Sustainable agriculture in a globalised economy, Report for discussion at the Tripartite meeting on moving to sustainable agricultural development through the modernization of agriculture and employment in a globalized economy

Report for discussion at the Tripartite Meeting on Moving to Sustainable
Agricultural Development through the Modernization of Agriculture
and Employment in a Globalized Economy

Introduction

The context

ILO: Decent work,
Report of the Director-General,
International Labour Conference,
87th Session, Geneva, 1999, p. 5.

How is the agriculture sector – the largest employer of the world labour force – affected by globalization? What role does it play, and how can this role be enhanced in a sustainable manner to improve the living standards of farmers and farm workers? These are the themes addressed in this report, the first to be written on the agriculture sector looking into the next century. It will be shown that globalization is affecting agriculture not only through the usual mechanisms of trade and foreign direct investment but, even more importantly, through the fast transmission of ideas made possible by new communications technologies, and in particular society’s demands to bring labour practices into conformity with labour standards. Thus, apart from macro-level issues such as the role of agriculture in development and commodity prices, the report will focus on social issues such as child labour, women’s role in agriculture, occupational health and safety, private voluntary initiatives, and genetic modification, since it is in these areas that the rapid transmission of ideas through modern communications is affecting labour practices on farms. Arguably, these transmission mechanisms may play an even bigger role in changing agriculture in the future than trade and direct investment. How the sector can best benefit from all the modernizing forces of globalization will be the underlying thrust of the report, “modernization” being understood to mean the process of raising productivity levels, diversifying the export base, effecting changes in land tenure, and aligning traditional practices – particularly with respect to occupational safety and health (OSH) – with increasing demands for higher labour standards as embodied in the ILO’s core Conventions. The last aspect assumes added significance in the light of the discussions to be held (at the time of writing) at the June 2000 session of the International Labour Conference, with a view to the adoption of instruments on safety and health in agriculture.

It is increasingly being recognized that meaningful modernization of the agriculture sector – and indeed overall economic development – will only be possible if it encompasses the notion of “sustainable agriculture and rural development (SARD)”, as adopted at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Earth Summit) in 1992. Some of the core components of SARD – sustainable employment and safe working conditions, reform of land ownership and control, acceptance of core ILO labour standards, representation of agricultural workers – are discussed in their own right in Chapter 4 of the report. The objective, as throughout the report, is to show the relevance of the ILO’s core and agricultural labour standards to SARD. In this way, the issues discussed attempt to strengthen the four strategic objectives of the ILO agreed at the 87th Session of the International Labour Conference (June 1999):

The Meeting comes at an opportune time to refocus world attention on the continuing role of agriculture in providing employment and sustenance to a majority of the world’s population and as an “engine of growth” for economic development. There is a need to reiterate the fact that, despite recent progress, 790 million people in developing countries – i.e. about one-fifth of their total population – and 34 million in industrialized countries and countries in transition are undernourished, ^[1] while 1.5 billion people live in poverty, most of them in developing countries and a majority of these in their rural areas. The rate of progress in both these important indicators of well-being is nowhere near sufficient to achieve the target of reducing both by half by 2015 that was set at the 1996 World Food Summit and by the OECD as one of its “Strategy 21” goals. ^[2] Moreover, the gap between rich and poor – people as well as countries – is widening and poor people, most of them rural, are being marginalized in the process of growth. The accepted role of agriculture as the foundation of economic development reinforces the need to refocus attention on the agriculture sector, while the inextricable linkages among hunger, poverty and rural areas reinforce the need to base agricultural development on sustainability and equity.

The Meeting also comes at an opportune time because it refocuses attention on the inexorable drive towards globalization and agriculture’s role in it. “Marginalization”, referred to above, is indeed increasingly the one main effect invariably associated with globalization. The agriculture sector as a whole is being marginalized compared to the modern sector; but the dilemma is that if the sector is opened up to foreign direct investment as part of the globalization process, there is a danger that small-scale farmers may be not only marginalized but actually dispossessed of their lands as farms attached to multinational procuring companies are established in developing countries to furnish standardized products on the world markets. Hence there is an urgent need to debate the role of agriculture under globalization and to draw lessons for how the process can be altered to benefit the maximum number of people and countries. As the Director-General of the ILO recently said in his address to the 17th World Congress of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU): ^[3]

Background to the Meeting

The Meeting is part of the ILO’s Sectoral Activities Programme, the purpose of which is to facilitate the exchange of information among constituents on labour and social developments related to particular economic sectors, complemented by practically oriented research on topical sectoral issues. This objective has traditionally been pursued by the holding of international tripartite sectoral meetings for the exchange of views and experience with a view to fostering a broader understanding of sector-specific issues and problems; promoting an international tripartite consensus on sectoral concerns and providing guidance for national and international policies and measures to deal with the related issues and problems; promoting the harmonization of all ILO activities of a sectoral character and acting as the focal point between the Office and its constituents; and providing technical advice, practical assistance and concrete support to ILO constituents in order to facilitate the application of international labour standards.

The Meeting was included in the programme of sectoral meetings for 2000-01 at the 273rd Session (November 1998) of the Governing Body. The topic of the Meeting was also decided then to reflect the contextual importance of globalization against which issues relating to “sustainability” and “modernization” of agriculture have increasingly to be viewed. Governments of the following 26 countries were invited to send representatives: Bangladesh, Benin, Brazil, Bulgaria, Chile, China, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Ghana, Honduras, India, Islamic Republic of Iran, Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, Philippines, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Uganda and Viet Nam. In the event of any of these governments being unable to attend, regional substitutes were to be drawn from a reserve list of countries. In addition, 26 Employers’ and 26 Workers’ representatives were to be chosen after consultation with the respective groups in the Governing Body. These will not necessarily come from the countries listed above.

Organization of the report

The report is issues-oriented. Chapter 1 sets forth the context in terms of its key themes – globalization, sustainability and modernization. Globalization is discussed in relation to the changing roles of States and markets, the traditional role of agriculture in development, and changes in employment structures that occur with development. Sustainability of agricultural development and employment, as well as modernization of agriculture, are discussed in relation to the imperatives of raising productivity levels, diversifying the export base, and modifying land tenure arrangements. (The more recent aspects of “modernization” – i.e. social pressures to improve labour practices – are taken up separately in Chapter 4.) Chapter 2 focuses on the performance of the agriculture sector in the past few decades, with emphasis on agriculture’s contribution to living standards and the transformation of economies. Issues relating to wages and poverty are taken up here. Chapter 3 expounds on the major macroeconomic issues in agriculture – prices and subsidies, commodity prices and external terms of trade, and the role of rural non-farm activities – while Chapter 4 elaborates on the social issues which governments and farmers increasingly have to confront because of changing global attitudes to working conditions: child labour, gender, private voluntary initiatives, occupational safety and health, and genetic modification. Although many of these issues have always been part and parcel of the agriculture sector, some are new (for instance voluntary initiatives, genetic engineering), and even for the old issues (child labour, gender, occupational health and safety) pressures are mounting on governments to bring about changes, often in deference to consumer movements. Of the social issues discussed, the inclusion of genetic engineering needs to be justified, since it is prima facie outside the ILO’s competence. Yet it has the potential to affect employment trends and hence incomes of farmers, apart from being an issue that will increasingly figure in any debate on the agriculture sector. Chapter 5 contains the conclusions and Chapter 6 a summary and suggested points for discussion.

A word about the data used: most have been culled from yearbooks and databases of international organizations – the ILO itself, FAO, IFAD, IMF, UNCTAD, UNDP, the World Bank and the WTO. These have been duly acknowledged at the appropriate places and are thanked further here, as is the IUF for material provided. Most data pertain to the “most recent” year available. As employment and labour force surveys are collected only sporadically, such data refer mostly to 1997. Moreover, differences often exist among data in different yearbooks and between these and data in national sources. Such drawbacks are inevitable and in most cases inconsequential for the kind of broad trends and conclusions derived here.

The report is published under the authority of the International Labour Office and was written by Vali Jamal, Rural Sector Specialist, Sectoral Activities Department.

1. Globalization and agriculture

International trade and direct investment are nothing new: already in 1890 merchandise exports represented 15 per cent of western Europe’s gross domestic product (GDP), compared to around 25 per cent now, and 6 per cent of the United States GDP, compared to 8-10 per cent now, and foreign direct investment (FDI) had reached US$14 billion by the outbreak of the First World War. ^[4]

What is new is the context within which the current globalization drive is occurring. Two aspects are significant: the global ideological shift and the spread of new information and communications technology (ICT). The 1970s and 1980s saw a realignment of national policies towards economic liberalization, with a dismantling of the State’s role in economic management and a greater opening of economies to international trade and investment. Most favoured nation tariffs in developing countries dropped from 34 per cent around the mid-1980s to 20 per cent by 1998 and should fall further to 14 per cent under the Uruguay Round. ^[5] Barriers to foreign investment have been dismantled everywhere. Regional alignments (such as ASEAN, APEC, MERCOSUR, East African Community, NAFTA) have furthered these trends. The spread of digital technology (Internet, mobile phones, fax) and the dramatic decline in its prices (see box 1) have contributed to the increase in trade and investment, the latter particularly remarkable in the form of cross-border production by multinational enterprises (i.e. firms with plants in several countries) and their network of affiliates and partners. Multinationals now control one-fifth of world manufacturing GDP, and one-third of world trade occurs between globally placed factories of multinationals. ^[6]

It is possible to conceive of three mechanisms for the spread of globalization effects – trade, foreign investment, and the transmission of new ideas. International trade has increased the fastest for manufactured goods, in conformity with demand patterns, but changes proposed under the Uruguay Round Agreement could have major impacts on trade in agricultural goods too. Under the Agreement, tariffs on agricultural products had to be reduced substantially from their still current 40 per cent level and the subsidization of exports (most of which occurs in developed countries) had to be cut by one-third of its 1986-87 levels by 2000. The second promise has been kept, but not the first. Once all measures have been implemented, it has been estimated that agricultural trade, could rise by as much as 50 per cent, making the world better off by US$160 billion. ^[7] On the other hand, food prices could rise by 5 per cent over a decade. The need to boost productivity levels in developing countries’ agriculture to ensure survival against competition will increase, while net importers of food – notably in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) – will have to face up to rising consumer prices. Competitive countries will gain from the global reduction of subsidies. Changes will not occur overnight and hence all countries will have a chance to make the necessary adjustments.

Foreign direct investment has already had some impact on developing countries’ agriculture in the form of the introduction of new export commodities. Flower growing, a booming activity in the last two decades, owes much to cross-border investments in the form of transfers of capital, technology and skilled personnel from developed countries. Further incursions can be expected. One avenue will be the transmission of demands by international supermarket chains that their suppliers meet rigid quality standards. This could even result in multinationals investing directly in the agriculture sector. If such investments occur too rapidly, there could be negative impacts for developing countries’ small-scale farmers, who now account for most of the global labour force. Vigilance is called for.

The fast pace of globalization is indeed where the danger arises for the agriculture sector. Underlying this concern are three facts: (i) domination of the food trade by a few multinational corporations; (ii) the vast technology gaps that exist between rich and poor countries; and (iii) agriculture’s role as the sector employing most of the labour force in the poorer countries. The penetration of developing countries by transnational corporations is bound to increase as they take advantage of the prevailing climate of liberalization. Small-scale farmers could be the casualties in this process. Moreover, foreign enterprises in agriculture may well attempt to replicate the technology known to them, and this would certainly mean the displacement of vast numbers of workers from the agriculture sector. A similar phenomenon has already occurred in the “modern” sectors, with the suppression of small-scale enterprises as a result of FDI, but while many of the displaced urban workers have been able to find employment in fast-growing industries, this would be too much to hope for in the case of agriculture, given the magnitude of the task. For example, in a context where the agriculture sector employs three-quarters of the labour force, as is still the case in many countries, a decline in employment of just 10 per cent would require modern sector employment to increase by 30 per cent. Vigilance is called for and the necessary policy changes need to be made. As the Director-General of the ILO pointed out in his previously quoted speech at the ICFTU World Congress, “We hear a lot that globalization cannot be changed ... We have to expose as a lie the idea that all we can do is to adapt to globalization. It simply is not true.” ^[8] In the agriculture sector, more than elsewhere, countries may indeed have to step in and dictate the pace of globalization and channel its direction.

The third mechanism for the spread of globalization effects – the transmission of ideas – has the potential to play the most important role. Labour practices will have to change under pressure by consumer and interest groups. Child labour, gender equality, and occupational safety and health are some of the areas where changes are being sought. These are perennial areas of ILO concern. They are discussed in detail in Chapter 4 of this report.

States and markets

Globalization has gone hand in hand with liberalization, the external manifestations of the latter, as noted above, being the dismantling of barriers to trade, FDI and capital flows; the internal manifestations in terms of withdrawal of the State from running the economy have been equally dramatic, with important implications for agriculture.

The State’s encroachment on economies grew everywhere in the twentieth century, nurtured on the one hand by a belief that only the State could boost growth and industrial development and, on the other, by the need to prime the pump after periodic economic depressions. Control over the “commanding heights” of the economy was thought to be imperative for this. Accumulating evidence that markets were not delivering equity reinforced the belief in the State’s role in the economy. The crucible was the Russian Revolution; the experiment was repeated in various diluted versions by governments of newly independent countries in Asia and Africa which, apart from espousing growth and equity, were also looking to wean their economies away from the colonial mode of provisioning the core countries with primary products. The Great Depression of the 1930s propelled the State into infrastructure investments and welfare programmes to create multiplier effects as a cure for mass unemployment and at the same time erect a safety net for the unemployed. This provided an enduring rationale for state involvement in the economy in the name of equity through transfer payments and subsidies, the trappings of the modern welfare state. Today government spending as a proportion of GDP still remains above 45 per cent on average for the OECD countries, compared to only half as much for the United States and less than that for sub-Saharan Africa.

Governments everywhere are seeking ways to reduce this spending, and the favoured solution is to entrust the market with hitherto government-assumed functions by privatizing state-owned enterprises (SOEs), as well as health and education. The former course of action is often uncontroversial, since SOEs, prominent in low-income countries, are generally acknowledged to be inefficient and a drain on the budget, to the detriment of spending on worthy social causes, yet despite the spate of recent divestitures they remain important all over the developing continents (see box 2). Controversy arises when the State attempts to divest itself of spending on social causes, primarily health and education. Privatization, again the preferred alternative, leaves vulnerable groups exposed to the vagaries of the market.

Agriculture’s role in development

How did agriculture figure in this model of development and what is its new role in the context of globalization? Based on accepted economic theories, agriculture was seen as having a passive role in economic development, providing a surplus for the growth of the industrial sector. This surplus would take a number of forms: surplus labour freed up from the rural sector for employment in industry; food transferred to feed the urban population; and agricultural products supplied as inputs into industry and as export commodities to generate foreign exchange. The rural sector would also provide a market for manufactured goods. ^[9]

The transfer of surplus from the rural sector to the rest of the economy can be achieved in a number of ways: through forced labour, land expropriation, taxation, marketing board margins, and terms of trade transfers in which relative prices are tilted in favour of non-agricultural goods, often by maintaining overvalued exchange rates. Excessive surplus extraction could harm the incentive to raise agricultural production. In the late 1970s and 1980s, precisely such excessive surplus extraction, through inefficient or corrupt marketing agencies, overvalued exchange rates and distorted pricing policies, was held out as a cause of the crisis in agriculture in many parts of the world. The crisis was exacerbated by a shortage of agricultural inputs and consumer goods against which to exchange farm products. Officially marketed output in sub-Saharan African countries fell. Declines in international prices intensified the crisis. This experience and that of many newly industrializing countries have underlined the importance of agriculture, not just as a passive generator of surplus for industrial growth, but also as a provider of sustenance for the 50-70 per cent of the world’s population that is still agricultural, and as a safety net for urban dwellers facing economic turmoil. ^[10] The Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 underscored this role of agriculture (see box 3).

