Trade agreement worries small farmers

Colombia's president calls a free-trade pact finally approved by the United States (US) Congress a commercial milestone that will build export muscle, but many of the country's small farmers fear for their livelihoods.

Some worry that imports of less expensive, subsidised US goods could drive them out of business. Small farmers help make Colombia self-sufficient in food production but tend to earn very little.

"What you hear is that the price will go through the floor," dairy farmer Margarita Maria Jaramillo said, as she and her husband milked their 12 cows recently in a dew-laden pasture in this dairy town just north of Bogota.

If the prices drop, "we'll have to sell the cows", she said. "What else can you do?"

It's too early to say whether that's a real danger.

But trade pacts always produce winners and losers, and those most at risk are subsistence farmers who, like Jaramillo, live humbly and lack access to capital.

President Juan Manuel Santos was exultant when the US Congress last week finally approved trade agreements with Colombia, South Korea and Panama that dated to the administration of former President George W. Bush.

Democrat hold-up

The Colombia pact, signed in November 2006, had been held up for so long because Democrats in the US Congress said Colombia had not done enough to halt killings of trade union activists.

Indeed, most Democratic congressmen voted against the pact in defiance of the White House, which had argued that Colombia deserved it for being such a loyal ally.

Santos called the treaty "the most important in commercial terms we've signed in our history".