In the United States, a food prize is recognising the struggle for workers’ rights within the food and farming sector. Engaging with major US businesses including Trader Joe’s, one workers’ organisation has managed to secure better wages and working conditions for themselves and their compatriots.

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Earlier in the year, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers was celebrated for securing a fair food agreement with grocery chain Trader Joe’s, having achieved similar results following protests against Taco Bell and McDonald’s, and partaking in a 6-day fast to urge Publix Super Markets to implement their Fair Food Program. This week, the CIW was awarded a Food Sovereignty prize in New York for its efforts by Via Campesina.

However, in the UK the outlook is rather bleaker. The impending dissolution of the Agricultural Wages Board will see agricultural workers lose benefits they previously enjoyed and will depress wages, sucking an estimated £9million from the rural economy by Defra’s own calculations.

Although, as Defra ministers have been keen to point out, workers will still be protected by the national minimum wage, working conditions are expected to worsen for those employed in what is already the most dangerous sector in the UK. Northern Ireland has opted to retain its AWB and the Welsh Assembly this week launched its own drive to protect the board.

Victorianic scheme may see UK workers forced to give up rights

Furthermore, those in the food sector may see their prospects jeopardised under new measures proposed by George Osborne this week. The measure, which could see workers pressured into giving up hard won labour rights in exchange for tax-free shares in their employer, were unveiled at the Conservative Party Conference. Although the scheme would ostensibly be optional, unless new workers capitulate they would be unlikely to secure employment in companies where it is operational.

Under Osborne’s ‘owner-employee’ scheme, which the chancellor claims is intended to stimulate growth in small and medium sized businesses, workers could be forced to sacrifice their rights to contest unfair dismissal, redundancy pay, and the rights to request flexible working and time off for training. The scheme has already come under fire from senior figures at retailers Sainsburys and Waitrose.

These developments come as the Washington DC-based Worldwatch Institute has issued warnings that, despite their critical role in the drive for food security and agricultural development, food workers around the world are more likely to suffer food insecurity, lower working standards, less nutritious diets and unsustainable incomes than workers in nearly any other sector. The Institute claims food workers make up “one of the most marginalized and exploited groups in the world.”

In September, Worldwatch researcher Catherine Ward pointed out that, worldwide, agricultural workers are “among the most socially vulnerable; the least organized into trade unions; employed under the poorest health, safety and environmental conditions; and is the least likely to have access to effective forms of social security and protection.”

The Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development initiative (SARD) has also revealed that in many countries up to 60 percent of agricultural workers live in poverty and less than 20 percent have access to basic social security.

Holistic, sustainable farming and grassroots initiatives to improve conditions

Food policy experts, including senior officials at the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation and agriculturalists working with development organisations have looked to agroecology to reduce inequality and environmental degradation in food production, improving the sustainability of the global food system.

Olivier de Schutter, the UN’s Rapporteur on the Right to Food describes agroecology as “A knowledge-intensive approach,” which factors environmental and social considerations into farming and uses cutting edge, low-impact techniques to improve sustainability and maintain production. He elaborated on the barriers to rolling out the agroecological approach in the current global climate; “States and donors have a key role to play. Private companies will not invest time and money in practices that cannot be rewarded by patents and which don’t open markets for chemical products or improved seeds. We won’t solve hunger and stop climate change with industrial farming on large plantations. The solution lies in supporting small-scale farmers’ knowledge and experimentation, and in raising incomes of smallholders so as to contribute to rural development.”

However, Worldwatch has pointed out that in many global regions it is worker-led initiatives that are gaining momentum, securing better labour conditions and improving agricultural techniques, free from the influence of nation-states. States are losing their power, constrained in many cases by the effects of neoliberal trade agreements, which support the erosion of workers’ rights. A variety of commentators, from Soil Association president Monty Don to Dr Julia Wright, head of the UK Centre for Agroecology and Food Security have shared in this disillusionment but also expressed hope that grassroots initiatives can drive sustainability.

The Worldwatch Institute this week used the occasion of the CIW’s food prize to draw attention to other worker-led initiatives driving progress in agriculture and social development around the world. They include:

• Organisations across Africa, which focus on improving communications, protecting the environment and supporting women working in rural regions to drive change in a sustainable direction. In countries from Tanzania to Burkina Faso many of these organisaitons have risen to prominence and encountered great success.
• The Australia Workers Union, which works to protect fruit and vegetable pickers across the continent from exploitation, and New Zealand’s Dairy Farm Workers Association, which protects the rights of dairy workers on a range of issues from farm safety to fair pay.
• The Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), the largest union of informal-sector workers in India, which protects farm workers and food processors. SEWA helps its members get fair prices for their produce, obtain loans, and produce enough food to feed their families.
• European organisations such as the Swedish Food Workers’ Union (LIVS), British Bakers, Food and Allied Workers’ Union (BFAWU) and the Food and Catering Workers’ Union (NGG) in Germany, which all seek to protect the rights and benefits of workers in the food industry.
• Cooperatives and agricultural workers’ unions are also meeting with success in South and Central America and the aforementioned organisations in the United States, along with unions and workers groups, are gaining public support as drivers of sustainability in the farm sector. Farming, increasingly family farming, is encountering renewed grassroots support for invigorating rural regions and keeping money flowing in local economies.

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