The surplus-producing role of the agricultural sector remains a constant in all types of economies and at all times. The surplus nurtures an industrial sector which begins to experience faster growth than agriculture, as a result of which agriculture begins to decline relatively. Engel’s Law, which shows how people spend their income as they get richer – a smaller proportion on food, clothing and other basic goods in favour of manufactures and services – informs these relationships.

The declining role of agriculture with development is best seen in changes in the structure of employment. This is illustrated in figure 1, based on a cross-section of countries, and figures 2 and 3 based on a time series for Malaysia. In Madagascar (figure 1), which, with a per capita income of US$250 in 1997, ranked amongst the ten poorest countries in the world, nearly 80 per cent of the labour force was classified as agricultural in the mid-1990s (latest data available); this proportion drops to 67 per cent for India, 17 per cent for Malaysia, and 3 per cent for the United States, the last figure being typical for most OECD countries. In contrast, industry’s share rises, from around 15 per cent for low-income countries to 25-35 per cent for developed countries – e.g. 31 per cent in the Republic of Korea and 24 per cent in the United States. It remains at 25-35 per cent for most of these countries, signifying that eventually economies become more and more services-oriented rather than manufacturing-oriented as they reach higher stages of development.

The figures for Malaysia show the dramatic changes in the structure of the labour force in just 25 years from 1970, as an illustration of the transformation that should be expected in any country undergoing development. At the start of this period, a majority of the Malaysian labour force was still agricultural (figure 2), whereas by 1995 the proportion had declined to under 20 per cent. Industry’s share increased from 13 to 34 per cent during this time, and that of services from 33 to 49 per cent. Figure 3 in absolute terms shows the trends even more vividly. The fact is that Malaysia’s agricultural labour force began to decline absolutely from 1965 onwards, indicating that all the growth in employment occurred in urban areas. By 1995, 25 per cent fewer people were employed on farms in Malaysia compared to 1970. The manufacturing and services sectors not only successfully absorbed the workers displaced from agriculture, but in addition created 1.5 million and 3.1 million jobs, respectively. Equally impressively, as the bottom part of the figure shows, most urban jobs created were in the wage category so that “non-wage jobs”, equated with informal sector employment, dropped to 25 per cent of urban jobs in 1995, compared to 40 per cent in 1970. The number of non-wage jobs declined even in absolute terms after 1988. Thus, Malaysia succeeded spectacularly in creating “modern” employment, transforming its economy from an agricultural base to industry and services and from a predominantly informal urban economy to almost a formalized one.

The shift to wage employment illustrated by Malaysia is an important part of the modernization process. Two forces are at work: (i) the decline of agriculture, with its family-oriented farms; and (ii) the decline of family-oriented small-scale enterprises in the non-farm sectors. Sub-Saharan African countries are still at an early stage of monetized economies: in Uganda, for example, only 13.7 per cent of the labour force was in wage employment in 1994 (latest year available; see table 1), the rest being either self-employed or family workers. Compared to this, the figure for Pakistan was 34 per cent, for most Latin American countries 50-70 per cent, and for the United States and western Europe 90 per cent. The correlation with per capita incomes comes through clearly, since the countries in table 1 are ranked in ascending order. As the table shows, Sri Lanka also experienced rapid structural transformation, with the percentage of the labour force in wage employment rising from 50 per cent in 1990 to 60 per cent in 1996. ^[11]

Sustainability

Along with “globalization” and “modernization”, “sustainable agricultural development”, broadened to include “sustainable agriculture and rural development” (SARD), is one of the key themes of this report. The concept was first elaborated in Agenda 21 adopted by the “Earth Summit” (United Nations Conference on Environment and Development – UNCED) at Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and discussed at length at the 8th Session of the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD8) in April-May 2000. The overall objective of SARD is to ensure sustainable increases in food production and food security. Employment, income generation, and equity, mandated objectives of the ILO, are very much at the heart of SARD (see boxes 4 and 5), the underlying goal being “sustainable employment”, in terms of returns to labour and workers’ health and safety. SARD enjoins all the concerned parties – farmers, workers, employers, governments, NGOs – to commit to the conservation of the earth’s natural resources so as to ensure that agriculture, forestry and fisheries contribute to the basic needs of not just the present generation but also future ones. ^[12] Although there is no formal definition, the different strands that distinguish “sustainable agriculture” from “agriculture” are by now well known (see box 5): first, the notion of nurturing the earth’s resources for present and future generations; second, the use of locally adopted and integrated farming practices; third, representation of farmers and farm workers (including wage workers) in all aspects of decision-making; and fourth, more equitable distribution of access to resources and food. The SARD concept is further elaborated on the related concept of the “multifunctional character of agriculture and land” (MFCAL) in recognition of the wide range of environmental, economic and social functions that agriculture fulfils, apart from its primary function of producing food, fibre and fuel. MFCAL highlights the potential linkages and trade-offs among rural activities that contribute to sustainable rural development. Four elements are crucial:

Sustainable agricultural practices include the use of organic and biological nutrients, crop rotation, integrated pest management (IPM), ^[13] and increased biological diversity. Sustainable practices are not only environmentally friendly but also capable of delivering higher yields. ^[14] Changes in public policies, economic institutions, and social values are called for to promote integrated policies for environmental health, economic profitability, and social equity. Market solutions could be a means of giving proper signals to farmers in making choices about sustainable resource management. Border prices could be used to remove biases against sustainable farming practices. Decentralization and community participation in resource conservation would be crucial in encouraging and fostering sustainable agriculture. Organic farming is an integral part of sustainable agriculture. However, it can only be a long-term goal, given the initial limited availability of natural organic material for recycling in some countries (box 6). What is important is that there be an incremental move towards organic farming and sustainable agriculture in developed as well as developing countries.

Consumers could play a critical role in creating a sustainable food system. The challenge now is to implement innovative strategies such as private voluntary initiatives that broaden consumers’ perspectives, so that concerns about environmental quality, resource use, and social equity are included in their shopping decision along with prices. At the same time incentives have to be created to enable producers using sustainable practices to market their goods to a broader public.

The concept of “decent work” as currently espoused by the ILO, encompassing all categories of workers – wage earners as well as self-employed workers – and all matters relating to employment – remuneration as well as conditions of work and workers’ representation – provides both the end and the means of achieving sustainable agriculture, with the emphasis on sustainable employment, living standards and welfare. Sustainable agriculture could contribute to these goals by ensuring that all rural workers (see box 7) follow sound practices that bring higher yields not only now, but for generations to come. Particularly important in this would be the role of agricultural wage workers – some 40 per cent of the labour force on the farms and growing. Wages and conditions of work in agriculture are generally below those prevailing in other sectors. Yet agricultural wage workers are often a neglected group, partly because they are unorganized and unrepresented, being widely dispersed. This is a serious obstacle in the way of achieving agricultural development, particularly sustainable development, since excluded wage workers may not feel any commitment to the land they are tilling. The best remedy is international acceptance of core ILO labour standards, at the heart of which are recognition of workers’ rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining and elimination of discrimination with respect to employment and occupation, of forced or bonded labour, and of child labour. The labour standards that apply to agricultural workers are listed in the appendix.

Sustainable agriculture has evident links with occupational safety and health (OSH). The ILO Programme on Occupational Safety and Health in Agriculture promotes the notion of sustainable agriculture in terms of the protection of agricultural workers. This goal is achieved through the promotion of core labour standards, eradication of poverty, access to decent employment, employers’ and workers’ participation in the prevention of occupational hazards, the improvement of working conditions, and protection of the environment from the impact of workplace activities. The ILO is actively involved in implementing the recommendations set forth by the Earth Summit in Chapter 19 of Agenda 21, concerning the environmentally sound management of toxic chemicals. The ILO’s role in sustainable agriculture was explicitly affirmed at CSD8 when “participants advocated […] CSD support for international rules that incorporate core labour standards as contained in the relevant ILO instruments”. ^[15]

Modernization of agriculture

“Modernization” of agriculture has at least four dimensions: (i) raising productivity levels by using better technology; (ii) diversifying into dynamic exports; (iii) changing to more durable tenurial arrangements; and (iv) ensuring the adoption of core ILO labour standards as a component of sustainable development. The first three issues are considered in this section, while the last is examined in Chapter 4 of the report.

Productivity and technology

A vast array of technology is now available for the agricultural sector, extending from the more mundane machines, chemical inputs and irrigation to genetic engineering and input monitoring devices using computers. The last, already making its mark in the developed countries (see box 8) must seem remote to the 70-80 per cent of the population in developing countries still dependent on the hoe and the water pail as their basic agricultural tools, although with technology costs tumbling and infrastructure – satellites, software – already in place, these technologies may be expected to “leapfrog” to large-scale farms in developing countries. There are already some instances of this (see box 8). Transgenic crops certainly have this potential to “leapfrog”; because of their importance in terms of employment levels, yield increases and potential hazards, they are discussed more fully in Chapter 4 of the report.

Box 8
IT and agriculture: The future is already here

Futuristic advances in information technology (IT) are already finding their way on to farms in developed countries. Most applications relate to “precision agriculture”. In one version, digital maps generated by global positioning system (GPS) satellites, output measurements generated by “yield monitors” fitted to combine harvesters, and soil samples generated manually are correlated to create a detailed profile of the land to facilitate pin-point application of chemicals. In another version, sensors connected to various parts of a plant are used to regulate, through an automated control system, functions such as irrigation and atmospheric gas concentrations.

Information technology has equal potential for change in agriculture in developing countries. In India, where notable advances – of even global significance – have been made in IT in “Silicon Plateau”, steps have recently been taken to link up rural areas. On 1 December 1999 the Chief Minister of Karnataka in South India launched videoconferencing facilities among nine of his districts. The first question he asked of one of the district collectors was: “What’s the price of tur daal in Gulbarga today?” (tur daal: a lentil, the chief source of protein in India). The priority application areas for IT in India will be agriculture, primary and reproductive health care and low-cost communications. “E-governance will change the way government functions”, said the Chief Minister.

In another giant step, the residents of Siddapur, India, a village relocated after facing dam-induced submersion 15 years ago, hooked up their self-purchased computer to the Internet, provided freely by a local company. “We are proud owners of a computer which has an Internet connection” was the first message they typed to the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh. Posting of paddy and turmeric prices, as promised, should prevent the currently endemic cheating by unscrupulous traders.

One important use of IT in developing countries could be in monitoring the food situation in the aftermath of a natural disaster, as happened in Venezuela after the December 1999 storms. An Emergency Intranet Network was set up, with assistance from the FAO, to provide information about damage to agriculture and emergency needs. The Intranet can be accessed by all relevant government ministries, international agencies and non-governmental organizations. Regular updates should contribute to monitoring harvests and attenuating future crises.

Sources: “Agriculture and technology”, op. cit., p. 7; India Today (New Delhi), 27 Dec. 1999; The Times of India (Mumbai), 19 Apr. 2000; and FAO at http://www.fao.org/news/2000/000104-e.htm.

Technology has moved so far ahead in developed countries that one no longer speaks there of “agriculture” but “agribusiness” – the chain from input supplies to production to processing to retailing. Farmers are a small part of this. Already in 1950 the world’s agribusiness was worth US$420 billion, in which farmers’ share was one-third; by 2028 the market could be worth $10 trillion, with farmers’ share down to one-tenth. ^[16] The underlying trend is the consolidation of the supply, processing and retailing sectors. Farming itself in these countries has fewer and fewer links with the soil (see box 9).

Technology questions facing most of the world’s farmers are much more mundane – how to make the most of water drawn from distant boreholes, how to eke out fertilizers, how to graduate from hoe to plough. Well-established correlations exist between the use of these inputs and yields, and these are shown in the next three tables, starting with table 2, which establishes a hierarchy of yields, taking cereals as the representative food group because of their much greater prevalence throughout the world (“roots and tubers”, the second most important food group, being more narrowly confined to the tropical belt).

Table 2. Cereal yield per hectare, kg/ha, 1999, and index 1999 (1975=100)

World cereal yield per hectare rose by 59 per cent over the last quarter century, with the greatest gains occurring in South America (80 per cent) and Asia (77 per cent) (table 2). African countries lagged, perhaps because of the problems associated with modernizing their traditional cereal crops – sorghum and millet. ^[17] Yields rose strongly in eastern Europe up to 1990, then fell abruptly and are now recovering slowly, reflecting the economic disruptions caused by structural changes in these transition economies.

Developed countries in Asia (Japan and Israel) have the highest cereal yields in the world, but have essentially reached a plateau since 1975. Yields in North America and western Europe have improved strongly over the period and are now approaching those in developed Asia. African yields (all countries except South Africa) lag at a level of only one-third of developing Asia. Such disparities are best explained in terms of differences in the use of irrigation and modern mechanical and chemical inputs (tables 3 and 4).


	Irrigated land (% of cropland)		Fertilizer consumption (100 grams per ha arable land)		Agricultural machinery
	Irrigated land (% of cropland)		Fertilizer consumption (100 grams per ha arable land)		Tractors/1,000 agr. Workers		Tractors/ha arable land

	1979-81	1994-96	1979-81	1994-96	1979-81	1994-96	1979-81	1994-96

World	16.6	17.4	867	941	19	20	172	187
East Asia and the Pacific	–	–	2 444	3 076	2	2	55	61
Europe and Central Asia	–	9.7	–	810	67	103	223	172
Latin America and the Caribbean	9.8	11.2	786	931	25	34	95	112
Middle East and North Africa	23.6	31.1	605	992	12	24	61	118
South Asia	27.8	37.2	918	1 370	2	5	26	83
Sub-Saharan Africa	3.6	3.8	419	576	3	2	23	18
Europe (EMU)	–	–	1 949	2 343	451	812	888	953

Source: World Bank: World Development Indicators, 1999.

Irrigation is much less developed in Africa than elsewhere, with the rate of irrigated land as a proportion of total crop land only one-fifth of the world total at mid-1990s and only one-tenth of South Asia’s (3.8 per cent in Africa versus 17.4 and 37.2 per cent respectively; table 3). Fertilizer consumption was at less than one-fifth (18.7 per cent) of that of the East Asia and Pacific region, and tractor use one-third to one-quarter of Asia’s.

Table 4. Growth rate of tractors and irrigated land, 1975-97, and world share in 1997


	Growth rate, 1975-97 (% p.a.)		% of world total, 1997
	Tractors	Irrigated land	Tractors	Irrigated land

Developing countries	5.2	1.7	24.5	75.2
Africa	3.4	1.5	1.7	4.1
Asia	6.7	1.7	16.7	64.3
South America	3.2	2.2	4.9	3.7
Developed countries	0.8	1.3	75.5	24.8
World	1.5	1.6	100.0	100.0

Source: FAO statistics, 1999.

Clearly Asia led the world in terms of irrigation, with around two-thirds of the world’s irrigated land in 1997. ^[18] Despite this, Asia still experienced the highest growth in irrigation of all the developing regions – 1.7 per cent per year in 1975-97. The fastest mechanization also occurred here, with a growth rate of tractors of 6.7 per cent per year compared to 5.2 per cent for developing countries as a whole; Africa and South America experienced around 3.3 per cent. Most of the increase in mechanization has occurred in developing countries, which had three times as many tractors in 1997 as in 1975, 4.4 times as many harvesters/threshers, and eight times as many milking machines. Even so, in 1997, developed countries had 75 per cent of all tractors, 80 per cent of harvesters/threshers, and 5 per cent of milking machines in the world. As the poorer countries progress, no doubt these ratios will change in their favour. Care must be taken so that the occupational and environmental hazards accompanying the greater use of machines and pesticides do not swamp the yield-increasing benefits. This issue is addressed further in the section of Chapter 4 on occupational safety and health.

Export diversification

One avenue for modernizing agriculture is the introduction of “dynamic” export crops – fruits, flowers, vegetables and spices so far being the most prominent. Of these, flower growing has been the most successful, largely thanks to advances in transportation techniques and new marketing arrangements, as well as other globalizing forces, such as foreign direct investment and imported technical know-how (see box 10). Double-digit growth has been achieved consistently by most entrants into this industry. ^[19] However, one drawback is the exclusion of smallholders because of high capital requirements of the industry in terms of greenhouses, cold storage, and imported materials and personnel. Their participation, perhaps on an outgrower basis, should be one prong of the strategy for further expansion of the industry. This would require, among others:

Further expansion of the industry would also require minimizing the hazardous working conditions and environmental damage resulting from the necessarily heavy use of agrochemicals in flower production. This issue is further addressed in Chapter 4, in the sections on OSH and private voluntary initiatives.

