Category: Chapter 2

Banana prices have always been too low

Chapter 2 / Tropical Fruits

The following short article appeared in a Banana Link blog dated 12th December 2020. It was written by Angelica Hicks and Emily Gove who work for Equal Exchange Produce, a US for-profit organisation, similar in aims and practices to the UK’s Traidcraft and the UK’s Equal Exchange Trading. We are grateful to Angelica, Emily and Equal Exchange for permission to reproduce the article here and we urge our readers to visit the Equal Exchange website at:  equalexchange.coop . We are also grateful to Banana Link whose website is at: www.bananalink.org.uk .

By Angelica Hicks and Emily Gove
Equal Exchange Produce

December 2020

In the past two days, Del Monte, Dole and Chiquita have announced their intentions to add surcharges to their banana contracts in the US, following extensive damage to their operations in Central America as a result of hurricanes Eta and Iota. The news is making ripples across fresh produce publications and, very likely, produce industry boardrooms, and for good reason. It has the potential to force a conversation that is long overdue.

Equal Exchange Produce, a Fairtrade, organic importer in the US, has worked with small-scale farmer cooperatives for 15 years. Our banana partners work in Ecuador and Peru, and supply a relatively specialised market within the US, largely made up of independent, cooperative and natural foods stores. As a brand, we have often been alone in raising the topic of exploitative banana prices, in a market demanding both availability and cosmetics at a price that sustains neither of the two.

The reality is this: bananas are a labour-intensive crop. Any banana you find in a grocery store in the US[1] – whether conventional or organic – has been cut down from its plant in a massive cluster, carried on a shoulder, pulled to a pack shed, washed multiple times, cut into perfect bunches, stickered, packed and inspected, all by hand. The many people that contribute to the banana production process are also those that bear the consequences of low prices, which large retailers and conventional banana companies push down the supply chain until they land on the shoulders of farmers and workers.

The devastating hurricanes in Central America, which have destroyed upwards of 12,000 hectares in banana cultivation and impacted livelihoods across the region, are an important reason to pay more for bananas now. Still, it’s a shame that it takes a crisis of this magnitude to force a meaningful price increase, despite the well-documented externalised costs borne almost entirely by producer communities.

In the US consumers are conditioned to think that bananas are inherently cheap. What they don’t know is the impact of artificially low prices, or the precarious position in which they place farmers and workers.

Equal Exchange will continue to push for sustainable prices across the industry. We hope this moment signals a turning point in the industry conversation about the price – and value – of bananas.

[1]  And in the UK, we might add.

One in three children in Costa Rica live in poverty – Unicef

Chapter 2 / On food security and food sovereignty

In early September [2021], the weekly Costa Rican newspaper Semanario Universidad reported on a story by the international news agency AFP which was based on Unicef data. Translated extracts from the report are given below.

One in three minors below the age of 18 in Costa Rica live in poverty, according to Unicef, as the country was celebrating the Day of Childhood and Adolescence. Patricia Portela de Souza, a representative of Unicef Costa Rica, said: “Girls, boys, adolescents and Young people are making an urgent call for help. The effects of the pandemic, the digital divide and the economic crisis are affecting the present and future of this population.”

The organisation’s findings were based on data from the National Household Survey which showed that 448,000 minors (32 per cent of 1.4 million) grow up as members of poor households and that figure is expected to increase in the coming months.

This is likely to have an impact on education. Unicef stated that this may affect levels of educational exclusion as well as the social and economic development of the country. Further, these conditions could cause problems for this generation’s insertion into the labour market.

In 2020, data from the Ministry of Public Education showed that of the 1.2 million students in the primary and secondary education sectors 63 per cent experienced problems of digital access to their learning. Unicef characterised this phenomenon as an ‘educational blackout’.

Unemployment levels (for workers aged over 15 years) had also risen during the pandemic from 12 per cent before Covid to 18 per cent in August 2021, although the level had reached 24 per cent between the two dates. To counter some of the effects of the pandemic, the government decided to maintain face to face classes in schools during 2021 along with reactivating the economy and reinstating many jobs, despite the continuing increase in cases of Covid-19.

The return of hunger to Central America? It never went away.

Chapter 2 / The effects – hunger and malnutrition

Key words: hunger; food insecurity; family farming; export agriculture.

In July 2021, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations and the World Food Programme (WFP) warned that acute food insecurity is likely to increase in 23 countries in the next four months. The two organisations explained that violence, conflict, climate change and economic crisis will remain as the main drivers of acute food insecurity.

In Latin America, the two organisations named Colombia, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras and El Salvador as the countries most like to experience worsening levels of hunger. The Mesoamerican coordinator for the FAO, Adoniram Sanches (as it happens a Brazilian), was particularly concerned about the levels of hunger likely to be felt in the Dry Corridor of the Pacific coastal plain of Central America which over the last ten years has suffered numerous hurricanes, six prolonged droughts, various catastrophic floodings and a pandemic.

According to Sanches, the three Central American countries registering the highest levels of hunger are El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, but conditions in the Dry Corridor also extend to cover Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. Some ten million people live in this region and most of them are to some extent dependent on agriculture.

