA (Free Trade Agreement) with the E.U., as it had previously done with the United States. So bad is this agreement that Rafael Mejia, the president of the SAC, said that “agriculture came out losing in the FTA with the European Union” and that “450,000 families who make their living from milk will be at risk.” José Vicente Lafaurie, chairman of Fedegan, said that crowds of milk producers “will be literally wiped off the map when the FTAs come into effect, as this poses a serious risk to their survival.” And Analac noted that “we can not compete with subsidized products, having lost the protections that price ranges provide.” For its part, the Livestock Committee of Caldas said: “The avalanche of powdered milk, cheeses and imported dairy products coming from economies based on domestic support to producers in [the form of] export subsidies and other distortions, will soon reach our market, devastating this sector and liquidating the national dairy herd.”

And in Colombia, farming is an activity full of the poor and the middle class. Of the 473,000 cattle farms, 236,000, or 48 percent, have fewer than ten cows, with an average of five; and 387,000, or 89 percent, have fewer than 50. Milk is also the last possibility of cold-climate production, because “free trade” left wheat, barley and fruits weakened. Under the FTA with the United States, vegetable farming also suffers.

As expected, the warnings did not make the government of Colombia reject the predatory impositions of the European Union, but rather, led the Colombian government to beg for minor changes to the agreement, not for the avoidance of disaster but to entice farmers and Colombians. They are also being manipulated by an announcement of a Conpes, a document for the “conversion” of the dairy sector, a trick that recalls the FTA with the U.S., which was embellished with Agro Security Income, paid for political patronage and to unions.

From what is known about the Conpes, it was reported that the FTA with the European Union was “negotiated” in secret from the Colombians, with the purpose of ending the trade in raw milk and to establish a policy to benefit the monopolies of pasteurizers, which will also be Colombia’s biggest winners in the import of European and U.S. dairy products. It goes without saying that without the trade of raw milk, dairy farmers who sell to this sector will be left without buyers, resulting in the increased power of pasteurizers-importers to not buy or to pay what they please for their milk to farmers who are forced to compete with the flood of subsidized dairy. It is obvious that European pasteurization multinationals will take what they have yet to control of the national market.

According to the study by Ricardo Arguello (2007) on the impact of the FTA with the European Union, Colombian production will decline in 30 of 32 sectors, including the industrial sector. Rice, already in crisis because of other imports, will be a loser in agriculture, as well as milk, vegetable oils and meat, the latter being very important among European exports. On bananas and sugar, in which the country could greatly increase its sales to Europe, the Colombian government agreed that tariffs will never reach zero; i.e. there will never be “free trade,” so as not to lose the European multinationals. The indignity!

This government will be remembered for agricultural imports that rose from 6 to 10 million tons and for the signed FTAs that made Colombians rely even more on foreigners for food, adding to the subject-like statehood of Colombia. What remains to be seen is whether the agricultural union bosses will take the side of its affiliates and definitively reject the FTA with the European Union or if it will support it, as it did with the United States.