Land tenure

Moving to sustainable and high-productivity agriculture will only occur if all current users of land as well as their descendants have assurances of receiving the full benefits of environmentally sound practices. Security of tenure is the sine qua non for this, since many conservation practices only begin to pay off in the long term. A prior condition is that marginalized groups in rural areas have access to land itself. Thus agricultural “modernization” through the use of sustainable technologies requires parallel efforts to modernize tenurial arrangements, understood to mean the division of proprietary and user rights and responsibilities between the State, individuals, communities, and other entities. ^[20] The issue is complicated and controversial – complicated because of the myriad tenurial arrangements that exist, and controversial since changes in land rights, almost by definition, impinge on vested interests.

Land tenure arrangements range all the way from land held commonly by lineage groups to land held under private ownership by individuals or plantations. State ownership also exists, although it is now on the wane. There is a similarly wide variety of tenancy arrangements to enable landless workers to gain access to land, ranging from payment of cash rent, to sharecropping and bonded labour. The problem with some tenancy schemes is the unfair advantage derived by landlords, compounding the general problem of the exclusion of marginalized groups from access to land.

Uneven distribution of land straddles both problems, one extreme manifestation being the historical vesting of ownership of large tracts of land in a few individuals in Latin America, although it is not uncommon in the other developing regions either, as illustrated recently by the land struggle in Zimbabwe. Out of 44 countries for which IFAD had data available, in 28 the Gini coefficient ^[21] was over 0.5, implying that the top 10 per cent of landowners possessed over 40 per cent of the land. While land distribution is called for, and has been a perennial recommendation in all reports dealing with agriculture, there are other less drastic measures available to improve the access of the poor to land, such as privatization of land previously held under customary tenure; settlement of families on newly developed lands; and establishment of individual usufruct rights. The last measure is particularly needed in Asian countries, where, because of growing landlessness, tenants sometimes find themselves shelling out upwards of 50 per cent of their crops in rent. The more common figure, however, is 25 per cent, reflecting the enforcement of recently enacted reform laws. Such laws provide the best remedy against extortionary practices on the part of landlords.

The tenurial arrangements discussed above constitute perhaps the single most important barrier to advancement of the agriculture sector. Some progress, however, must be noted since the Earth Summit (UNCED). These changes have occurred in three parallel processes: ^[22]

Much more needs to be achieved in the above three areas to ensure that investments in agriculture are made from a long-term perspective, including future generations. Progress in these areas would also secure the inclusion of a greater segment of the population in the process of growth, which is the sine qua non for sustainable development.

2. Production and export
performance

Production

World agricultural production grew at an annual rate of 2.2 per cent between 1975 and 1999 (table 5), which, allowing for population growth, implies a total increase of around 15 per cent in per capita terms. Most of the growth occurred in the 1970s and 1980s, the first five years of the 1990s recording the worst performance. Of the two components of agricultural output (food and non-food), the former grew almost twice as much as the latter (71 per cent compared to 36 per cent).


	Index 1999 (1975=100)			Growth rate, 1975-99 (% p.a.)

	Agriculture	Food	Non-food	Agriculture	Food	Non-food

World	168	171	136	2.2	2.2	1.3
Developed countries	118	120	93	0.7	0.7	-0.4
Developing countries	225	231	164	3.4	3.5	2.1
Africa	181	185	139	2.5	2.6	1.4
Asia	246	250	198	3.8	3.9	2.9
South America	204	214	103	3.0	3.2	0.1
Eastern Europe	95	98	38	0.0	0.0	-4.0
Western Europe	124	125	121	0.9	0.9	2.0
North America	147	147	143	1.6	1.6	1.5

Source: FAO statistics, 1999.

Developing countries performed much better than developed countries, with growth of 125 per cent and 18 per cent, respectively (table 5 again). Thus, the global structure of food production shifted to the former: to give some examples, the developing countries’ share of cereals rose from less than 50 per cent in 1975 to 59 per cent by 1999, their share of beef from 29 to 48 per cent, and their share of poultry and eggs from 30 per cent each to 51 and 66 per cent, respectively.

Growth was especially strong in Asia, output rising by 146 per cent for agriculture as a whole and 150 per cent for the food subcategory, implying a gain of 60 per cent in per capita terms. While increased use of improved seed varieties, irrigation, and chemical inputs contributed to this, the impact of liberalization, especially in China, India and Viet Nam, should not be underestimated.

Growth was also substantial in South America, particularly in the food category, with 114 per cent, or 36 per cent per capita. Africa again stands out on the negative side, with food output per capita falling by 3.2 per cent. Although internal policy failures are routinely blamed for this, the impact of droughts must have been considerable (box 11), and AIDS is exacting its toll on agriculture through increased absenteeism and a growing number of female-headed households and child workers in agriculture. Labour forces are shrinking in many countries in Africa as a result of the dreaded disease (box 12). In eastern Europe per capita food production fell even more than in Africa – by 8.5 per cent. In the industrialized world, after modest growth to 1990, agricultural production stagnated in western Europe, but maintained an upward trend in North America with a 47 per cent total gain, 20 per cent since 1990.

Agricultural exports

World trade in agricultural commodities grew at an annual rate of 5.6 per cent between 1975 and 1998, signifying a 3.5-fold increase in aggregate terms (table 6). However, as may be expected, growth was unevenly distributed, with western Europe and developing Asian countries returning the best performance and sub-Saharan Africa the worst. The final outcome of the underlying trends was a decline in the developing countries’ share of world agricultural exports, from 32 per cent in 1975 to 30 per cent in 1998, the gains in Asia being offset by losses in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean. For the world as a whole agricultural exports comprised 10.5 per cent of total exports at late 1990s, clearly a minority and on a declining trend for many decades. Latin American and Caribbean countries relied most heavily on agricultural exports, which accounted for 23.8 per cent of total exports, higher even than Africa with 19.5 per cent.


	Growth rate 1975-98 (% p.a.)	Share of region in world agricultural exports (%)		Share of agricultural exports in total exports 1998 (%)
	Growth rate 1975-98 (% p.a.)	1975	1998	Share of agricultural exports in total exports 1998 (%)

World	5.6	100.0	100.0	10.5
Developed countries	5.8	67.7	69.7	–
Developing countries	5.3	32.3	30.3	–
Sub-Saharan Africa	2.3	6.3	3.0	19.5
Asia	6.7	11.7	14.7	7.7
Latin America and the Caribbean	5.1	14.0	12.4	23.8
Eastern Europe	2.9	4.3	2.3	11.7
Western Europe	6.9	32.6	43.2	10.1
North America	4.5	21.4	16.6	11.1

Source: FAO statistics, 1999; WTO: Annual Report, 1999.

While agricultural exports have been growing more slowly than manufacturing exports, they have at least been increasing faster than agricultural output. Thus, between 1950 and 1998, world agricultural output tripled (index 311, compared to 100 for 1950) but agricultural exports quintupled (index 531). In the meantime, dwarfing this performance, manufacturing output increased ninefold (index 900) and manufacturing exports almost 34-fold. ^[23] Three trends emerge: (i) manufacturing output expanded much faster than agricultural output, as mentioned above, relegating agriculture to a smaller share of the world economy; (ii) a greater share of world manufacturing output began to be traded; and (iii) manufacturing exports totally dominated world merchandise trade by 1998, their share reaching around 90 per cent. Thus, globalization has meant very much a globalization of manufacturing exports.

Developing countries played an increasing role in this, their share of total world trade in agriculture and manufacturing rising from 23 per cent in 1985 to 29 per cent a decade later. Even more impressively, the share of manufactured goods in their total exports grew from 47 per cent in 1985 to 83 per cent in 1995, a trend that is consonant with their increased industrialization (table 7). A large part of these gains went to the Asian newly industrializing economies (NIEs), whose share in world trade rose from 2 per cent in 1968 to 10 per cent in 1996. The cases of Malaysia and Thailand are highlighted in box 13. The NIEs apart, the share of developing countries stagnated at 17.5 per cent. Africa has been among the secular losers, its share halving from 3 per cent in 1968 to 1.5 per cent in 1996.

Table 7. Advanced economies v. developing countries including NIEs:
Diversification of exports (percentage of merchandise exports)


	Advanced economies (excluding newly industrialized economies)			Developing countries plus newly industrialized economies
	1975	1985	1995	1975	1985	1995

Non-fuel primary products	7.1	5.6	4.2	10.1	7.4	5.7
Fuel	5.9	8.9	3.8	61.4	45.4	11.2
Manufactures	87.0	85.5	92.0	28.2	47.2	83.0

Source: IMF, World Economic Outlook, Oct. 1997.

Regional transformations

Agricultural and GDP growth varied from one region to another, as did structural transformations of the economy, the hallmark of development. These differences are discussed here, and significant country experiences are highlighted. Table 8 shows growth rates of total GDP and agricultural GDP since 1980 and the ensuing changes in agriculture’s contribution to GDP and labour force between 1970 and 1997.

Table 8. Growth of output, 1980-97, and structural changes in GDP and labour force, 1970 and 1997


	GDP (% p.a.)		Agriculture (% p.a.)		Share of agriculture (%)
					GDP		Labour force

	1980-90	1990-97	1980-90	1990-97	1970	1997	1970	1997

World	3.2	2.4	2.7	1.1	9	4	55	49
East Asia and the Pacific	7.5	9.4	4.7	3.8	35	18	76	69
Eastern Europe and Central Asia	3.5	-4.3	–	-6.3	–	12	33	23
Latin America and the Caribbean	1.6	3.8	2.1	2.7	12	8	41	25
Middle East and North Africa	2.1	2.9	5.5	1.7	13	14	50	35
South Asia	5.6	5.6	3.2	2.7	43	25	71	63
Sub-Saharan Africa	1.8	2.0	2.4	2.5	21	18	78	68

Source: World Bank: World Development Indicators, 1999, tables 1.5 and 4.1.

Total GDP in East Asia and the Pacific increased at the rate of 7.5 per cent per year in the 1980s and 9.4 per cent in the first seven years of the 1990s. The agriculture sector recorded an annual growth rate of 4 per cent for the whole period, implying a rate of around 9.5 per cent for the non-agricultural sectors (industry and services). The latter sectors almost quintupled, contributing to a decline in agriculture’s share in GDP from 35 per cent in 1970 to 18 per cent in 1997 and in the labour force from 76 per cent to 69 per cent.

Wide variations existed. In Mongolia, the proportion of GDP deriving from agriculture increased – from 15 per cent in 1980 to 37 per cent in 1997 – a dubious distinction shared with only a few other countries, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo (15 to 58 per cent) (box 14). In all such cases these trends signified a collapse of the modern economy rather than a resurgent agricultural sector. China had one of the highest rates of agricultural growth of any country during the 17-year period – around 5 per cent, but even then, with faster growth in the non-agricultural sectors, agriculture’s share declined, from 35 per cent in 1970 to 19 per cent in 1997. In Malaysia agriculture’s contribution to GDP declined from 29 per cent in 1970 to 12 per cent in 1997 and to the labour force from 54 per cent to 27 per cent; in other words Malaysia went from a mainly agricultural labour force to a mainly urbanized economy, as mentioned above.

Box 14
Economic losers and performers

The Democratic Republic of the Congo and Mongolia were two countries out of four in the world (Central African Republic and Myanmar being the other two) where agriculture increased its share of total GDP. This signified a breakdown of the industry and services sectors. For example, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo industry declined at an annual rate of 4.8 per cent between 1980 and 1997 and services at 5.5 per cent, shrinking by more than half. China and Malaysia, on the other hand, were outstanding examples of successful economic transformation. In China the industrial sector increased eightfold since 1980 while that in Malaysia grew at least fourfold.

Sectoral growth rates (1980-97) and share of agriculture

Growth (% p.a.)

Share of agricultural GDP (%)

Agriculture

Industry

Services

1970

1997

Mongolia

3.6

1.8

2.5

15^a

37

Democratic Republic of the Congo

2.7

-4.8

-5.5

15

58

China

5.3

13.2

12.0

35

19

Malaysia

3.1

8.8

6.1

29

12

^a 1980.

Source: World Bank: World Development Indicators, 1999, tables 4.1 and 1.5.

The situation in eastern Europe and central Asia is both less and more serious – less because of the region’s high endowment of physical and human capital, and more since the trends portend ill for their development. In the 1990s GDP fell by 4.3 per cent per annum, while agricultural output fell by even more – 6.3 per cent. Explanations range from those who defend market-oriented reforms in the transition countries to those who fault them for failing to build on the platform of accumulated social capital. The fact is, the economic decline in these countries is manifesting itself in rising levels of social instability that will make the reversal of the trends even more difficult. As the ILO’s Decent work puts it: “One of the most disturbing issues in this region is ‘new’ poverty. Previously there was little overt poverty. Now, following the process of transition, there is widespread and open poverty and inequality. Wages are very low and often unpaid.” ^[24]

Latin American experience has been far more diverse and substantially more positive, especially in the 1990s, although trends in rural development have been a cause of concern in some countries. Differences in socio-economic conditions and agricultural practices explain the diverse experiences. Mexico, Chile and Argentina have technologically sophisticated agriculture, while Bolivia and Haiti remain heavily subsistence-oriented. The broad picture is of a continent where the agricultural sector has declined progressively over the past two decades, with the contribution of agriculture to GDP at 8 per cent; however, its share of the labour force remains at 25 per cent.

Growth in the Middle East and North Africa was naturally conditioned by oil production, on which most of the region’s economies depend (those in the Middle East are well known; those in North Africa are Algeria and the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya) where oil also relegates agriculture to a minority role. In 1970 agriculture already contributed only 13 per cent of the economy, and the figure remained at that level in 1997, under the impact of falling oil prices. Agriculture accounted for 35 per cent of the total labour force in 1997, reflecting the much more agricultural North African countries, but also low productivity in the agriculture sector.

South Asia – Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan – has the world’s largest concentration of the rural poor, around three-fifths, with the incidence of poverty hovering around 40-50 per cent. High rates of poverty also characterize urban areas. Landlessness is a common feature here. With divergent rates of growth of total GDP (5.6 per cent in both periods under consideration, 1980-90 and 1990-97) and agricultural GDP (3 per cent), the proportion of the GDP contributed by agriculture declined, from 43 per cent in 1970 to 25 per cent in 1997, and agriculture’s share of the labour force from 71 to 63 per cent.

The situation in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) remained precarious. The “lost decade” of the 1970s stretched into the “lost decade” of the 1980s, and the first seven years of the 1990s were not much better either – just 2 per cent overall annual growth – and that was also thanks to better performance in agriculture (growth rate 2.5 per cent), largely reflecting the stagnation of the non-agricultural sectors. The agricultural labour force remained at 68 per cent of the total, but agricultural GDP was only 18 per cent, signifying vast gaps between rural and urban productivity levels. The incidence of poverty is the highest in the world, ^[25] food security precarious, and growth prospects uncertain, given the dependence of most SSA economies on a few primary commodities in secular price decline and the high proportion of dwindling export proceeds absorbed by debt servicing. Political instability has contributed to economic problems. Structural adjustment programmes starting with the late 1970s put inordinate faith in “getting the price right” – i.e. the withdrawal of the State from market interference – as a cure for the continent’s ills, but there is belated recognition of the impact of falling commodity prices ^[26] and the futility of expecting major supply responses to prices given the weaknesses in the rest of the economy. ^[27]

Living standards

The general increase in production translated into a general improvement in living standards. The incidence of undernourishment in the developing world decreased from 37 per cent in 1969-71 to 18 per cent in 1995-97, which in absolute terms meant a decline from 960 million to 791 million, or 17.7 per cent (table 9). The greatest drop occurred in East and South-East Asia, where the numbers halved, bringing the incidence of undernourishment down from 43 to 13 per cent. In South Asia too, the proportion fell perceptibly, from 38 to 23 per cent, but this reduction was not sufficient to prevent the total number of hungry people from increasing by 6.4 per cent. Sub-Saharan Africa lagged behind, not even registering a decline in the incidence of hunger, while the number of hungry people doubled in absolute terms.


