Seven Montana-based organizations signed the letter: Northern Plains Resource Council; Montana Farmers Union; R-CALF, United Stockgrowers of America; Intertribal Agriculture Council; Montana Chapter of the National Farmers Organization; Campaign to Reclaim Rural America; Alternative Energy Resources Organization; Montana Community Labor Alliance and the Western Organization of Resource Councils.

The NAFTA trade model has failed family farmers and ranchers and has devastated rural America, said Dena Hoff, a farmer from Glendive, who chairs both the Montana-based Northern Plains Resource Council and the NFFC Trade Task Force. Inadequate border inspections, commodity dumping, price manipulation, and devastatingly low commodity prices for farmers are just some of the casualties of the failed agricultural and trade polices embodied by NAFTA, the WTO and the Freedom to Farm Act. Congress and the President must focus on addressing the many failures of NAFTA instead of expanding this economic, social and environmental disaster to the rest of the Western Hemisphere.

Putting all the decision-making power for trade deals into the hands of the President is unconstitutional, because it circumvents the democratic process we promote to citizens and governments in the rest of the world, said Hoff. What kind of an example of democracy are we setting?

Hoff said the letter puts forth fair trade principles for agriculture that, if followed, would begin to reverse the severe agricultural depression inflicted on rural America for the past decade by failed agricultural and trade policies. Labor and environmental groups have already put forth their alternative principles for fair trade, she said. This letter marks the culmination of efforts by hundreds of thousands of grassroots rural activists from across the country to place agriculture on equal footing with labor and the environment in the context of the current trade debate. The following are the agricultural and food security principles outlined in the letter:

Allow countries to prioritize sustaining family farms and global food security.

Allow for vigorous enforcement of antitrust laws at the local, regional, national and international levels to guarantee competitive markets for family farmers, and a strengthening of these laws when necessary.

Allow countries to establish domestic and global reserves, manage supply, enforce anti-dumping laws, and ensure fair market prices.

Respect the consumers right to know that their food has been produced in a sustainable manner by advocating labeling and other approaches.

Allow countries to ensure the production and distribution of a safe, affordable, and abundant food supply to meet their domestic needs and achieve food security.

The letter also cites the following negative impacts on farmers and rural communities since NAFTA was negotiated in 1994:

The overall agricultural trade surplus has declined from $22.5 billion per year to $12.6 billion in 2000, a 47 percent decrease.

Corn, wheat, and cotton export volumes have decreased between 11 percent and 28 percent since NAFTA. Farm prices received by farmers for these crops have declined between 20 percent and 38 percent. Despite a 16 percent increase in soybean exports, the 15 percent drop in farm prices has created a net loss of 2 percent in the value of the U.S. soybean market.

Fruits and vegetables have been especially hard hit since NAFTA due to imports that displace the domestic market. Trade deficits more than doubled and the frozen fruit sector went from a $9 million trade surplus in 1995 to a $37 million deficit in 1999. The expansion to 31 other countries as part of the FTAA will further exacerbate this situation.

The $416 million dairy trade deficit has climbed to $796 million and a $21 million beef surplus is now a $152 million deficit.

The impact of NAFTA and other free trade agreements is reflected in the ongoing farm crisis gripping the nation, and the billions of taxpayer dollars appropriated to programs created by Congress and implemented by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to help alleviate the economic devastation caused by the failures of our export-driven farm policy, Hoff said.