September 15, 2000

Don’t use food as policy weapon!

Folks in Washington, D.C. always like to talk about how they want to help farmers and ranchers—especially in an election year. Well, if Congress and the administration really want to keep them in business, they should stop using U.S. food and medicine exports as a foreign policy weapon.

Right now, U.S. farmers are prohibited from shipping agricultural exports to Iran, Libya, Sudan, Cuba and North Korea due to economic sanctions. Over the last two decades, the use of economic sanctions has been an increasingly popular foreign policy strategy of the U.S. government. We choose to restrict our exports to nations whose leaders don’t support a more democratic system of government. Denying “rogue leaders” like Cuban President Fidel Castro access to U.S. goods and services, the U.S. government reasons, will force these leaders to back down and/or propel repressed citizens to rise up and overthrow their failing governments.

The United States imposed sanctions on Cuba in 1961. Nearly 40 years later, Castro is still in power. The Cuban government has maintained its power base and has no intention of changing its current political stance. Cuba used to be one of our biggest export markets, especially for U.S. rice. Rice is a staple of the Cuban diet. Cubans are still eating rice, but they’re not buying it from the United States, which is 90 miles away. Instead, they are paying more to import a lower quality product from Asia.

Seems to me that the only people losing here are the Cuban citizens and U.S. farmers and ranchers. And don’t forget the citizens of Libya, Sudan, North Korea and Iran. Denying high quality food and medicine to these people is wrong. It’s time we stop denying our bounty to those less fortunate.

Another problem with U.S. sanctions is that we receive little or no support from other nations when we act unilaterally. Instead of standing with our government, our trading competitors eagerly step in to provide the food that we are prohibited from shipping. Our competitors are only too glad to gear up and sell even more.
The promise of additional markets for our products is just another unfulfilled government assurance. When U.S. farmers and ranchers told Congress four years ago that we wanted less government intervention and more market control of agriculture, we knew that our industry’s future depended on more export markets being available. It’s said that one U.S. farmer feeds 125 people at home and overseas. Yet our government punishes us for our success.

U.S. farmers and ranchers must remain competitive if we are to succeed. But our success also hinges on our ability to shake the “unreliable supplier” image that past and current U.S. sanctions have imposed on our industry.

With farmers facing another year of historic low commodity prices, a world food surplus, [and multi-billion dollar Congressional bailouts since 1996,] support is growing in Congress to lift existing unilateral economic sanctions and implement a workable strategy for determining when, if any, future unilateral sanctions are necessary. Veto-proof majorities now exist in both the House and Senate to discontinue the use of food as a weapon by exempting food and medical exports from unilateral sanctions.

Call or write your senators and representative today. Tell them that Congress should pass sanctions reform and remove the shackles of an outdated foreign policy tool from our producers.