	Percentage undernourished				Number undernourished (% change)

	1969-71	1979-81	1990-92	1995-97	1995-97 ÷ 1969-71

Sub-Saharan Africa	34	37	35	33	+102.2
Near East and North Africa	25	9	8	9	-26.7
East and South-East Asia	43	29	17	13	-52.2
South Asia	38	38	26	23	+6.4
Latin America and Caribbean	19	13	13	11	-1.9
All developing regions	37	29	20	18
Number undernourished (million)	960	938	831	791	-17.7

Source: Based on FAO: The State of Food Insecurity in the World 1999, at http://www.fao.org/focus/e/SOFI/home-e.htm.

As noted above, GDP increased all round, even more in the non-agricultural sector than in agriculture. In consequence, dramatic increases in incomes occurred in the past 30 years in the four Asian NIEs (Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan, China), so much so that between 1965 and 1995 their average income as a proportion of the industrial country average grew from 18 to 66 per cent, ^[28] only to drop by 20-30 per cent during the Asian financial crisis. Altogether, the underlying figures show that the Republic of Korea experienced a tenfold increase in per capita income during this period, Thailand a fivefold and Malaysia a fourfold growth. Average per capita income in Latin America doubled up to 1980, but then stagnated over the next 15 years, a period dominated by the debt crisis and its aftermath. African incomes halved as a proportion of industrial country incomes – from 14 per cent of the latter in 1965 to just 7 per cent. With only the Asian NIEs showing any consistent increase in incomes, the overall outcome was that the gap between the richest and poorest countries widened, a trend that has marked the world economy since the start of the Industrial Revolution. ^[29]

In the limited number of countries for which data were available, agricultural wages improved in dollar terms between 1980 and 1994 in all except China, Mexico and Paraguay (decline of 7 and 12 and 25 per cent respectively; see table 10); and they exceeded the minimum wage in the period 1990-94 for all countries except Tunisia, but were well below manufacturing wages in all countries except Canada and Romania. Mexico is particularly noteworthy, with agricultural wages amounting to less than 15 per cent of manufacturing wages. Between 1980-84 and 1990-94, agricultural wages declined relative to manufacturing wages in seven of the 13 countries shown in the table, increasing in the other six. Although wages have risen by and large, some disturbing trends in overall conditions of work should be noted, which are partly attributable to the impact of globalization. In the pursuit of “flexibility”, agricultural employment has become precarious, with substantial increases in the number of migrant workers, day-labourers, and seasonal and temporary workers, all of whom suffer in terms of pay, social protection, housing, education and medical protection.

The final outcome of the trends in production, incomes and wages was that poverty declined (for selected figures see table 11). China stands out, with a rural poverty incidence of 11.8 per cent in 1994 dropping to 7.9 per cent in 1996, translating into a decline in absolute terms of 40 million in just two years. In India too, a decrease of around 40 million was registered, also in two years, from a 43.5 per cent rural poverty rate in 1992 to 36.7 per cent in 1994. Data limitations preclude making too many definitive statements, but in conditions of high economic growth, as currently in China and Viet Nam, and earlier in Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, the evidence is incontrovertible that poverty declines: growth does “trickle down” in the form of increasing demand for food and agricultural raw materials, and “trickle up” in migration of workers away from agriculture to urban areas in search of new jobs. Migrating workers have two important impacts on rural incomes and poverty: (i) through the remittances they send back; and (ii) by exhausting the labour surplus on the land. The second is undoubtedly the more important trickle-down mechanism. As the labour market tightens, increasing wages in urban areas finally begin to rub off on rural areas, and eventually agricultural wages rise pari passu with industrial wages, as happened in the Republic of Korea and Taiwan, China, during their structural transformation phase, as is happening in Malaysia now, and was beginning to happen in Indonesia before the Asian crisis.

Table 10. Agricultural wages and manufacturing labour costs, 1980-84 and 1990-94
(in US$ per year, except as indicated)


	Minimum wage	Agricultural wage		Labour cost per worker in manufacturing		Agricultural wage as % of manufacturing labour cost

	1990-94	1980-84	1990-94	1980-84	1990-94	1980-84	1990-94

Australia	12 712	11 212	15 124	14 749	26 087	76.0	58.0
Botswana		650	1 223	3 250		20.0
Canada	7 897	20 429	30 625	17 710	28 346	115.4	108.0
China		349	325	472	434	73.9	74.9
Costa Rica	1 638	982	1 697	1 788	2 645	54.9	64.2
Hungary	1 132	1 186	1 766	1 410	2 777	84.1	63.6
Israel	5 861	4 582	7 906	13 541	26 635	33.8	29.7
Kenya		508	568	1 040	940	48.8	60.4
Mexico	843	1 031	908	3 772	6 138	27.3	14.8
Paraguay		1 606	1 210	2 509	3 241	64.0	37.3
Romania		1 669	1 864	1 739	1 190	96.0	156.6
Sri Lanka		198	264	447	717	44.3	36.8
Sweden		9 576	27 098	22 734	59 913	42.1	45.2
Tunisia	1 525	668	968	3 344		20.0
Turkey	1 254	1 015	2 896	3 582	7 958	28.3	36.4
Uruguay	967	1 289		4 128	3 738	31.2

Note: Countries chosen based on data availability. Source: World Bank: World Development Indicators, 1999.

Table 11. Poverty incidence (percentage of population below national poverty line)


		Rural	Urban	Total

Bangladesh	1991-92 1995-96	46.0 39.8	23.3 14.3	42.7 35.6
China	1994 1996	11.8 7.9	<2 <2	8.4 6.0
India	1992 1994	43.5 36.7	33.7 30.5	40.9 35.0
Indonesia	1987 1990	16.4 14.3	20.1 16.8	17.4 15.1
Nigeria	1985 1992-93	49.5 36.4	31.7 30.4	43.0 34.1
Philippines	1994 1997	53.1 51.2	28.0 22.5	40.6 37.5
Sri Lanka	1985-86 1990-91	45.5 38.1	26.8 28.4	40.6 35.3

Source: World Bank: World Development Indicators, 1999.

Role of agriculture

Paradoxically for a report espousing the importance of the agriculture sector, the first lesson to be drawn from the foregoing discussion confirms the traditional role of the sector, which is to “decline”. Successful development must inevitably mean that agriculture shrinks in terms of its relative contribution to GDP and employment. It would be a mistake to conclude from this that agriculture is unimportant – or to tax it inordinately to hasten industrial development. Agriculture can only “decline” successfully if its growth is strong. Only then can it begin to shed workers to the industrial sector and feed them. Thus the decline in the role of the agriculture sector is only relative; in absolute terms there is no question at all about the importance of a strong agriculture sector. Increasing globalization, particularly the easing of the savings constraint through the influx of foreign capital flows, which makes it possible to leapfrog the tedious stage of increasing productivity in agriculture, has rather obscured this role of agriculture in fuelling overall development. Yet the real lesson of Taiwan, China, and the Republic of Korea is not that they achieved rapid industrialization but that they did so piggy-backing on a strong agricultural sector. The much deeper economic meltdown in Indonesia during the recent Asian crisis compared to the other Asian countries also points to the perils of embarking on rapid industrialization without first ensuring a productive agriculture sector.

Other traditional reasons for not neglecting the agriculture sector remain. For economies wishing to enter the stage of globalization-induced industrialization, the backlog of the agricultural labour force is much too great to afford an alternative. As we have seen, in developing countries as a whole, even including the NIEs, agriculture still employs over two-thirds of the labour force, and the proportion easily reaches three-quarters when the more industrialized NIEs and Latin American countries are excluded. Agricultural growth is imperative to ensure that this 75 per cent of the labour force experience increasing incomes directly rather than by the “trickle-up” process of migrating to urban areas to service the industry sector.

Prices and subsidies

One sure measure of the government’s regard for the agricultural sector may be found in the stance of pricing policy. First, past experience of agricultural stagnation shows conclusively that farmers everywhere react rationally to price incentives; however, it also shows that a positive supply response may not ensue if extra purchasing power cannot be translated into consumer goods. Second, the prompt availability of inputs, such as credit, fertilizers and transport is just as vital in determining the supply response as prices. Third, pricing policy cannot be viewed as a simple technical problem requiring fine-tuning by bureaucrats. The domestic terms of trade reflect the complexities of balancing economic and political power among farmers, urban workers and owners of processing plants. Changes in relative prices can have immense political ramifications, which explains the time-lag between the emergence of a problem and its rectification.

A case in point is food subsidies, which have now fallen out of favour in the currently prevailing climate of economic liberalization. Given their evident role in guaranteeing broad access to food (for example in Sri Lanka), the question remains why this is so. Subsidies can be given in one of two ways, with quite different outcomes for food production. In the first place, consumer subsidies can be effected by keeping state-controlled producer prices low, but quite naturally this could discourage farmers from producing food. The second method of effecting subsidies is by paying farmers incentive prices but reducing consumer prices through the state budget. This was the method followed in Zambia and other SSA countries for many years, and is now applied in China, where the cost of subsidies more than doubled between 1978 and 1995, to 36.4 billion yuan – twice the level of investment in rural infrastructure. ^[30] Given the high income elasticity of demand for food (around 0.6) ^[31] and rapid urban population growth, the total subsidy can skyrocket rapidly and show up as bad debt in state-owned banking institutions. Cutting back on food subsidies then presents itself as an obvious, even if politically difficult, option. Targeting subsidies to the needy, through subsidizing “their” foods, is more manageable fiscally and helps preserve some of their important social benefits.

The important lesson for macroeconomic management from the above is that state intervention in pricing almost always militates against incentives and costs the economy in terms of lost production. When farmers have to step outside the law by using unofficial marketing channels to sell their goods, there is something wrong with producer pricing and marketing policy; when raising producer prices for export crops bankrupts the marketing agency or the state bank which finances it, there is something wrong with pricing policy; when price fixing benefits the corrupt, there is something wrong with pricing policy. Privatizing marketing outlets is a solution and may improve efficiency if the state monopoly outlet has become incompetent or corrupt, but the problems that led to state intervention in the first place may reappear. These could include large monopoly margins, neglect of small farmers or remote regions, and arbitrary payment schedules. Moreover, different parts of the world differ in their endowment of the kind of dynamic private sector that adjustment programmes take for granted. Thus, many argue that in Africa the State may, of necessity, have to continue to play a much more central role in marketing than elsewhere, for lack of efficient alternatives. It is also often pointed out that reform programmes may themselves be indirectly compromising the benefits of price reforms by reducing public investment in such essentials as irrigation, infrastructure, research, and extension services, demonstrating that pricing policy cannot but be one part of a package for the agriculture sector. ^[32]

Recognition of the fact that industrialization is a long drawn-out process and that the number of people living in the rural areas of the world will grow for the next half-century points to the imperative of strengthening rural areas for their own sake, and not merely as a source of surplus labour and markets for the urban industrial sector.

External prices

Prices of agricultural commodities have been on an almost continuous decline since 1980, and since developing countries are heavily reliant on agricultural exports – particularly those in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America – falling commodity prices have contributed greatly to their difficulties. Table 12 shows the trends in “real” prices of agriculture as a whole and three of its components – beverages (cocoa, coffee, tea), food, and raw materials (cotton, logs, rubber, tobacco). ^[33] The real-term prices of agriculture as a whole as well as its three components declined by around 60 per cent between 1980 and 1998. Annual losses in purchasing power due to deteriorating terms of trade are estimated to cost developing countries US$2.5 billion a year and mean that countries have to run faster merely to stand still; for example, the 60 per cent decline in cotton prices found above requires countries to export over twice as much lint to buy back a fixed bundle of cotton shirts.


	1980	1985	1990	1991	1992	1993	1994	1995	1996	1997	1998

Agriculture	265	210	100	93	82	87	102	92	96	110	100
Beverages	351	346	100	81	67	73	122	107	97	146	130
Food	265	180	100	95	88	87	88	82	95	99	97
Raw materials	201	149	100	95	86	97	104	95	98	97	81

Source: World Bank: World Development Indicators, 1999. Deflator used is “manufacturing unit value” index of G-5 countries, a proxy for prices of manufacturing imports into developing countries.

Price fluctuations are as much a staple of the agricultural sector as falling prices. Background figures to table 12 show that beverage prices in nominal terms increased by 75 and 33 per cent in 1994 and 1997, and fell by 14-18 per cent in 1992, 1996 and 1998. Food prices fell on average throughout the whole period, and fluctuated, although less so. Volatility, then, is endemic and almost an inherent feature of commodity production. Supplies are dependent on the weather, while on the demand side low price elasticities cause supply variability to translate into price swings. Production is also often inelastic in the short term (especially when the commodity is perishable or the gestation period long), so that shifts in demand have a large impact on prices. ^[34] The consequences of falling prices depend of course on production structures. Sub-Saharan Africa has been a consistent loser, while East Asia escaped falling terms of trade of primary products because of the shift in its production base to manufactures. Latin America and the Caribbean have seen export prices for non-fuel primary commodities fall steadily over the whole period.

There are no sure ways for developing countries to hedge themselves against falling and fluctuating prices, since most of them are price takers, none being large enough to influence prices. Even where they have some market power, withholding supplies is not feasible as storage facilities are lacking and not all producers may comply. Collective action through commodity agreements has fallen out of favour, since quotas in the 1970s for tea, coffee, cocoa, sugar and sisal achieved only transient success in dampening price fluctuations and upholding prices. Concerted opposition from industrialized countries was (and is) not the least of the factors militating against such agreements.

Stabilizing internal producer prices to offset shifts in external prices was a function previously performed by the State through the erstwhile marketing boards. This required the accumulation of reserves in good years for use in bad years, but governments never resisted the temptation of putting the reserves to general use and either taxing or paying out any windfall gains. Lately budgetary constraints, agricultural sector adjustment lending, and international trade agreements ^[35] have led to various forms and degrees of economic liberalization, precluding policies that had enabled countries to hedge against fluctuating prices. Working directly with market forces is the currently favoured solution. Mexico has instituted an “options premium system”, a hedging mechanism through futures markets that permits farmers to purchase insurance against falling prices. Price fluctuations can also be attenuated through the development of modern storage capacity and the use of warehouse receipts as collateral for storage loans. ^[36]

Three longer term strategies are possible. First, as commodity prices have differing patterns of volatility and time trends, agriculture could be diversified. This could take the form of replacing food imports with local production, a politically difficult move given low world prices. Diversifying the export base is a more viable possibility, and this has happened to a certain extent in the last 15 years with the production of flowers, fruits, nuts, spices, etc. Constraints exist, given farmers’ lack of familiarity with markets and production methods. The issue is discussed more fully in Chapter 1.

The second type of diversification, through tourism, offers the prospect of strengthening agriculture within the context of the rural sector. Backward linkages could be fostered through food supplies and new sources of foreign exchange created for rural crafts. Experience has been varied, with Asian and African countries such as Thailand and Kenya having done quite well, while quality destinations in the Caribbean have opted to rely on imported food and drinks, based on an assumption about inflexible tourist preferences. Tourism has its own brand of earnings instability, depending on conditions in industrialized countries.

