Vermont's Silenced Voices Project: Root Causes of Migration

In this interview a VT migrant farmworker shares an often told story of the struggle to survive in agriculture in Mexico and explains that this forces farmers, many who are indigenous, to migrate to the United States to help their farms, families and communities. This is cause to reflect on the roots of migration. Since the 1994 passage of North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Mexico lost over 2 million farming jobs and the number of Mexicans migrating to the U.S. each year has more than doubled. Subsidies, price supports, and various programs supporting small farmers were eliminated due to NAFTA. If family farmers in Mexico and family dairy farmers in Vermont are unable to make a living farming--who is really benefiting from the globalization of agriculture and so-called free trade agreements such as NAFTA?