{"id":3816,"date":"2018-01-03T21:17:36","date_gmt":"2018-01-04T05:17:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.entremundos.org\/revista\/?p=3816&lang=en"},"modified":"2021-02-21T14:42:09","modified_gmt":"2021-02-21T22:42:09","slug":"biofuels-and-climate-change-exacerbate-guatemalas-stunning-inequality-and-poor-farmers-are-fighting-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.entremundos.org\/revista\/uncategorized\/biofuels-and-climate-change-exacerbate-guatemalas-stunning-inequality-and-poor-farmers-are-fighting-back\/?lang=en","title":{"rendered":"On Guatemala\u2019s Pacific Coast, key drivers of migration are connected to the US"},"content":{"rendered":"

The US market for sugarcane and bananas has encouraged plantation owners on Guatemala\u2019s Pacific Coast to drain rivers and grab land<\/a>. This is causing land and water shortages for small farmers already struggling with intense droughts linked to climate change<\/a> and corn from the US that devalues their harvests<\/a>. Meanwhile, I Squared Capital\u2014a US private equity firm that sells electricity in Guatemala\u2014is bankrupting rural families<\/a>. Faced with these pressures, some farmers are migrating, and others are fighting back.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Article and photos by Richard Brown – Editor \/ EntreMundos. January, 2018.<\/em><\/p>\n

Ricardo G\u00f3mez is a farmer from Nueva Cajol\u00e1, a rural Maya Mam community on Guatemala\u2019s Pacific Coast. His grandparents and other Mayan laborers were ordered to dig a highway tunnel in the 1920s, and in return they were granted a fertile piece of land on the coast that was quickly seized by a European landowner.<\/p>\n

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Ricardo G\u00f3mez.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Eventually, the community ended up on land that had been exhausted by intensive cotton production. Decades of hard work made their land fertile again, but now they are being surrounded by huge, growing sugarcane plantations that are\u00a0sucking wells and rivers dry<\/a>.\u00a0\u201cThe sugarcane fields have destroyed small farmers\u2019 produce,\u201d G\u00f3mez told EntreMundos<\/em>. \u201cThe fruit on the trees doesn\u2019t ripen, it bruises, it falls. Before, you could go to the market with the fruit and make a little money\u2026but not anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re screwed\u201d said Catarino L\u00f3pez. He explained that the water table has fallen 30 feet in the last few years as the plantations have spread, and that in nearby rivers he no longer finds the fish, crab, and shrimp that were plentiful just 20 years ago.<\/p>\n

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Catarino L\u00f3pez.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

V\u00edctor Alvarado, the Red Cross coordinator for the region, told EntreMundos<\/em> that several years of severe drought linked to climate change<\/a>\u00a0have affected small farmers, but that expanding sugarcane plantations have also had a dramatic impact, deforesting huge swaths of land and diverting or draining entire rivers<\/a>. \u201cThese things together are why people lose their harvests,\u201d Alvarado said.<\/p>\n

The US encourages the spread of these plantations by buying more of their sugarcane<\/a> than any other country in the world, turning much of it into biofuel. After Guatemala ratified the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) in 2005, sugarcane exports to the US rose, in part because US biofuel legislation<\/a> mandates increasing amounts of biofuel in the US gasoline supply.<\/p>\n

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A plantation burns sugarcane for harvest as an irrigation machine waters the seven-foot crop.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Much of the Pacific Coast\u2019s fertile farmland is already controlled by the 2% of farms that\u00a0use 70% of Guatemala\u2019s arable land<\/a>, and land ownership is becoming yet more concentrated as powerful plantation owners drain and divert rivers and struggling small farmers see little choice but to sell their land.<\/p>\n

Many Pacific Coast African palm and banana plantations cause the same problems<\/a>. Despite concerns about sourcing<\/a>, the US buys<\/a> 87%\u2014over $900 million\u2014of Guatemala\u2019s fruit exports, mostly bananas, every year. Since CAFTA came into effect, the amount of land covered<\/a> by banana plantations has more than tripled to over 70,000 hectares, and sugarcane has spread to 270,000. Most plantation profits go to the Guatemalan investors who control most sugarcane<\/a> and African palm operations and the US companies that dominate the banana business<\/a>\u00a0in Guatemala.<\/a><\/p>\n

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Graph from the 2018 USDA Guatemala Sugar Report<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Guatemala produces almost $1 billion of sugarcane every year, but the farmers of Nueva Cajol\u00e1 say that jobs on the plantations surrounding them are seasonal and pay little, about Q12 ($1.63) per ton of cane cut and collected. They say that a sugarcane cutter working from before dawn until after dark with his children might collect five tons in a day, earning about $8. The Guatemalan government estimates <\/a>that basic nutrition for a family of five costs $483 per month.<\/p>\n

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Graphic from the World Bank’s Economic DNA of Guatemala report. It states, \u00abProsperity has not been shared. Despite economic growth, Guatemala is the only country in Latin America in which the income of the bottom 40% fell between 2003 and 2012.\u00bb<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The success of these plantations at the expense of underpaid workers and nearby communities illustrates why Guatemala\u2019s steady GDP growth<\/a> has not reduced poverty<\/a>. The World Bank reports<\/a>, \u201cDespite economic growth, Guatemala is the only country in Latin America in which the income of the bottom 40% fell between 2003 and 2012.\u201d To make matters worse, food prices have risen steadily as more and more land that once grew food for Guatemalan markets is used to grow crops for export. This is part of why 49% of Guatemalan children under six\u00a0suffer from chronic malnutrition<\/a>, one of the five highest rates in the world.<\/p>\n

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Guatemala\u2019s last major attempt at land reform to address poverty and food insecurity was halted in 1954, when the US deposed Guatemalan President Jacobo \u00c1rbenz<\/a> and replaced a democratic government with a series of US-backed strongmen, in large part to protect the interests of United Fruit<\/a>, the US banana company that was Guatemala\u2019s largest landowner. This led to the outbreak of an armed conflict in 1960 that lasted 36 years and crescendoed in a genocide<\/a>\u00a0of Mayan people in the early 80s. Through it all, export crop plantations owned by a handful of wealthy Guatemalans and foreign companies remained the basis of Guatemala\u2019s economy.<\/a><\/p>\n