Rural non-farm activities

Rural non-farm (RNF) activities provide a more viable third avenue for diversification. RNF activities perform a number of functions vital to farming, such as transportation of inputs and outputs, milling and processing of crops, slaughter and processing of livestock, and crafting and repairing of simple tools. Indeed, transporters, millers, butchers, blacksmiths, and yoke and harness makers have always been integral parts of the farming community. Producers of simple consumer goods may also be located in rural areas, particularly those making consumer goods using indigenous raw materials. Merchants occupy a more ambiguous space: on the one hand, the functions they perform of purchasing crops and provisioning trade goods are as vital to agriculture as farming itself; on the other hand, their monopoly position in trade, often linked to moneylending, milling and storage, serves as a major source of surplus extraction from agriculture, creating conditions for control over a wide range of rural commercial, financial and industrial activities. ^[37]

A strong RNF economy can help raise agricultural productivity, given conducive state policies. A contrast is often made between Soviet policy and Chinese policy under Mao. The Soviets starved handicraft and rural repair shops of access to materials from the late 1920s, since these were not considered a priority in their grand industrial design. The slaughter of draught animals during forced collectivization campaigns compounded the problem, accounting for low levels of productivity and innovation in the collective farm system. ^[38] In comparison, small-scale industrialization in rural areas became the centrepiece of Mao’s Great Leap Forward, and although it engendered examples of inefficiency, it did strengthen the rural economy and integrate farms and factories much more closely than was ever the case in the USSR. ^[39] Today the thriving township and village enterprises in China are the living proof of the success of this policy (see box 15).

Patterns in the development of RNF activities suggest that Africa and most countries in South Asia are in the first stage of RNF transformation, with RNF activities mainly home-based and involving small-scale production of non-tradable goods (goods that are mainly sold locally). At this stage, agriculture tends to depend on local supplies of farm inputs and services and on local processing and distribution of farm products, usually carried out by small-scale firms. ^[40]

Latin America is in the second stage of RNF development, where the share of rural population dependent on farming is lower. Linkages within agriculture as well as with other rural sectors – for example tourism, mining and services – are observed, but rural-urban linkages also develop in the form of subcontracting of rural workshops by urban businesses (for example in clothing) and a rapid rise of commuting between the countryside and rural towns and intermediate cities. Development of small-scale labour-intensive production is seen, as well as agro-industrialization.

East Asia has entered the third stage of RNF development, with a greater weight of more advanced forms of rural-urban business linkages, such as subcontracting arrangements for light durable to medium durable goods, labour commuting and rapid agro-industrialization in commercial agriculture. Sri Lanka, as an exception to the South Asian stage of development, belongs to this stage: after having successfully dispersed garment factories throughout the rural areas, it is now attempting to nurture further linkages by attracting higher technology industries to the rural areas to reduce their dependence on garment manufacturing.^[41]

Finally, it is important to mention that the increase in RNF activities may not always reflect a positive trend. Households in zones with high-risk agriculture may embark on RNF activities simply as a survival strategy, as has been happening in much of sub-Saharan Africa in the last two decades. ^[42] Moreover, RNF activities may not necessarily improve rural income distribution. For example, agro-ecological tourism is flourishing in the old coffee haciendas in Colombia, but this has meant increased unemployment for thousands of peasants who had formerly worked picking the coffee.

Rural non-farm activities are in many ways the analogue of the urban informal sector – they are small-scale and labour-intensive, use local materials and cater to local demand. As opposed to the urban informal sector, their advantage lies in their location – i.e. precisely the rural areas – and hence they are doubly worth nurturing to lessen the pressure on urban areas to create employment. China, Sri Lanka and Viet Nam, among others, have pointed the way.

4. Social issues in agriculture

“Globalization changes everything” has by now become a cliché, but its very currency reflects a certain degree of truth. Nowhere is this more so than in the globally transmitted demands of consumers that the food they eat, the beverages they drink, and the flowers they give be produced “safely” – safely for workers, the environment, and themselves. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are often at the forefront of these campaigns, their message spread through innumerable Internet websites. From just a few hundred in the 1960s, the number of NGOs has now reached nearly 30,000. ^[43] They work together to proselytize, in the agriculture sector, for better labour standards on farms, particularly for the elimination of child labour and gender inequality, safer use of farm machinery and chemicals, and safer foods, most recently in terms of labelling of genetically modified foods. Adoption of higher labour standards is increasingly certified through “labels” and rewarded through premium prices at the supermarket. These are some of the issues discussed in this section.

Child labour

Although the term “child labour” conjures up images of children working in factories and artisan workshops, the fact is that most children at work are found on farms – as many as three-quarters of the 120 million full-time child workers (5-14 years), according to ILO estimates, a statistic that is consonant with the fact that child labour is mostly found in developing countries and developing countries are mostly agricultural. Over three-fifths of child workers are estimated to be in Asia, 32 per cent in Africa, and 7 per cent in Latin America, ^[44] which, based on their respective shares in world population, means that the proportion of children at work is twice as high in Africa as on other continents. In ten out of 13 African countries surveyed recently, more than 30 per cent of children in the 10-14 age group were working on farms. ^[45] Children suffer disproportionately from injuries, such as cuts and wounds, eye infections, skin problems, and fever and headaches caused by exposure to pesticides. ^[46]

A distinction needs to be made with respect to child labour on family farms, given the importance of the household in the Third World as the organizing unit for production. ^[47] Children supplement household family work with farm work, in particular when time-sensitive tasks have to be completed. In Latin America, boys tend sheep, gather wood, collect fodder, draw water, and assist at sowing and harvesting; girls help with milling, cooking, and caring for siblings. In sub-Saharan Africa, children regularly supplement family labour and often work 45-hour weeks during the peak harvesting season. Child labour in a family context is tolerated since the element of exploitation is absent.

The pattern of child labour assumes more serious proportions when it occurs in the context of commercial agriculture and bondage. Recent ILO studies have shown a much higher involvement of children in commercial agriculture than hitherto presumed. In the mid-1990s in north-eastern Brazil, 25 per cent of the total labour force in sugar cane production consisted of children aged 14 years and under. In the northern states of Mexico, 20-35 per cent of the labour force in fruit and vegetable production were children aged 8-14 years. And on Kenya’s coffee plantations as many as 30 per cent of the coffee pickers during the peak harvest season were found to be under 15. “Children working in commercial agriculture are exposed to long […] hours of physically strenuous work, to injuries caused by tools, to repeatedly shouldering heavy loads, to the hazards of insect and snake bites, and to hazards linked to the handling of agrochemicals.” ^[48]

Children are often included as part of hired family labour for large-scale enterprises producing for export. When hiring casual labour on a piece-rate basis, contractors on plantations may employ children as cheap labour, who may engage in dangerous tasks. Wages paid to children are invariably lower than those for equivalent work by adults.

The worst form of child labour is debt bondage, found predominantly in South Asia and Latin America, a form of modern slavery, whereby in return for credit, a person offers his own or his children’s labour. Bonded children may work for large farmers and landowners, performing domestic and non-domestic tasks in lieu of partial payment of the family debt. Forced labour in commercial agriculture is also found in the harvesting of rattan in the Philippines, sugar cane and rubber in Brazil, and vegetables in Honduras and South Africa. ^[49]

The main policy divide on child labour issues is between legal interventions and public action. National legislation stipulates a minimum working age and regulates the working conditions of young persons, ^[50] while public action through collaborative interventions seeks to alter the economic environment, so that parents voluntarily withdraw their children from the labour force. A great many initiatives are being taken to address the problem of child labour in commercial agriculture, partly with ILO assistance, ranging from national committees to research, public advocacy, tripartite training seminars, and special action projects. ILO policy is currently formulated under four main headings, with IPEC (see box 16) as the Office’s flagship programme on child labour:

IPEC’s work has gained added impetus with the adoption at the International Labour Conference in June 1999 of the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 (No. 182), which defined such labour as “work which, by its nature or the circumstances in which it is carried out, is likely to harm the health, safety or morals of children” (see box 17). Much work on commercial farms and plantations fits this definition. This is particularly so in cases where chemicals, fertilizers and pesticides are used or in hazardous work in processing plants attached to the plantations.

Gender

Agriculture is the primary source of employment for women in most developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and East and South-East Asia, where women’s public work is not excluded by cultural norms. This inclusion is a mixed blessing, however, since women often have to contribute a majority of the labour on farms with very little to show for it by way of monetary rewards (see box 18 on sub-Saharan Africa). With increasing poverty, traditional norms are breaking down even in South Asia, where women now work in the fields, as opposed to homestead gardens. In Bangladesh, women are increasingly in charge of sowing, land preparation, transplanting, weeding, irrigation, spraying and harvesting (box 19). Tradition still prevails however in access to resources, with women having little say in the allocation of household expenditure. A critical issue remains women’s lack of command over arable land and the absence of effective land rights, whether through inheritance, state transfers or the market. This determines not only women’s livelihood options, but also their social and political status. ^[51]

Box 18
Women in agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa

Women have traditionally contributed heavily to agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa, where more than three-quarters of working women are to be found in the sector. Division of labour along gender lines prevails, with men taking care of the more arduous tasks at the field preparation stage and women predominating thereafter. There is also a traditional division of labour, with women being confined to cultivating food crops and men to cash crops. This also means women have very little control over family income, since food crops are generally grown for subsistence. In total, women contribute over 50 per cent of labour in all agricultural tasks, except for clearing the forest and preparing the fields.

	Share of total hours spent on each task (%) by:
	Women	Men
Clearing forest, preparing field	5-30	70-95
Planting, weeding, harvesting	50-70	30-50
Transporting crop home, storing, processing	80-90	10-20
Marketing surplus	60	40
Fetching water, fuel	90	10

Although the above data are rather old, there is ample reason to believe the situation has hardly changed – if it has, it will have been for the worse because of the deepening economic crisis in Africa.

Source: Economic Commission for Africa (ECA): United Nations handbook on women in Africa: Today and tomorrow (Addis Ababa, 1975), cited in ILO: Rural employment promotion, Report VII, International Labour Conference, 75th Session, Geneva 1988, p. 42; see also ILO: Gender! A partnership of equals, Briefing kit of the Bureau for Gender Equality (Geneva, 2000).

Traditional norms concerning women’s roles and income sharing condition this, but equally important are five interrelated factors: lack of control over productive resources; inequalities in employment opportunities; exclusion from decision- and policy-making; unfavourable legal environment; and increasing prevalence of female-headed households. These factors effectively exclude women from an equal share in remuneration, in total disregard of their contribution to family food security. The fact that this contribution is usually in the form of subsistence food renders it invisible, but is nevertheless very real. The growing prevalence of female-headed households because of the absence of men in towns in search of employment or increasing divorce and abandonment means women have to bear even more burdens in bringing up children.

ILO experience in assisting women in agriculture (as also in other sectors) has shown the importance of contextualizing women’s patterns within the rules and practices of the household, community, market and the State which perpetuate their subordinacy. Emphasis is increasingly placed on making the whole process of gender discrimination – from incentives and constraints to rewards – more transparent. Gender mainstreaming, generation of gender-sensitive data and information, and enhanced capacity building, combined with greater participation by women at all stages of decision-making, are seen as the basis of the ILO’s work on gender equality (see box 20).

Such increased participation would contribute not only to higher household incomes but also to sustainable development by tapping women’s knowledge of genetic diversity acquired through their routine tasks of provisioning their families and the market with food, fuel and water. A three-pronged approach is called for:

Better data and research on gender-specific household and agricultural technologies should be integral parts of this approach.

Occupational safety and health

Agriculture ranks as one of the three most hazardous occupations in both developing and industrialized countries, alongside mining and construction. The sector accounted for more than half of the total of 330,000 fatal workplace accidents worldwide in 1997, and the mortality rate in agriculture, contrary to that in other dangerous occupations, is increasing. ^[52] This means that at the global level, agricultural workers run at least twice the risk of dying on the job compared to workers in other sectors; in the United States the comparison is even worse, since agricultural workers suffered a fatality rate of 20.9 per 100,000 in 1996 compared to the overall industrial average of 3.9. The recorded statistics everywhere, bleak as they are, show just the tip of the iceberg since difficulties involved in the diagnosis of occupational and work-related diseases and in establishing the employment status of agricultural workers almost always result in under-reporting. In contrast to the high injury rates suffered by agricultural workers, protection is weakest in terms of injury benefits or social insurance, the most common being individual insurance schemes. Workers on family farms, daily labourers in plantations, seasonal and migrant workers, women workers, and child workers are the most vulnerable groups.

Machinery and chemicals are the leading cause of injuries on farms. While machinery has undoubtedly reduced physical drudgery, it has also contributed to increasing accidents particularly in developing countries in connection with the use of inadequate protectives and lack of attention to prevention and training on safety issues. Even in developed countries, machine-induced accidents are the cause of most work accidents, accounting for 25 per cent of all agricultural accidents in France, for example, and 40 per cent in Spain, half of these from tractors alone. ^[53] In Argentina, in the period April-June 1997, agricultural machinery was the cause of 30 per cent of non-fatal injuries and 4 per cent of fatal injuries. Colombia reported that 50 per cent of all agricultural accidents in 1996 involved tractors.

Chemicals account for most of the rest of farm injuries. Nearly three-quarters of a million chemicals and chemical compounds are used in agriculture throughout the world, and several thousand new ones appear every year, often without any prior assessment of their potential effects. Developing country farmers again are most at risk because of their inability to afford protective gear and lack of awareness of the dangers. At the start of the 1990s with only 20 per cent of the world’s agrochemical consumption, developing countries accounted for almost all (99 per cent) of the deaths due to pesticide poisoning. ^[54]

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 3.5-5 million people are poisoned by pesticides every year, 40,000 fatally. United States government estimates speak of 735,000 people a year worldwide suffering from pesticide-related illnesses, while a Canadian source puts the number of deaths in developing countries from pesticides at 10,000 every year and poisonings at 4 million. ^[55] Acute poisoning may occur when pesticides are applied in close spaces where they cannot disperse, causing high levels of concentration in the air. However, delayed toxicity, which is seldom diagnosed, may be induced by repeated exposure to even low concentrations of chemicals. Chronic and delayed repercussions include cancer, respiratory diseases, neurological and neuromuscular impairments, neuro-behavioural effects, psychiatric sequels, and allergies. Chronic toxicity also affects foetuses in women exposed to chemicals during pregnancy (teratogenesis).

Phasing out the use of the most dangerous pesticides – those that cause cancer or reproductive harm, or are toxic to the nervous system – would represent a major step towards a more sustainable healthy and human agricultural system. The following steps are called for: ^[56]

Greater awareness of the risks to human health and the environment by pesticides has led to increasing acceptance among manufacturers of measures and programmes to reduce pesticide usage.

Apart from injuries and deaths caused by machines and chemicals, major occupational diseases occur in agricultural work, including: infectious disorders transmitted by contact with animals (zoonoses); respiratory tract infections; dermatosis; allergies; occupational cancer; injuries due to noise and vibration; and musculoskeletal disorders arising from repetitive work, working in unsuitable positions, carrying heavy loads or working excessively long hours. There is also a significant risk of death by asphyxia from falls into storage silos. The diseases and disorders result in a significant expenditure of energy, premature ageing, absenteeism and declining productivity, and lead to high social and health costs at the national level.

On all aspects of OSH, the lead in the Office is provided by the InFocus Programme on SafeWork (formerly the Occupational Safety and Health Branch). An example of a successful prototype technical cooperation project carried out by the branch is described in box 21. Such work will receive a boost with the anticipated adoption of new standards on OSH in agriculture by the International Labour Conference (box 22).

Genetically modified crops

Genetic engineering refers to recently developed techniques to enable the transfer of genetic material among cells of unrelated species to improve the tolerance of crops and animals to particular stresses, pests and pathogens and increase the efficiency of nutrient intake (see box 23). ^[57] Gains are foreseen, in the case of crops, in terms of increased agricultural production, particularly from marginal lands, and reduced use of agrochemicals. Many consider genetic modification (GM) as an essential scientific breakthrough needed to feed the world, protect the environment and reduce poverty. ^[58] However, dissent is increasing, based on a fear of the unpredictability of transplanted genes. ^[59] Vigilance is called for to evaluate potential problems that have been raised by scientists and environmentalists, such as weediness, gene flow, development of new viruses, and unintended effects of plant-produced insecticides on non-target organisms. ^[60] “Super weeds” may be created if advantages such as herbicide resistance are passed on to wild native flora, or engineered crops may unwittingly target beneficial insect predators that feed on harmful insects present on these crops. Homogeneous GM varieties may cause genetic degradation, as new seeds replace local varieties, and vector recombination may generate new resilient strains of viruses, especially in GM crops engineered with viral resistance through viral genes. In the light of such concerns, the 8th Session of the Commission on Sustainable Development in April-May 2000 called for “a moratorium on GMOs [genetically modified organisms] until adequate research on their impacts is complete”. ^[61]

Unfortunately, funds for environmental risk assessment have up to now been limited. For example, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) spends 1 per cent of the funds allocated to biotechnology research on risk assessment, about $1-2 million per year. Such resources are nowhere near sufficient, given the current level of deployment of GM plants.

