The North American Free Trade Agreement has provided many benefits for North America. Because of NAFTA, trade, jobs, and economic growth have greatly increased between Mexico, the United States, and Canada. Along with these advantages many drawbacks can be found. One of the major issues concerning NAFTA is the agricultural competition between the United States and Mexico. NAFTA needs to address the conflicts that Mexican farmers are facing because a large portion of Mexican farmers are losing their jobs, making sacrifices, and stressing their lands causing environmental problems.
When NAFTA took place in Mexico, an estimated 1.43 million farmers lost their jobs. After NAFTA removed tariffs, maize and other types of grain were exported at a cheaper cost than their actual worth. As a result, Mexico highly imports American corn rather than buying from their own farmers. This cause the nation to reduce the “subsidies to farmers from 33.2% of total farm income in 1990 to 13.2% in 2001” (Amadeo, Kimberly, 6 Problems With NAFTA,
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Many did not see success in their agricultural products and sold their lands at extremely low prices. Some immigrated to the United States to have better opportunities, economically wise. NAFTA was intended to decrease the number of illegal immigrants but the exact opposite happened. “By 2006, there were more than 20 million” (The Failures of NAFTA, coha.org) illegal immigrants and two thirds of those people were motivated to move to America because of NAFTA. Others migrated to northern Mexico, where advanced technology for agriculture is prominent. A study showed that “more than 6.2 million Mexicans migrated north after NAFTA.” (Morris, Brittany, NAFTA an empty basket for farmers in southern Mexico, cronkitenewsonline.com) From this information, it is obvious that NAFTA never considered how the poorer farmers in Mexico would be