The National Pork Producers Council is pushing for passage of the Panama Free Trade Agreement, saying it will level the playing field for U.S. pork producers.
Free trade protests are growing in Peru. A group of indigenous activists began demonstrating in April against the FTA with the United States, claiming the agreement robs them of their land and resource rights - instead selling rights to oil, mining, logging and agricultural companies.
The Free Trade Agreement or the Association Agreement the European Union is promoting with two of the four countries member of the Andean Community of Nations (CAN) risks the continuity of this bloc, but it also represents a threat to access to medications and health of the Andean peoples.
The constant pression exerted by the European Union on the countries of the Andean Community of Nations to reach an FTA under an Association Agreement caused that, while Peru and Colombia decided to follow that path, Ecuador and Bolivia are excluded from the negotiations, similarly to the US imposition of FTAs.
More than 10,000 indigenous Colombians have begun a protest march against President Alvaro Uribe. Marchers are protesting the militarization of their territories, the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement, and the failure of Uribe's administration to fulfill various accords with the indigenous communities.
In Colombia, thousands of indigenous people are staging a week long march. Marchers plan to march through 70 miles of Colombia's countryside. They say they want to change economic policies that are impoverishing their nations. And they reject the presence of US corporations on their lands. Manuel Rueda joined the march as it passed through Colombia's Cauca Province.
These free trade agreements that the US government is continuing to negotiate, most of the emphasis is usually on the industrial-in the trade in consumer goods, but not in the impact on farming. In the debate this week, for instance, Barack Obama made a distinction that he opposed the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, but he supported the Peru Free Trade Agreement, because it had supposed labor safeguards in it. What is the impact of these free trade agreements on farming in this country, as well as in the other countries that are a part, signatories?