Another fear with respect to GM is the increasing private sector dominance of a few commercial enterprises in their development (see table 13), unlike the case of the Green Revolution, in which the public sector played a significant role. The extension of the notion of intellectual property rights contributes further to privatization of GM development. Monsanto, for example, has made patent claims to all GM cotton and brassicas. Seed patenting could be detrimental to small farmers, particularly in less developed countries, since they would be forced to pay royalties for the patented seed at each sowing. ^[62] Multinationals could also tie up the supply of herbicide-resistant crops to their own brands of herbicides. A fear has even been expressed that biotechnological products from industrialized countries may displace traditional developing country commodities. ^[63]

The new agricultural revolution has not expanded as fast as “life sciences” corporations might have wished. Public concern has been steadily growing in the past few years. The European Union (EU) has already forced food manufacturers to label biotech products. Some British and EU grocery store chains have banned foods with GM ingredients, and the United States Government is tightening up its monitoring of GM foods (box 24).

Table 13. Three main GM crops commercialized in the United States, July 1998


	Modification	Company	Applications

Maize	Insect resistance – Bt toxin	Monsanto, Novartis, Mycogen	Insect control
	Herbicide resistance – glyphosate	Monsanto	Weed control
	Herbicide resistance – glufosinate	Monsanto, Hoechst	Weed control
	Fertility control system	Hoechst/AgrEvo/Plant Genetic Systems	Hybrid seed production
Cotton	Herbicide resistance – bromoxynil	Monsanto/Calgene/Rhône Poulenc	Weed control
	Herbicide resistance – sulphonyl urea	DuPont	Weed control
	Herbicide resistance – glyphosate	Monsanto	Weed control
	Herbicide resistance – bromoxynil. Insect resistance – Bt toxin	Monsanto/Calgene/Rhône Poulenc	Weed and insect control
Soy bean	Herbicide resistance – glyphosate	Monsanto	Weed control
	Herbicide resistance – glufosinate	Hoechst/AgrEvo	Weed control
	High oleic acid	DuPont	Increase stability. Reduced poly-unsaturated fatty acids

Source: Gene Exchange (Washington, DC, Union of Concerned Scientists), Summer 1998.

After four years of negotiations, the world’s first international accord to regulate the use, handling and cross-border transfers of GMOs was adopted on 29 January 2000 in Montreal, Canada, as the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to the Convention on Biodiversity. The treaty represents a rare success in balancing environmental concerns with free trade, interests that are not easily reconciled. The key provision requires exporters to obtain prior permission from the importing country for the first shipment of a “living modified organism” for release into the environment, but not for commodities intended for food, feed or processing. The “precautionary principle” introduced in the treaty states that a nation can take action to protect itself – in this case by barring importation of a GMO – even in the absence of scientific certainty about the danger.

Although they hold a promise of high yields and perhaps even environmental friendliness, GMOs are as yet in an experimental stage and hence require careful monitoring. The ILO’s three social partners – governments, workers, employers – all have roles to play in this. The issue will be one of the points for discussion.

Voluntary initiatives

Voluntary initiatives in the form of labels and codes of conduct are intended to privilege goods and services produced under fair and equitable working conditions. The initiatives are “voluntary” in that producers or retailers who place a label on a product or service or adopt a code of conduct do so by choice, rather than in response to government legislation or import restrictions, and the consumer freely chooses to purchase the labelled or coded item. ^[64] Aimed at consumers and/or potential business partners, social labels may be affixed to products, displayed at retail sites, or assigned to enterprises, while codes of conduct are written statements of principle intended to serve as the expression of a commitment to specific enterprise conduct. Such codes may be adopted unilaterally by enterprises, negotiated between management, workers and/or NGOs, or influenced in some way by shareholders. ^[65]

Following the success of campaigns against child labour in certain export industries, the first social labelling initiatives were introduced in the 1990s as a supplementary means of attempting to totally eliminate child labour from any role in the production of the labelled product and improving the situation of child workers. ^[66] Later initiatives have encompassed other issues such as international labour standards on forced labour, freedom from discrimination, freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining, and issues relating to conditions of work with respect to wage levels, social benefits and working hours. Protection of the environment is an even more recent addition.

Voluntary initiatives are common for coffee, tea and bananas in the form of “fair trade initiatives” (see box 25). These initiatives purchase directly from small farmers at a guaranteed minimum price plus a premium for adherence. Fair trade labels attempt to shift the extra costs of labelling, such as the price premium, to the consumer. The Forest Stewardship Council, which began as an effort to address technical aspects of forest management, has incorporated principles of freedom of association and occupational health and safety in its labelling initiatives. The labour issues addressed by the Flower Label Program, developed to ensure environmentally and socially correct production of imported flowers, were influenced at the start by trade union involvement.

Advocates of voluntary initiatives draw on the example of the eco-labelling movement in operation for more than 20 years. Ecological and “green” labels have proliferated in many markets, and are now easily recognized by consumers. Table 14 shows selected operative private initiative labelling programmes. No endorsement on the part of the ILO is implied.

Table 14. Social labelling programmes, 1998


Programme/ year started	Product	Market sector ^a	Primary countries of operation		Leaders ^b
Programme/ year started	Product	Market sector ^a	Producers	Buyers	Leaders ^b

Care & Fair 1994	Hand-knotted carpets	E	India, Nepal, Pakistan	Germany, UK, Netherlands, Luxembourg	E
Kaleen 1995	Hand-knotted carpets	E	India	Germany, Nordic countries	E + G
RUGMARK 1994	Hand-knotted carpets	E	India, Nepal, Pakistan	US, Germany, other W. Europe, Canada	NGO
STEP 1995	Hand-knotted carpets	E	India, Nepal, Pakistan, Morocco, Egypt	Switzerland	E + NGO
Double Income Project 1995	Textiles, handicrafts, jewellery	E	Kenya, India, L. America, esp. Peru	Switzerland	E
Pro-Child 1995	Footwear	D	Brazil	Brazil	E
Abrinq 1995	Footwear and other	E + D	Brazil	Brazil, other L. America	E + NGO
Baden 1997	Sport balls	E	China	Primarily N. America and W. Europe, some L. America, Pacific Rim	E
Reebok 1996	Soccer balls	E	Pakistan	US, Europe, L. America	E
Fairtrade Labelling Org. International 1988	Agricultural products	E	20 in Africa, L. America, Asia	W. Europe, US, Canada, Japan	NGO
Flower Label Program 1997	Cut flowers	E	Ecuador, Israel, Kenya, Zambia, Zimbabwe	Germany, Austria, Sweden, Switzerland	W + NGO
Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) 1996	Forestry products, including timber	E + D	Brazil, Mexico, Malaysia, Poland, S. Africa, Sri Lanka, Sweden, UK, US	Australia, Japan, W. Europe, N. America	W + E + NGO

^a E = export; D = domestic. ^b W = workers; E = enterprise; G = government; NGO = non-governmental organization. Notes on some labels: RUGMARK International is expected to maintain uniform standards across the RUGMARK system; RUGMARK Foundations in Germany and the US manage and protect the trademark system and promote the labelled carpets in the importer countries; RUGMARK Foundations in India and Nepal are autonomously responsible for implementing the RUGMARK criteria locally. STEP (Stiftung für gerechte Bedingungen in Teppichherstellung und handel – Foundation for fair conditions in carpet production and carpet trade) is a joint initiative of a Swiss industry association and five Swiss NGOs. The Abrinq Foundation for Children’s Rights created the Child-Friendly Company Programme, which includes a labelling component. The Foundation is an NGO established by members of Brazil’s Association of Toy Manufacturers. It also covers, toys, agricultural products, chemicals, transport equipment, financial and other (restaurant, parking) services and utilities. FLO International is an umbrella organization comprising the independent labels Max Havelaar, TransFair and Fairtrade Mark. FLO agricultural products include coffee, tea, honey, sugar, cocoa, bananas, and orange juice. FLO products are largely exported through alternative trade structures, but aim to reach a broader market through exports through mainstream retail channels. Source: Diller, op. cit., p. 105.

Overwhelming evidence exists on the efficacy of consumer pressure to induce conditions of production in the targeted activity. The price premium itself can be used for this by channelling it back into improvements in the region of production. Surveys in the United States and Europe indicate consumer willingness to pay higher prices for “socially correct” products. The most important role of labelling initiatives is the snowball effect they have on the mainstream market once labelled products command a 10 per cent share. This creates the opportunity for trade unions to negotiate industry-wide codes of conduct. If successfully implemented, these codes could eliminate the need for specific human rights or environmental labels, the brand name of the product sufficing as the only label necessary. ^[67]

Clearly, private voluntary initiatives are a powerful means of promoting universal values and, with this in view, the United Nations has proposed a “Global Compact” between its various agencies and the world business community (box 26). The Compact is “an initiative to safeguard sustainable growth within the context of globalization by promoting a core set of universal values which are fundamental to meeting the socio-economic needs of the world’s people today and tomorrow. It is an effort to give a human face to the global market”. ^[68] Not surprisingly, the ILO’s core labour standards are very much at the heart of the “universal values” espoused by the Compact. The programme of activities in the Office is being coordinated by the Voluntary Private Initiatives Programme. Some of its proposed activities are shown in box 26.

Quite evidently governments, workers’ and employers’ organizations have differing perspectives on private initiatives. The Meeting will be invited to discuss the roles of the tripartite partners in furthering the cause of social issues through private voluntary initiatives.

5. Conclusions

Of the three mechanisms for the spread of globalization effects identified in this report – increasing exports through reduced transportation and storage costs, transmission of ideas, and foreign direct investment – so far most of the impact has come through the first two: declines in transportation and storage costs have opened up new markets for non-traditional exports, and the rapid transmission of ideas had led to pressures for better labour practices. Cross-border investments have however played an important role, particularly in the start-up of non-traditional exports and in the form of backward-linkage transmission of demands made on agriculture by international buying chains. Such investments are nothing new, having occurred when new countries were opened up for the export of tea, sugar, coffee, cocoa, palm oil, rubber and bananas. Now that experience is being repeated in the case of the new “dynamic” exports and demands for the production of standardized goods.

While the impact of globalization on the agricultural sector will undoubtedly increase, certain limitations must be recognized. Globalization, almost by definition, is confined to the modern sector, this being conditioned by two external factors – income elasticity of demand and the nature of technological innovations – and one internal factor – the strategic and symbolic importance of agriculture and land. Basically, income elasticities will dictate higher returns in industry and services compared to agriculture, inducing capital to flow into the non-agricultural sectors. Recent technological innovations too have been faster in the non-agricultural sectors compared to agriculture. In the developed countries such innovations have percolated down to the farms through the spread of information technology – and lately genetic engineering – but even then the gains in productivity per se in agriculture have been much more limited than in the rest of the economy. This is all the more true for developing countries, where the productivity gap between agriculture and non-agriculture has always been wide and has increased further under globalization.

Yet the fact remains that a vast array of agricultural innovations is available to currently developing countries to modernize their farms, and liberalization measures put into effect as a result of globalization ensure the possibility of rapid transfer. Moreover, many of these innovations have already been tested by an earlier round of developing countries. Why have today’s developing countries been slow in adopting these technologies, and in particular why have they been reluctant to attract foreign investment in their agriculture sector as has happened in the modern sector under globalization? The reason is provided by the “internal” factor mentioned earlier – the strategic and symbolic importance of the agricultural sector. Where agriculture still occupies over half of the labour force, as in many developing countries, there is a well justified fear that the fast introduction of new technologies could displace vast numbers of agricultural workers and alienate them from their land. At early stages of development such huge shifts in the labour force would be beyond the capacity of the nascent industrial sector to accommodate. There is also a fear, often well justified, that such massive alienation from land could occur at the expense of food security, since FDI is more likely to occur in non-food crops than in food crops, in consonance with their respective rates of return. Moreover, given that a greater use of chemical inputs is almost always imperative in the graduation to higher technologies in agriculture, there is also a danger to the occupational safety and health of the workforce, where the agricultural workforce is uneducated and still a majority in rural areas. Hence gradualism is a prudent way forward in involving FDI in agriculture. The development of the flower industry in African and Latin American countries points the way, although fears about land alienation, food security and OSH are present even in this context.

Ironically, although it is now relegated to a minority position, it is worth remembering that agriculture was one of the first sectors to participate in the prototype globalization that started with the extension of sea and land routes at the turn of the century. Cotton, coffee, cocoa, palm oil, tea and rubber were the prime movers. In the current globalization process these crops have not benefited from any major productivity-enhancing innovations nor from any demand expansion. In fact, demand, if anything, has been on a downward trend for a long time, as substitutes have been invented. In the meantime, economies that have not been able to lock into the current globalization drive, notably those in sub-Saharan Africa, have continued to increase their supplies of these traditional crops, contributing to price declines. Many of these countries are now pinning their hopes on diversifying their export base into crops for which demand is increasing, such as flowers, spices, fruit and vegetables, and whose exports have become viable with the technical advances in transportation and storage that are part of the current process of globalization.

It is in the countries which have succeeded in globalizing their economies – for practical purposes the East Asian countries – that we talk of “marginalization” of the agriculture sector, as manufacturing exports have grown much faster than agricultural exports. In consequence, these countries have escaped the worst effects of declining terms of trade of agricultural products, while at the same time their agriculture sector has been the indirect beneficiary of growth by shedding a great part of its workforce to the better paying urban areas. In the earlier stages of this process, remittances from the newly urbanized workers become important supplements to rural family incomes, but later, with the agricultural labour force starting to decline in absolute terms, even the wages of workers on the farms begin to increase. This is the “historical” pattern of how agriculture participates in growth, and is confirmed by the experience of many globalizing economies.

One aspect of globalization that should be noted occurs in the form of labour migration across borders, most notable being the migration of workers from South Asian countries to the Gulf States. Often the migrants come from rural areas or have relatives there and their remittances have been an important and often dominant component of rural incomes.

The current phase of globalization has proceeded in tandem with the liberalization of internal markets and international trade – the former often referred to as “structural adjustment” in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, and “transition” in the former centrally planned economies. Structural adjustment has enabled African countries to participate in new exports, while in the transition economies, particularly those in Asia, much growth has been triggered with the freeing of the incentive structure. The ongoing trade liberalization under the Uruguay Round has the potential to effect significant changes in production patterns, as countries, developing as well as developed, adjust to new relative prices, cleansed of subsidies and non-tariff barriers. Increasing trade and information flows in themselves influence labour standards in developing countries’ agriculture, as there are increasing demands from consumer groups for export crops to conform to certain basic standards with respect to occupational safety and health of workers, employment of children, workers’ rights and environment.

Some broad guidelines for policy action emerge. First, in all countries there is scope for adopting productivity-raising technologies in food crops to ensure that the structural transformation away from agriculture that is the normal pattern of growth proceeds quickly, but not at the expense of food security. Second, countries that are still locked in traditional exports should be helped to diversify their production base to new exports for which demand conditions are favourable. Third, developing countries should remain prudent in attracting FDI into their agriculture sectors since this could result in the displacement of vast amounts of labour from the land and in food insecurity. Fourth, developing countries will increasingly have to conform to basic labour standards in response to heightened consumer awareness of conditions of work in export agriculture. Fifth, since the indirect benefits of globalization are often slow in reaching rural areas, continued assistance to the rural sector is called for in terms of investment in infrastructure and social services.

The above policy guidelines assume all the more importance when it is realized that rural workers – farmers as well as wage earners – are the most deprived of all workers in terms of wages, occupational safety and health, social protection, and representation – the four dimensions of “decent work”. The fifth policy nexus – national efforts to get agriculture moving – is particularly important in this respect.

