Aide for the Aspagus Farmer

Why is it the powers that be in Washington seem to have an overwhelming need to lend aide, comfort and money to foreign governments and yet with the same wave of their mighty “fix it wand” manage to hurt American farmers, workers and taxpayers. Nothing is quite as blaringly obvious of this fact as the Andean Trade Preferences Act of 1991 in which good old Uncle Sam decided to help Andean farmers grow something other than illegal drugs. The crop they came up with, asparagus! This was supposed to solve two problems at once; slow down illicit drug trade and teach farmers in Peru to grow their own produce, when in fact it created a greater third problem. American asparagus farmers, mainly in Washington and California have seen their once successful and prosperous industry slowly dry up and blow away on the Peruvian wind. And did outsourcing asparagus production to Peru have any effect on the drug crop and farmers in Peru? Yes, now they have a very lucrative illicit drug crop and asparagus crop, an asparagus crop that while abundant is of much lower quality than any U.S. asparagus.