The Stories Project: Oregon Livelihoods Traded Away

Doug Maag Residence: Jamieson, OR Occupation: grower: sugar beets Affiliations: Snake River Sugar Beet, OR Farm Bureau

Snapshots "I'm a farmer here. I was a participant in the buy-in of the 2nd largest sugar factories in the United States. In 1997, 1000-1200 growers went in together to buy our sugar factory because we wanted to control our destiny to the end. We kept our employees right here in the United States and we kept them going. And now we can't even sell our own sugar." "The good of CAFTA is not nearly what the negative effects of it could be. I hope they get the whole story and they realize that there is a better way to handle taking care of those countries. I just think we need to give more thought to our trade negotiations. If you don't have jobs in the United States, you're not collecting the tax dollars and it just affects us all the way down. It seems like every time we do these trade deals, we come out second or we come out last. We have to do a better job in our trade negotiations." "Some of the bakers, cookie makers, and candy makers that use our sugar have elected to jump outside our borders to take advantage of the cheaper labor and regulations. The sugar they were using is not getting used right now. That makes our sugar consumption go down."

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