Again, some broad parameters may be indicated. The priority is to raise the abysmally low productivity and yield levels in agriculture, while at the same time improving the conditions of work of rural workers. For many developing countries that are unable to attract vast amounts of FDI for their modern sector – i.e. for practical purposes, the African countries – the agriculture sector has to remain the “engine of growth” to provide the surplus for the development of the industrial sector. Increasing food production is an integral part of this process, first, to raise nutritional standards from bare sufficiency levels and, second, to feed a bigger non-farm population. It is also important, however, to increase the production of export crops to generate foreign exchange to finance the importation of inputs for the agriculture sector itself, as well as the expanding industrial sector. The operation of interlocking “virtuous circles” is evident here: higher food production enables the release of workers to run the industries, while increasing exports facilitate the purchase of modern inputs for the farms, themselves forming one link in the virtuous circle in that they contribute to raising productivity of both food and export crops. Given the vast array of technical possibilities, selectivity is essential. Technologies that require major changes in the organization of existing farms are out of the question, as are those that provide high productivity growth but at the cost of displacing vast numbers of workers from the farms. If the fate of these workers is to remain unemployed – because the industrial sector is not growing fast enough – then there will be no net gain to the economy – and in fact a loss in terms of the social consequences. The very fact that agriculture still employs more than half of the labour force in a vast majority of developing countries calls for changes in small steps and in tandem with developments in the rest of the economy.

Selectivity is also required in choosing the export strategy, although here the need to diversify the export base is now widely accepted as part of conventional wisdom. The traditional export crops – beverages and fibres for clothing – simply do not provide any viable basis for generating the surpluses needed for development, given that demand for them is declining with the availability of substitutes, or not growing fast enough because of their position in the hierarchy of human needs. Better prospects exist for supplying the developed countries with exotic fruits, vegetables, and spices, demand for which is becoming more elastic as consumers acquire new tastes as a consequence of the “shrinking world” – increasing tourism and international migration. This important aspect of globalization, combined with advances in transportation and storage technologies, translates into growing markets. Flower imports from increasingly remote countries is another manifestation of the “shrinking world”, in this case attributable to reduced transportation and storage costs. Flower growing is “modern” agriculture par excellence: flowers have to be grown under glass and according to a very strict time regime, using irrigation and massive doses of chemicals and fertilizers. The “downside” is quite evident in the health and environmental hazards involved in the use of these “modern” inputs. These hazards must be eliminated for their own sake, but also, increasingly, in response to society’s demands for safe agriculture, expressed in the form of private voluntary initiatives. Such consumer movements are bound to grow. Complying with them is not only desirable in and of itself but brings additional benefits in terms of the premium prices consumers are willing to pay for approved exports.

Looking into the new century, there are many reasons for optimism. Communication technology will continue its relentless advance and open up new markets and new geographical areas to supply these markets. Biotechnology will leap forward as more secrets of the plant and animal genome are unearthed. Seed selection and breeding of superior animals have been a part of agriculture for as long as farming has been practised, and genetic modifications occur even in nature; now such experiments are conducted in laboratories and enter the real world with the speed of the Internet. There are questions as to the long-term consequences for the environment and human beings, yet their productivity-enhancing effect has the potential to speed up the transformation of economies. The high degree of public awareness about possible negative repercussions will ensure that the more experimental innovations are held at bay until their effects have been better ascertained.

The concept of “decent work” recently put forward by the ILO, with its four core components – promotion of fundamental principles and rights at work, sustainable employment with equitable remuneration, social protection for all, and strengthening of tripartism and social dialogue – provides most of the essential ingredients for agricultural development on a safe and sustainable basis. The four components of “decent work” also reflect the four dimensions implied in “sustainable development”. It is particularly important in the case of the agricultural sector to recognize the contribution of all agricultural workers – i.e. farmers as well as waged workers – to sustainable agriculture. This implies adherence on the part of governments to the core ILO standards on freedom of association, the right to collective bargaining, and the elimination of discrimination with respect to employment and occupation, forced or bonded labour, and child labour. Universal acceptance of these core standards would ensure that the promise of globalization does not become the prerogative of a minority in the modern sectors to the exclusion of the majority on the farms.

Summary

Although “globalization” – i.e. the integration of the world economy – has been the hallmark of economic development in the twentieth century, what is remarkable today is the speed at which globalization is proceeding. The underlying pace of technological change is responsible for this, and is nowhere more palpably felt than in the field of communications, notably the computer, the Internet and the mobile phone. Increasing foreign direct investment has been the catalyst for rapid globalization, almost ubiquitous now in the form of transnational production and growing manufacturing exports. A sea change of global proportions in the ideological stance with regard to the respective roles of the State and markets has fuelled the globalization drive, through liberalization of laws to permit greater foreign direct investment and capital flows, and dismantling of tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade, among other measures. The report looks at how the agricultural sector has been affected. It is shown that of the three forces of globalization – foreign direct investment, trade, and transmission of ideas – it is perhaps the last aspect that has had the greatest impact so far, by putting pressure on governments and farmers in developing countries to conform to socially beneficial ideas with respect to the employment of children, gender equality, and occupational safety and health. Many of these ideas are translated into reality through private voluntary initiatives in the form of social labels and codes of conduct. One new issue that the world’s agriculture has to confront is in the area of genetic engineering, whose rapid spread again bears witness to the fast pace of technological change in the world today. Genetically modified crops have the potential to feed the world but also unknown environmental and health effects, as well as their possible impact on employment patterns if they leapfrog into developing countries.

The traditional role of the agricultural sector is to facilitate industrialization by providing a surplus in the form of food, fibre, fuel and workers. The industrial sector achieves faster growth than agriculture, dictated by income elasticities (i.e. expenditure patterns), and agriculture begins to decline relatively to the modern sector. Farm workers begin to leave the farms and hence agriculture also recedes in terms of the employment structure. Successful development thus inevitably means that agriculture declines in terms of its relative contribution to GDP and employment. For agriculture to “decline” successfully and quickly, it must be strengthened, particularly at early stages of development when upwards of two-thirds of the population still derive sustenance from it. Only if its growth is strong can the agricultural sector shed workers to the industrial sector and feed them.

Increasing emphasis is being placed on “sustainability” and “multifunctionality” of agricultural development in recognition of the central role of agriculture for generations to come and its multiple functions apart from producing food, fibre and fuel. Multifunctionality draws attention to the synergies and trade-offs that exist between agriculture and other rural activities, linkages that can be harnessed to further the development of both agriculture and rural areas in general. Sustainability encompasses many of the themes discussed in the report – sustainable employment and remuneration, occupational health and safety of workers, security of land tenure, and elimination of child labour and gender inequality. Thus, in many ways, “sustainable agriculture” is the corollary of “decent work”, and the observance of core ILO standards is an intrinsic component of both, with the emphasis on workers’ right to freedom of association and collective bargaining.

Four dimensions of “modernization” of agriculture are discussed: the use of better technologies; diversifying into more “modern” exports; changing to more durable tenurial arrangements; and improving labour practices in response to social demands. Raising yield levels is the sine qua non for agricultural growth and economic development. While leapfrogging to modern technologies is possible, this should be avoided at early stages of development because of the sheer disproportionality between the agricultural sector and the rest of the economy. In this case, technological enhancement would be offset by a vast displacement of agricultural labour that would be impossible for the non-agricultural sectors to accommodate. Increasing use of simple mechanical tools and chemicals is the most feasible goal for countries which are still predominantly agricultural. A vast array of such technologies exists, and if factor prices are decided by market forces – as is increasingly the case – then there is a good chance that the upgrading of technologies will proceed smoothly, without causing massive lay-offs.

Modernization of agriculture can also be achieved by diversifying into more “modern” exports – fruits, vegetables, spices, flowers, etc. Aside from the need for modernization, another reason for diversification is the poor market conditions for traditional agricultural exports – beverages, food, and fibres. Almost continuous declines in real-term prices have been experienced by these crops in the last two decades and price fluctuations are common. Reduced transportation and storage costs have enabled the geographical spread of the more modern exports, which fetch better returns, being higher than traditional exports in the income-elasticities hierarchy. Flower growing has succeeded in many African and Latin American countries and prospects remain bright for this and other dynamic exports.

Adoption of higher-yield technologies and sustainable practices is hampered by the insecurity of tenurial arrangements that exists in most developing countries as a result of historical inequitable distribution of land. While land reform is the usual remedy proposed, other less drastic measures are available to improve the access of the poor to land – for example, privatization of land previously held under customary tenure, settlement of families on newly developed lands, and the establishment of individual usufruct rights. The last is particularly necessary in Asian countries to protect tenants from extortionate rents demanded by landlords.

Five issues are singled out for discussion in the context of the need to “modernize” labour practices in deference to the globalization of consumer-inspired movements – child labour, gender equality, occupational safety and health, private voluntary initiatives (PVIs), and genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The first three issues have gathered momentum in the past two decades often through PVIs, while the GMO issue is new and reflects the fast pace of technological development.

It is shown that the majority of children who work are found on farms; most of these work on family farms, which rather attenuates the burden, although the long-term objective must remain to lift the families above poverty in order to rescue the children from work and put them in schools, where they belong. Child labour in commercial agriculture has a more definite connotation of exploitation, since children are exposed to long hours of work, physical drudgery, and hazards, with very little by way of remuneration. Child labour in agriculture (or elsewhere) in the context of debt bondage is clearly even more reprehensible.

Agriculture is the primary source of employment for women in most developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. This is a mixed blessing, since women contribute a majority of the labour on farms, for very little monetary remuneration. Improving their position is a long drawn-out task, since traditional norms concerning gender roles and sharing incomes are at stake. Emphasis is increasingly being placed on making the whole process of gender discrimination more transparent. Greater participation of women at all stages of decision-making provides the best hope of mobilizing society for social and economic change.

Agriculture ranks among the three most hazardous occupations in both developing and industrialized countries and, contrary to other sectors, its safety record is worsening. Increasing use of machinery and chemicals is the root cause of this, particularly in the context of a labour force that lacks training in safe practices and employers who are all too ready to cut corners. There is a need to train workers and provide them with protective equipment to lessen the risk of injury. Urgent steps are necessary to reduce the exposure of the workforce to harmful chemicals, including banning the broadcast spraying of pesticides.

Debate will focus increasingly on the pros and cons of genetically modified crops. Despite the gains in terms of increased agricultural production and reduced use of chemicals, there are fears as to the unpredictability of transplanted genes, and vigilance is required to monitor potential problems, such as weediness, gene flow, development of new viruses, and unintended effects of plant-produced insecticides on non-target organisms. The technology is “scalable” – i.e. it can be applied on a small-scale basis – and hence can leapfrog into developing country agriculture, with the potential risk of disrupting employment patterns.

The social issues discussed above are being increasingly tackled through private voluntary initiatives in the form of labels, which seek to put a seal of approval on goods and services produced under fair and equitable working conditions and deemed to be safe for human consumption. Voluntary initiatives are common for coffee, tea and bananas in the form of “fair trade initiatives”. These initiatives promise a guaranteed price to farmers plus a premium for adherence. Private voluntary initiatives are an effective way to nudge agricultural practices towards observance of universally accepted standards with respect to child labour, occupational safety and health, and gender equality.

Suggested points for discussion

Arising from the information presented in this report, the following points are proposed by the Office as a basis for the Meeting’s discussion, it being understood that, in line with the general characteristics of ILO sectoral meetings, the Meeting is free to organize its work as it sees fit.

Macroeconomic policy issues

1. Given the importance of agriculture in many developing countries, how should government policy be oriented to ensure that agriculture contributes to sustainable employment creation and overall sustainable development? How should workers’ and employers’ organizations facilitate sustainable agriculture?

2. Is there a remaining role for the State in fixing prices and ensuring orderly competitive trading of major export crops? In particular, how should the competing interests of farmers and consumers with respect to food prices be reconciled?

3. What should governments’ stance be vis-à-vis globalization, particularly foreign direct investment (FDI) in agriculture? Diversification into non-traditional crops could well entail attracting FDI and foreign personnel. Are any guidelines possible?

Social issues

4. Child labour is common in agriculture. How should it be reduced and eventually eliminated? Is the distinction between child labour on family farms and commercial farms justifiable, or should all child labour be subjected to the same policy guidelines?

5. Women contribute heavily to farm work, apart from their domestic duties. What are some short-term measures available, for example in the form of simple tools to ease their burdens, and what are the possible long-term policy stances with a view to achieving gender equality?

6. Agriculture is among the three most hazardous occupations and growing use of machinery and chemicals in developing countries is bound to increase injury rates. What are the respective responsibilities of the State, workers and employers in this area? International action is also needed to enforce existing bans on hazardous chemicals.

7. Genetic engineering is a new development and its negative effects are therefore unknown, although much debated. Are there any general guidelines the Meeting may wish to propose in addressing the various attendant issues?

8. Private voluntary initiatives are an effective means to advance core labour standards. How should they be further promoted in terms of activities and social issues covered?

Role of the ILO

9. What should be the priority areas for ILO action, in particular research and technical assistance, in the context of globalization and its impact on sustainable agricultural employment and working conditions?

ILO Conventions and Recommendations relevant to agriculture adopted since 1919

Migration for Employment Convention (Revised), 1949 (No. 97), and its accompanying Recommendation (Revised) (No. 86)

Minimum Wage Fixing Machinery (Agriculture) Convention, 1951 (No. 99), and its accompanying Recommendation (No. 89)

Holidays with Pay (Agriculture) Convention, 1952 (No. 101), and its accompanying Recommendation (Revised) (No. 93)

Plantations Convention, 1958 [and Protocol, 1982] (No. 110), and its accompanying Recommendation (No. 110)

Guarding of Machinery Convention, 1963 (No. 119), and its accompanying Recommendation (No. 118)

Employment Injury Benefits Convention, 1964 (No. 121) [Schedule I amended in 1980], and its accompanying Recommendation (No. 121)

Maximum Weight Convention, 1967 (No. 127), and its accompanying Recommendation (No. 128)

Labour Inspection (Agriculture) Convention, 1969 (No. 129), and its accompanying Recommendation (No. 133)

Minimum Age Convention, 1973 (No. 138), and its accompanying Recommendation (No. 146)

Occupational Cancer Convention, 1974 (No. 139), and its accompanying Recommendation (No. 147)

Working Environment (Air Pollution, Noise and Vibration) Convention, 1977 (No. 148), and its accompanying Recommendation (No. 156)

Occupational Safety and Health Convention, 1981 (No. 155), and its accompanying Recommendation (No. 164)

Occupational Health Services Convention, 1985 (No. 161), and its accompanying Recommendation (No. 171)

Safety and Health in Construction Convention, 1988 (No. 167), and its accompanying Recommendation (No. 175)

Chemicals Convention, 1990 (No. 170), and its accompanying Recommendation (No. 177)

[1] FAO: The state of food insecurity in the world 1999, at http://www.fao.org/
focus/e/SOFI/home-e.htm.

[2] OECD Development Assistance Committee: Shaping the 21st century: The contribution of development co-operation (Paris, 1996). Available online at http://www.ocde.org/
dac/htm/stc.htm.

[3] Held in Durban, South Africa, on 4 Apr. 2000; see ILO: World of Work, No. 34, Apr.-May 2000, p. 13.

[4] See Peter Stalker: Workers without frontiers: The impact of globalization on international migration (Boulder, Colorado, and London, Lynne Reinner Publishers, and Geneva, ILO, 2000), pp. 3-5.

[5] In India tariffs fell from an average of 87 per cent in 1990-91 to 25 per cent in 1996-97, and non-tariff barriers dropped even more dramatically. IMF: World Economic Outlook, Apr. 2000.

[6] Source: World Bank: Global economic prospects and the developing countries, 1998/99.

[7] “Agriculture and technology”, in The Economist (London), 25 Mar. 2000, p. 9.

[9] Johnston and Mellor wrote a seminal, much-quoted treatise on this: Bruce F. Johnston and John Mellor: “The role of agriculture in economic development”, in American Economic Review (Menasha, Wisconsin), Sep. 1961, pp. 566-593.

