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DEVELOPMENT: Agriculture Workers Too Poor to Buy Food, Say Unions

By Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Apr 24 (IPS) - A coalition of 40 trade union delegations,
led by the 124-million strong International Confederation of Free Trade
Unions (ICFTU), warns that much of the world's food is now produced under
"unacceptable and unsustainable" conditions.

The coalition says that despite increases in food supply, 800 million
people in developing nations and 34 million in industrial nations do not
have enough food because they are too poor to buy it.

The unions, both from the North and the South, are calling for a new food
system which will ensure that the benefits of multinational investments
also address poverty issues and the capacity to buy food.

Currently, 1.3 billion people (out of a world population of about 6
billion) work in agriculture-related jobs, 450 million of whom are waged
agricultural workers.

But one of today's great injustices, says the coalition, is the irony that
those who feed the world are often least able to feed themselves. And
making the situation worse is the fact that globalisation has increased the
vulnerability of workers in the food industry.

The state of the world's agriculture and food system will be one of the
subjects under discussion at the UN Commission on Sustainable Development
(CSD). The 53-member CSD, which began a two week session Monday, will focus
on land management, agriculture, trade, investment and economic growth.

"The forthcoming discussions at the CSD must look at the possibility of
bringing changes to the entire food system, not just to agriculture, " says
Luis Anderson, the delegation leader.
"It makes no sense to address agricultural issues in isolation from the
rest of the food system, which reinforces the negative impacts of current
agribusiness."

In a 32-page study released to coincide with the CSD session, the coalition
says that trade unions believe that many of the unsustainable features of
the world's food and agricultural industry can be attributed to its
increasing domination by a few large multinational corporations (MNCs).

Some of these corporations have "internationalised" production and
consumption, overriding local and national interests by utilising a
combination of marketing, pricing practices, and international rules.

In contrast, says the study, business input to the CSD is emphasising
productivity alone, and ignoring the issue of solving poverty, which has
now become a main focus of international financial institutions such as the
World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The world's big food manufacturers - including Nestle's of Switzerland,
Unilever of the Netherlands/UK, Groupe Danone of France and Snow Brand Milk
Products of Japan - exert a tremendous amount of influence over
agricultural production, as well as on consumption patterns through
retailing strategies.

In the UK, for example, five supermarket chains that sell three- quarters
of all groceries, are able to control distribution of food.

"While there is considerable competitiveness between them," says the study,
"the net effect is that they are in a position to dictate patterns of
consumption, and hence, patterns of agricultural production."

While control is somewhat less concentrated in the North American market,
the top 10 supermarkets are nonetheless in control of the food retail market.

"They are in a position to create demand for the products they stock, to
ignore certain healthy foods, and to provide consumers self-serving
information about chemical contents, nutritional value, or even the
possible genetic make-up of the food they sell," the study asserts.

Titled "Plough to Plate," the study also says that the vast majority of
attention has been given over to finding ways to lower input costs, flood
retail market while reaping benefits from increased sales and marketing. On
the other hand, insufficient attention has been given to the environmental
and social costs that result from such an approach.

"There is no doubt that new technology and processes of production have
enabled world producers to make great leaps forward in the quantity of food
and agricultural production, but this has come at a price, that is not
fully recognised," the study notes.

Mechanisation, increased use of chemicals, pesticides and biocides, and
advances in biotechnology and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have
created new sources of wealth, along with increases in food supply. At the
same time, says the study, underemployment, world hunger, poverty and
environmental degradation have either increased or continued unabated.

Trade unionists are also concerned that biotechnology and techniques in
agribusiness are ignoring the possible health and safety impacts for
workers involved in production and distribution.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) in Geneva has said that the increasing
use of pesticides is killing 40,000 people each year and poisoning millions
of others.

The study says that trade union research in the flower industry discovered
that in Colombia, pesticides banned in industrial countries were being
freely used to spray carnations, and there was an increase in miscarriages.
In Uganda, women flower workers have been blinded by the use of chemicals.

"During the dialogues, trade unionists will focus on the plight of
agricultural workers in the food chain, to ensure that their health and
safety are protected and that they receive enough money to pay for the food
which they are helping to produce," says Anderson.

According to the Geneva-based International Labour Organisation (ILO),
170,000 of the 300,000 work-related deaths reported worldwide occurred in
agriculture, with an increase in machinery and agrochemicals aggravating
the risk.