FLORIDA FARMERS INC.
“ A STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL”

CAN FAIR COMPETITION BE ACHIEVED?

Florida´s winter vegetable farmers are not afraid of fair competition, be it from within Florida or from a foreign source. Florida farmers are among the most efficient farmers in the world.

Fair competition arises when all competing parties are playing by the same rules, within the same basic economic framework. This is not the case with the sale of winter vegetables within the United States. Florida farmers operate under conditions prescribed by various governmental entities. Various state and federal departments, including the U.S Department of Agriculture, Environmental Protection Agency, Food and Drug Administration, Department of Labor, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration enforce these conditions.

Our standard of living in the United States and Florida is dependent on balanced governmental regulation. Florida farmers live by those rules. Each farmer competes against each other within that rule structure. Each seeks a competitive price advantage by virtue of ingenuity and management skill.

Since the United States is the economic bastion of the free world, many countries look to America for various types of support. In the case of winter vegetables, Mexico regards the United States as its primary market. Mexico, through central agricultural planning units (CADDES and UNPH), plots the growth of the agricultural economy with a high degree of sophistication. Through the offering of produce at prices less than the cost to produce and transport, the Mexican agricultural interests are attempting to force Florida farmers from the market place. Mexican agricultural conglomerates have been quietly inquiring whether Florida farmers are ready to sell packing equipment. Fears that Mexico is deliberately trying to run Florida growers out of business abound.

Florida farmers are not asking the United States government to prohibit or restrict the importation of Mexican produce. They ask only that the government prevent a situation that promotes unfair competition. Our antidumping laws are still in existence, are specifically upheld by the NAFTA rules and must be enforced by the federal government. Florida growers simply want to stop sales at below fair market value. The result of this inequality has been that there is no longer a supply and demand system that works. There is no longer an orderly marketing system, which is essential in marketing perishable commodities. Long established trading custom, trade ethics and trade laws in the United States have maintained the market integrity. This is what the Mexican market challenges with its unethical pricing practices.

The safeguards in NAFTA designed to protect vegetable growers have not worked. The so-called snapback tariffs, designed to discourage Mexican import shipments, which exceed negotiated quotas, are often levied weeks or months after the shipping surge has occurred. The result for Florida growers is too little relief that arrives too late.

Legislation has been introduced in Congress, supported by U.S Senator Bob Graham, D-Fla., and passed in the U.S Senate to amend Section 202of the Trade Act of 1974, which would allow the International Trade Commission to recognize the seasonal nature of Florida´s vegetable industry and provide relief from import surges. The bill has been tabled in the House as not urgent.

Bob Crawford, Florida Commissioner of Agriculture, stated that trade will not be fair until Mexico and other countries can only grow their products under the same food safety and pesticide requirements that growers and suppliers in the United States are required to follow. Crawford initiated tough inspections of Mexican- grown produce, strict enforcement of Florida´s country-of-origin law and, finally, the unprecedented step of filing a petition for relief under Section 201/204 of the 1974 Trade Act with the ITC on March 12, 1996.