[10] The latter role is best exemplified by the absorption in rural areas of urban workers displaced during the Asian crisis in 1997-98. An earlier example is the absorption in Ghana of over a million refugees expelled at short notice by Nigeria in the early 1980s.

[11] For a detailed discussion of the Sri Lankan case, see Vali Jamal: Employment and poverty in Sri Lanka: Long-term perspectives, Working Paper No. 157, forthcoming.

[12] United Nations Conference on Environment and Development: Agenda 21, Chs. 14 and 19; United Nations, CSD8: “Agriculture: Decision by the Commission on Sustainable Development at its 8th session” and “Chairman’s summary of the multi-stakeholder dialogue on sustainable agriculture”, May 2000. See also Peter Hazell and Ernst Lutz: “Integrating environmental and sustainability concerns into rural development policies”, in Ernst Lutz (ed.): Agriculture and the environment: Perspectives on sustainable rural development (Washington, DC, World Bank, 1998).

[13] IPM combines biological, mechanical and chemical methods to control pests to minimize the environmental effects.

[14] IUF Policy Brief No. 4, Sep. 1999. See also IUF: Good food, safe work: Trade unions and sustainable agriculture (Geneva, 2000).

[16] “Agriculture and technology”, op. cit., p. 1. Vast changes in income distribution are implicit in these figures, with further “marginalization” of farmers in the whole chain of agribusiness. A statement made by Lucien Royer on behalf of the ICFTU, TUAC, and the IUF to the Commission for Sustainable Development is apropos in this respect: “Where does the money go?”, he asked, and pointed to the growing gap between the rich and the poor. See, Lucien Royer, “‘Plough to plate’ approaches to food and agricultural production: Trade unions at the United Nations”, address to the Commission for Sustainable Development, 28 Feb. 2000.

[17] Taking a more long-term view – the last 50 years – FAO data show that yields of millet/sorghum increased by 57 per cent compared to 134 per cent for wheat and 104 per cent for rice. Maize, the primary preferred cereal in most of tropical Africa, helped to push up the cereal average for Africa, experiencing the best yield increase in the last 50 years – 139 per cent.

[19] See also the case studies on Ecuador, Uganda and the United Republic of Tanzania: Zonia Palán and Carlos Palán: Employment and working conditions in the Ecuadorian flower industry, SAP 2.79/WP.138 (Geneva, ILO, 1999); Patrick K. Asea and Darlison Kaija: Impact of the flower industry in Uganda, SAP.WP.148 (ILO, Geneva, 2000); Haji Hatibu Haji Semboja, Rhoda Mbelwa and Charles Bonaventura: The cut-flower industry in Tanzania,SAP.WP.152 (Geneva, ILO, 2000). The overall paper for the series puts the studies in a global perspective. See G. van Liemt: The world cut flower industry: Trends and prospects, SAP.WP.139 (forthcoming).

[20] IFAD: The state of world rural poverty: An inquiry into its causes and consequences (New York, New York University Press, 1992), p. 107. The following paragraphs too draw on this source.

[21] A statistical indicator that measures the extent to which the actual income distribution diverges from a hypothetical perfectly equal distribution. The higher the Gini coefficient, the more unequal the income distribution.

[22] United Nations: Sustainable agriculture and rural development, Report of the Secretary-General, CSD8, doc. E/CN.17/2000/7, para. 32.

[25] The World Bank identifies sub-Saharan Africa as the region in which the largest share of the population survives on less than a dollar a day. World Bank: Global Economic Prospects and the Developing Countries 2000 (Washington, DC, 1999), pp. 29-30.

[26] See in particular UNCTAD: Trade and Development Report, 1998 (New York and Geneva, 1998). A vigorous defence was put forward earlier by Vali Jamal and John Weeks in: Africa misunderstood or whatever happened to the rural-urban gap (London, Macmillan, 1993).

[27] The cumulative impacts of poor infrastructure, weak technical packages, slow development of commerce and highly uncertain land tenure, have substantially suppressed supply response to price and institutional liberalization. Jacob Meerman: Reforming agriculture: The World Bank goes to market, World Bank Operations Evaluation Study No. 16701 (Washington, DC, World Bank, 1997), p. 54.

[29] Thus in 1820 the ratio between the richest and the poorest country (the United Kingdom and China) was 3:1; by 1900 it was 10:1 (United Kingdom and Ghana) and by 1992, 72:1 (United States and Ethiopia) (UNDP: Human Development Report 1999, p. 38). The paper wealth of William Gates III, the creator of Microsoft, at the start of 2000 (US$100 billion) exceeded the GNP of Malaysia in 1997 (US$98 billion)! The vagaries of Nasdaq being what they are, by the end of April 2000 he was only the second richest man on earth and richer only than the Czech Republic!

[30] See Li Xiaoyuan et al.: Sustainable agriculture and rural development in China, at http://fao.org/sd/epdirect/epan0010.htm, from Promotion of sustainable agriculture and rural development in China. Elements for a policy framework and a National Agenda 21 Programme (FAO/UNDP/Ministry of Agriculture, China, 1997).

[31] Johnston and Mellor, op. cit., p. 572. Elasticity shows by what percentage X (in this case expenditure on food) changes as a result of a 1 per cent change in Y (in this case income).

[32] S. Subramanian, E. Sadoulet and A. de Janvry: Structural adjustment and agriculture: African and Asian experiences, Economic and Social Development Paper No. 124 (Rome, FAO, 1994).

[33] “Real” prices show what one unit of the exports in question would purchase of imported manufactured goods.

[34] World Bank: “Managing the recent commodity price cycle” (Ch. 4), Global Economic Prospects and the Developing Countries 2000, op. cit.

[35] With the implementation of the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture in 1994, for the first time the sector was submitted to multilateral rules. Participating countries agreed to convert all non-tariff agricultural trade barriers to tariffs and to reduce them. Reliance on price supports for domestic production and exports was curtailed in favour of less distorting forms of support such as direct income-support payments to farmers. Agriculture-specific non-tariff barriers, such as import quotas, variable levies, and minimum import prices, are now outlawed.

[36] For further discussion see Jacob Meerman: Reforming agriculture: The World Bank goes to market, op. cit.

[37] Barbara Harris: “Another awkward class: Merchants and agrarian change in India”, in Henry Bernstein et al. (eds.): The food question: Profits versus people (New York, Monthly Review Press, 1990).

[38] On the less drastic case of Viet Nam see Vali Jamal and Karel Jansen: Agrarian transition in Viet Nam, SAP 2.74/WP.128 (Geneva, ILO, 1998); and John Loxley and Vali Jamal: “Structural adjustment and agriculture in Guyana: From crisis to recovery”, SAP 2.84/WP.143 on the case of agricultural changes in Guyana following adjustment reforms.

[39] Charles Bettelheim: “Class struggles in the USSR: Second period, 1923-1930”, Monthly Review (New York, 1978).

[40] FAO: “Rural non-farm income in developing countries” (Part III), in The state of food and agriculture 1998 (Rome, 1998), pp. 293-294. See also ILO: Promotion of employment and incomes for the rural poor, including rural women, through non-farm activities, Advisory Committee on Rural Development, Tenth Session, Geneva, 22 Nov.-1 Dec. 1983, p. 85.

[41] See the report of the ILO National Tripartite Workshop on Long-term Perspectives for Rural Employment and Poverty, Colombo, 1-3 Oct. 1999 (unpublished document); and Vali Jamal: “Employment and poverty in Sri Lanka: Long-term perspectives” (Geneva, ILO, 2000) for further discussion.

[42] See Deborah Fahy Bryceson and Vali Jamal (eds.): Farewell to farms: De-agrarianisation and employment in Africa, African Studies Centre Research Series 1997/10 (Aldershot, Ashgate, 1997).

[43] Source: UNDP: Human Development Report 1999 (New York and Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 26.

[44] Alec Fyfe: Bitter harvest: Child labour in agriculture (Geneva, ILO, 1997), p. 5.

[45] ILO: Child labour in commercial agriculture in Africa, Technical Workshop on Child Labour in Commercial Agriculture in Africa, Dar es Salaam, United Republic of Tanzania, 27-30 Aug. 1996 (Geneva, 1997), p. 8. Only those countries with a per capita GNP of more than US$1,500 (Tunisia, South Africa and Mauritius) showed less than 30 per cent. The countries selected in the sample were heavily dependent on agriculture exports, the median share being 52 per cent of total exports.

[46] See V. Forastieri: Children at work: Health and safety risks (Geneva, ILO, 1997).

[47] A concept found useful in some past ILO work on rural development is that of “household survival strategy”. There is a close relationship between the family’s labour needs and the number of children they have. A family with few children is considered to be economically disadvantaged throughout the family life cycle. See ILO: Rural labour markets and employment policies: Issues relating to labour utilisation, remuneration and the position of women, Advisory Committee on Rural Development, Tenth Session, Geneva, 22 Nov.-1 Dec. 1983 (Geneva, 1983).

[50] In 1921 the ILO adopted the Minimum Age (Agriculture) Convention (No. 10), which stipulates that: “Children under the age of 14 years may not be employed or work in any public or private agricultural undertaking, or in any branch thereof, save outside the hours fixed for school attendance.” The Minimum Age Convention, 1973 (No. 138), sets the minimum age for admission to employment at 15 years, applicable to plantations and other agricultural undertakings mainly producing for commercial purposes, but excluding family and small-scale holdings producing for local consumption and not regularly employing hired workers.

[51] Bina Agarwal: “Gender inequality: Some critical neglected dimensions”, presentation at the ILO Symposium on Decent Work for Women, Geneva, 24 Mar. 2000.

[52] ILO: Safety and health in agriculture, Report VI(1), International Labour Conference, 88th Session, Geneva, 2000, p. 3. The same document is the source of subsequent estimates in this section. See also ILO: Yearbook of Labour Statistics 1996 (Geneva); C.J.L. Murray and A.D. Lopez (eds.): The global burden of disease, WHO Global burden of disease and injury series (Geneva, WHO, 1996); and V. Forastieri: ILO Programme on Occupational Safety and Health in Agriculture (Geneva, ILO, 1999), at http://www.ilo.org/public/english/protection/safework/agriculture/agrivf01.htm.

[53] Mutualité Sociale Agricole (MSA): Prévention des risques professionnels des salariés agricoles. Des conseillers au service des entreprises (Paris, 1994); and L. Marquez Delgado: “Seguridad en la maquinaria agrícola”, in Salud y Trabajo (Madrid, 1986), No. 56, cited in ILO, Safety and health in agriculture, op. cit., pp. 54-55.

[54] ILO: “Chemicals in the working environment”, in World Labour Report 1994 (Geneva, 1994), p. 82.

[56] Pesticide Action Network North America: Fields of poison: California farmworkers and pesticides (1999). See also http://www.panna.org.

[57] World Bank: Agricultural biotechnology: The next “Green Revolution”, Technical Paper No. 133 (Washington, DC, 1989).

[58] “At the forefront of preoccupations is the need to maintain adequate food production levels in the light of continuing high rates of population growth. Another major preoccupation […] is that of environmental degradation, which has two essential causes. One is the use, with increased population growth, of increasingly marginal lands for agricultural production. The other is the chemical-intensive (but high-productivity) model of agricultural production adopted in industrialized countries which has, increasingly, been adopted – and encouraged – in developing countries.” Carliene Brenner: Biotechnology policy for developing country agriculture, OECD Development Centre, Policy Brief No. 14 (OECD, 1997). The World Bank and the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) reported in 1997 that transgenic groups that are developed and used wisely can be very helpful and may prove essential to world food production and agricultural sustainability. See World Bank: Bioengineering of crops: Report of the World Bank Panel on Transgenic Crops, Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development Series No. 23 (Washington, DC, Oct. 1997).

[60] Miguel A. Altieri: Ten reasons why biotechnology will not ensure food security, protect the environment and reduce poverty in the developing world (University of California, Oct. 1999). See http://www.gene.ch. See also IUF: “Patenting life, destroying lives”, in News Bulletin, Vol. 69, No. 3-4.

[62] “Genetic engineering: Can it feed the world?”, in GeneWatch, Briefing No. 3, Aug. 1998, at http://www.genewatch.org/Publications/Briefs/Brief3.htm. The technique developed to prevent peasant farmers from reusing their seed has been dubbed “terminator technology”. Monsanto bowed to growing dissent and announced in 1999 that it would not commercialize the technology. In April 2000 it also announced that it would make its “working draft” of rice’s genetic make-up freely available to the publicly funded International Rice Genome Sequencing Project (IRGSP). However, those using Monsanto’s data for commercial use would still have to pay non-exclusive licensing rights. Source: Financial Times, 5 Apr. 2000.

[63] J.F.G. Bunders: Biotechnology for small-scale farmers in developing countries: Analysis and assessment procedures (Amsterdam, VU University Press, 1990).

[64] Janelle Diller: “A social conscience in the global marketplace? Labour dimensions of codes of conduct, social labelling and investor initiatives”, in International Labour Review, Vol. 138, No. 2, 1999, pp. 99-129; Janet Hilowitz: “Social labelling to combat child labour: Some considerations”, in International Labour Review, Vol. 136, No. 2, 1997, pp. 215-232.

[66] An ILO study lists the following labelling initiatives targeting child labour: (A) for the oriental hand-knotted carpet industry: (1) RUGMARK in Germany, the United States, India, Nepal and the Netherlands; (2) Care & Fair in Germany, the United Kingdom, India, Nepal and the Netherlands; (3) Kaleen in India; (4) STEP, headquartered in Switzerland; (B) for the textile and garment industries: (5) The Double Income Project, also based in Switzerland; and (C) for the footwear industry: (6) Abrinq, established by entrepreneurs in the State of São Paulo in Brazil. See also Hilowitz, op. cit.

[67] Geir Myrstad: Social labelling and trade union efforts to fight child labour: Some comments to the Hilowitz Report, at http://www.ilo.org/public/english/dialogue/actrav/ child/codecond/social2.htm.

[68] United Nations: “The Global Compact” (1999), public information leaflet.


Bangladesh, 1996	12.4
Uganda, 1994	13.7
Pakistan, 1996	34.1
Sri Lanka, 1990	49.8
Sri Lanka, 1996	59.9
Venezuela, 1993	61.8
Chile, 1997	71.3
Japan, 1997	82.2
United States, 1997	91.8

Source: ILO: Key Indicators of the Labour Market 1999, op. cit., table 3, pp. 83-91.


	Yield (kg/ha)	Index 1999 (1975=100)

World	3 043	159.2
Africa, developed ^a	2 260	139.0
Africa, developing	1 159	115.1
Asia, developed ^b	5 720	99.3
Asia, developing	3 215	177.3
Eastern Europe	3 482	119.0
Western Europe	5 512	170.5
North America	5 125	161.3
Oceania	1 982	137.2
South America	2 891	180.0

Notes: ^a South Africa. ^b Israel, Japan. Source: FAO statistics, 1999.

APEC	Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation
ASEAN	Association of South-East Asian Nations
CSD8	8th Session of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development
ECA	United Nations Economic Commission for Africa
FAO	Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
FDI	Foreign direct investment
GDP	Gross domestic product
GM	Genetic modification, genetically modified
GMO	Genetically modified organism
ICFTU	International Confederation of Free Trade Unions
ICT	Information and communications technology
IFAD	International Fund for Agricultural Development
IMF	International Monetary Fund
IPEC	International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (ILO)
IPM	Integrated pest management
IUF	International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations
MERCOSUR	Southern Common Market
MFCAL	Multifunctional character of agriculture and land
NAFTA	North American Free Trade Agreement
NGO	Non-governmental organization
NIE	Newly industrializing economy
OECD	Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
OSH	Occupational safety and health
RNF	Rural non-farm
SARD	Sustainable agriculture and rural development
SOE	State-owned enterprise
SSA	Sub-Saharan Africa
TUAC	Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD
UNCED	United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (“Earth Summit”)
UNCTAD	United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
UNDP	United Nations Development Programme
WTO	World Trade Organization
Developing Africa	All African countries except South Africa
Developing Asia	All Asian countries except Israel and Japan