| In May 2004 the United States signed an agreement with Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic (DR-CAFTA). It is a free trade agreement and it is in many ways similar to the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs), which the European Union wishes to conclude with the ACP countries (Africa, the Caribbean and Pacific regions). At the time of signing, the government of El Salvador and supporters of the deal hailed its merits, but opponents emphasised its risks. Today the first net results are clear - it is a disaster for the peasants of El Salvador. Here are some excerpts from a relevant article available on Internet. (http://www.alterinfos.org/spip.php?article608) “Seven months after the entry into force of the free trade agreement with the United States, peasant farmers and economists in El Salvador declare that the agreement benefits only a restricted number of sectors, to the detriment of most others, both with regard to national production and employment. The economist Raùl Moreno is formal in his conclusion: “Since its inception on March 1st the agreement has only benefited a group of large businesses, i.e. import traders, and has harmed both agriculture and consumers.” “The DR-CAFTA is the final blow to El Salvador’s agriculture. Some sectors, for example rice production, will be extinct at the end of the first year, which in turn means the end of food sovereignty”, according to the Latin American news agency IPS. The leader of the Confederation of unions for agrarian reform, Miguel Alemàn, also expressed fears for the future of agriculture in El Salvador. “We have denounced the DR-CAFTA” he says, “as the death warrant for several categories of producers; for example it will have adverse effects on 400 000 grain farmers”. …/… Moreno recalls that one of the main causes for the trade deficit with the U.S. lies in the fact that U.S. producers enjoy government subsidies, which sometimes cover 80% of their production. The U.S. can therefore reduce prices considerably. “If we add the fact that there are no import duties on U.S. products sold in El Salvador, it is clear that the situation of our producers becomes even more complicated”, he said. Alemàn refers to the price of fertiliser as an example: “The price of fertiliser was 18 dollars a year ago, but is now 33 dollars. One quintal of criollo maize previously sold for 11-12 dollars, but now the price is down to 8.5 dollars”. Under the terms of CAFTA, U.S. maize is sold at 6.4 dollars in El Salvador. “So who is going to buy our own maize?” a subsistence farmer wonders. “Last year I grew a little less than one hectare of maize for our family meals, but even that no longer pays”, he adds. “Five years from now we will be entirely out of business, because we will have a production crisis and we will no longer be able to provide food for our country”, the trade union leader warned. Comment by abc Burkina: We have already published the case of Mexico: (See http://www.abcburkina.net/vu_vu/vu_11.htm) Now the turn has come to El Salvador. Time and time again it is the subsistence farmers who are the front victims.
Who can still pretend that free trade agreements - because that is what the EPAs actually are – are good for West Africa, whose population for the major part is made up of peasant farmers and livestock herders? We join in with the battle cry of the National Confederation of Farmers’ Unions of Burkina Faso (La Confédération Paysanne du Faso): “NO to EPAs without prior recognition of food sovereignty and ECOWAP” (the agricultural policy of the Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS).
Koudougou, 3 November 2006
Maurice Oudet
Director, SEDELAN | 
View from the South