Agricultural News
FTA Costing Farmers in Exports
Thu, 02 Sep 2010 17:23:58 CDTU.S. Grains Council director in Latin America Kurt Shultz traveled to Colombia last week where he found that a lack of progress on the U.S.-Colombia Free-Trade Agreement is continuing to have a devastating impact on U.S. corn, soybean and wheat producers. As an example, Colombia traditionally purchases approximately 3-million metric tons of yellow corn annually. However, since 2009, Colombia has been gradually switching its corn imports to South American origins at the expense of U.S. producers.
The United States, which has had an FTA agreement negotiated since 2006, has been unable to get the agreement before the U.S. Congress for a vote. As a result of this inaction, Shultz says - the Argentinean market share for corn has increased from 3 percent in 2007, to 67 percent through June 2010. The U.S. market share, previously 96 percent in 2007, now stands at only 22 percent. In the first six months of 2010, Argentinean corn exports to Colombia have soared to 201-million dollars, while U.S. exports have dwindled to 67.6-million.
Shultz, says - the U.S. government needs to ratify this already signed FTA before it's too late. Once these competitors' trade patterns and relationships are established, U.S. market penetration will be significantly damaged and it could result in continued erosion of the U.S. market share in neighboring countries, such as the Dominican Republic which has imported 80-thousand metric tons of South American corn.
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