THE HIDDEN COSTS OF CHEAP FOOD

By Mark Sommer and - - Reprint | | Print |

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ARCATA, CALIFORNIA, Sep 26 2007 (IPS) - The industrial agriculture system that supplies Americans their cheap food is predicated on cheap labour, lax enforcement of already weak labour regulations, often hazardous working conditions, and physical and sexual abuse, writes Mark Sommer, host of the award-winning, internationally-syndicated radio programme, \’\’A World of Possibilities\’\’. In this article, Sommer writes that this is not just an American problem. In an increasingly integrated global food system, affluent consumers in North America, Europe, and elsewhere have come to expect low prices for food from far away and far out of season, much of which is grown and harvested by marginal farmers in distant places who receive a tiny portion of what we pay for it. Driven from the land by impossibly low commodity prices, they crowd the cities of the developing world in search of work. Failing to find it, their desperation becomes a breeding ground for extremist movements. Our abundance must not be built on their indigence. How much are we willing to pay for the food we eat to assure that those whose labour brings it to our tables are paid enough to eat it too?

The industrial agriculture system that supplies this cheap food is predicated on cheap labour, lax enforcement of already weak labour regulations, often hazardous working conditions, and physical and sexual abuse that in extreme cases has been likened to modern-day slavery.

In some respects conditions for migrant workers remain little better than those documented by journalist Edward R. Murrow a half century ago in his classic TV special ”Harvest of Shame”, which revealed the existence of a hitherto hidden underclass of migrant workers who endured substandard housing and sanitation, abysmal working conditions, and exploitation of many kinds in the course of harvesting tomatoes in mid-fifties Immokalee, Florida. There as elsewhere in the US, rootless immigrants, largely from Central America, plant and harvest crops they themselves can’t afford to buy.

Now the very same region is the scene of an epic struggle by migrant workers for decent working and living conditions and a livable wage. Immokalee is the state’s largest farmworker community and the most important centre of agricultural production. Field labourers here pick crops on vast holdings owned and operated by giant multinational corporations. It’s been the same for decades: long hours of back-bending labour, staying in substandard housing, exposed to toxic pesticides, isolated by language, and exploited by labour bosses preying on their vulnerabilities.

Migrant labour has always been a hard row to hoe. Workers live an average of just 49 years; the US average is 78. The median annual income of migrant workers is just USD 7,500, 6,500 in Florida; the median US household income is USD 48,000. Adjusted for inflation, migrant labour income has fallen by 60 percent in the past twenty years. Each year 20,000 farmworkers require medical treatment for acute pesticide poisoning and that many more cases go unreported. Nationally, 50 percent of migrants –80 percent in Florida– lack legal work papers.

While Florida farmers are paid USD 10 per twenty-five-pound box of tomatoes, the tomato pickers are paid 45 cents per 32-pound bucket, less than 5 percent of what the farmer gets. To earn 50 dollars, a picker must harvest 2.5 tonnes in a typical ten-hour day, twice as much as thirty years ago, just to earn the same minimum wage.

Yet the farmer is not the big winner in this system. Fast food chains with enormous buying power exert intense downward pressure on the prices they are willing to pay farmers, who in turn squeeze workers to retain their own profit margin.

Facing these grim realities, in the early nineties a small group of workers who called themselves the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) began organizing in a local church. Through work stoppages, general strikes, a month-long hunger strike, and a 230-mile march, in 1998 the Immokalee farmworkers won industry-wide raises of 13-25 percent. Meanwhile, CIW began campaigning against what it calls ”modern-day slavery”, farm operations in Southeastern states where workers labour in conditions a federal prosecutor labelled ”involuntary servitude”.

In a series of highly-publicized campaigns targeting major fast-food chains that depend in part on Immokalee’s tomato harvest, CIW organizers succeeded in persuading Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Mac Donald’s and other corporations to commit to a penny-a-pound raise for Immokalee labourers. Burger King (BK) refused to join the agreement, arguing that farmers are actually paying more than the workers say and that BK would like a more comprehensive settlement that gives workers better working conditions while assuring the company and industry of consistent prices and a stable workforce. BK has offered to employ in its own operations any farmworker who would like to change occupations, an offer Immokalee workers dismiss as ”eliminating farmworker poverty by eliminating farmworkers”.

Most Americans don’t want to do such backbreaking work but few are aware of the working and living conditions of those who do. However redressing the inequities of the current industrial food production system is not easy. To begin with, it’s hard to make sure that extra money spent in the supermarket will filter down the food chain to the migrant labourers at the bottom.

The poorest and weakest work longest and hardest and receive the last and least. To provide a living wage to those at the bottom will take more than a piece work rate hike. It will require a systemic shift, with those of us higher on the food chain pulling it hard in the direction of those at the bottom. Not only must farmworkers be paid living wages for their labour and farmers a fair return on their crops, but governmental regulations must bring farm labour practices up to global human rights standards.

This is not just an American problem. In an increasingly integrated global food system, affluent consumers in North America, Europe, and elsewhere have come to expect low prices for foods from far away and far out of season with great hidden costs in fuel and transportation, environmental devastation, worker exploitation, and social conflict. Much of the food that comes to our tables is grown and harvested by marginal farmers in distant places who receive a tiny portion of what we pay for it. Driven from the land by impossibly low commodity prices, they crowd the cities of the developing world in search of work. Failing to find it, their desperation becomes a breeding ground for extremist movements. Our abundance must not be built on their indigence.

Automaker Henry Ford, a self-interested capitalist, understood this elementary principle when he insisted on paying his workers enough for them to buy the cars they built. How much are we willing to pay for the food we eat to assure that those whose labour brings it to our tables are paid enough to eat it too? (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)