Washington D.C. (December 3, 2007) - Family farm, ranching, consumer and faith groups from across the country released a letter to the U.S. Senate today asking that the Senate oppose the Peru Free Trade Agreement. With consumer anxiety about foreign imports rising, as well as growing demand for local food, now is not the time to be passing yet another free trade agreement that allows in more untested food while undermining local food systems.

The letter sent to the Senate outlines the flaws of the Peru FTA for U.S. and Peruvian farmers and urges that trade policy be based on principles of food sovereignty that emphasizes local, sustainable farm systems instead of the free trade model that pits farmers around the world in a race-to-the-bottom.

Despite the clear failures of free trade to benefit farmers here in the U.S. and in Mexico after NAFTA, the House chose to pass another severely flawed trade agreement that will cause extreme harm to Peruvian farmers and subject them to dumping of below-cost commodities by U.S. agribusiness companies. Under NAFTA, over 1 million Mexican corn farmers have been driven off the land thanks to the dumping of cheap U.S. corn. George Naylor, an Iowa corn and soybean farmer and president of the National Family Farm Coalition, said, "There is no excuse for Congress to support one more free trade agreement given the very apparent record of free trade displacing rural people and farmers from their communities. Meanwhile the benefits only go to multinational corporations that export and process cheap agricultural commodities."

U.S. fruit and vegetable farmers already suffering from the flood of cheap Peruvian imports will likely be further driven out of business. U.S. ranchers may have to compete with exports from Peru, which has had outbreaks of foot and mouth disease. The U.S. already has a $400 million agriculture trade deficit with Peru. Mississippi farmer Ben Burkett said, "After NAFTA, I and many of the farmers in my cooperative lost our cucumber contracts from corporations such as Heinz and Vlasic who chose to buy instead from Mexico. The Peru FTA simply continues the failed NAFTA-model for agriculture that destroys local food systems both here and abroad while favoring industrial-style export production."