Sanches said that “the problem with hunger is not one of production but is rather one of economic access and the lack of resources to get food.” The FAO and WFP regretted that efforts to combat a global surge in acute food insecurity are often hampered by political tensions and blockages, preventing families on the brink of famine from receiving assistance.” Bureaucratic hurdles and lack of funding also slow the efforts of UN agencies to provide emergency food assistance.

The coordinator suggested that in Guatemala there is a large group of farmers producing coffee, water melon and melon (all for export) but who do not have enough food for themselves. The FAO therefore needs to support family farming. He also suggested that within the worst affected groups, there are smaller groups who are doubly affected, such as women, Indigenous peoples and those of Afro-descent.

In 2019 and 2020, the number of food insecure people worldwide increased from 135 million to155 million. This situation is expected to worsen this year (2021).

 

Sources

El Economista,14 July 2021, ‘Centroamérica vuelve a pasar hambre’.

Telesur Newsletter, 30 July 2021, ‘Acute Food Insecurity To Increase in Colombia, Haiti and Guatemala’.

United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), 30 July 2021, ‘Hunger Hotspots: FAO-WFP early warnings on acute food insecurity (August to November 2021 outlook)’.

 

 

Food insecurity increases in the Northern Triangle of Central America due to the pandemic

Chapter 2 / On food security and food sovereignty

Following our report on ‘The return of hunger to Central America?’ (item added to the website in September 2021), a report appeared in El Economista on 30th November 2021 addressing the same theme but more specifically in the Northern Triangle of Central America. A report for the BBC World also addressed the theme. Salient points from both reports are summarised here. 

El Economista report claims that Latin America is the worst affected region of the world by the pandemic in terms of food insecurity. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), food security indicators show a regression of 15 years.

The prevalence of hunger in Latin America and the Caribbean currently stands at 9.1 per cent of the population affected, the highest rate reached in the last 15 years. That means that almost 60 million people are affected in the whole of Latin America and the Caribbean. Also between 2014 and 2020 there has been an increase of almost 79 per cent in the number of people experiencing hunger in the sub-continent.

Between 2019 and 2020, Central America suffered the highest annual increase compared with equivalent annual changes over the last 20 years – that is, an increase of over 10 per cent, or 19 million people. The BBC report suggested that countries with the highest rates of inequality and poverty before the pandemic were the worst affected by the scarcity of food during the pandemic.

According to the report in El Economista the three Northern Triangle countries (El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras) experienced the highest increases in moderate and serious hunger. In El Salvador the rate of moderate or serious food insecurity reached 47.1 per cent, in Guatemala 49.7 per cent and in Honduras 45.6 per cent.

Sources:

  • Irma Cantizzano, 30 Noviembre 2021, ‘Inseguridad alimentaria subió 4 puntos en Triángulo Norte de C.A. a causa de la pandemia’, El Economista.
  • BBC Mundo, 30 Noviembre, 2021, ‘Seis cifras que muestran el gran impacto de la pandemia en América Latina’.

 

 

Supermarket banana pricing policies

Chapter 2 / Case studies / Tropical Fruits

The following item written by Alistair Smith appeared in the Banana Link Newsletter of 7th December 2021. Alistair is Banana Link’s International Coordinator and has worked with tropical fruit producer organisations in many parts of the world. We are grateful to him for granting us permission to reproduce this section of the Banana Link Newsletter in The Violence of Development website. Although the article is a general one making no specific mention of Central America, it clearly has implications for Central American banana producers and the organisations that represent them. Banana Link’s website is at: www.bananalink.org.uk

By Alistair Smith

7th December 2021

Keywords: supermarkets; banana prices; shared responsibility; World Banana Forum.

 

Does the Aldi banana price rise mean we are turning the corner?

For the best part of two decades, German hard discount retailer Aldi, present in thirty countries worldwide, has more or less set the benchmark price for fresh bananas in the European market. On 1st December the long-awaited ‘white smoke’ on the 2022 contract price finally appeared to have gone up after particularly protracted and controversial negotiations with suppliers. The contract price for next year has risen quite significantly, by 9 euro cents per box compared to 2021; but this was the lowest price ever seen, says Banana Link International Coordinator, Alistair Smith.

In the second half of the year, most of the leading Latin American, Caribbean and African producers’ and exporters’ organisations had denounced with increasing force the hypocrisy of a major buyer that wants more and more social and environmental standards to be met whilst paying less and less in its annual negotiations. Aldi’s buyers were, quite rightly, criticised publicly for not being in tune with their corporate responsibility colleagues.

The rise, which is estimated to be from an average of 11.50 euros per box this year to an average 13.30 in 2022, sounds significant, but as Reefertrends, who reported the move, stated: “While the increase has been broadly welcomed, whether the value at retail can cover the minimum price demanded by governments and producers alike is contingent on by how much trade related supply chain costs have also risen”. The Ecuadorian exporters have reported 50 to 60 % increases in shipping costs in recent months, and these costs can account for up to 25-30 % of the landed price in European ports.

So, the jury is still out as to whether this increase for 2022 really covers more of the costs of production than the 2021 historical low.

Aldi accepts it has ‘shared responsibility’

What is significant, though, regardless of the actual figures per supply chain is that the retailer has broken through its image of arrogance, of not listening to producers and of driving a race to the bottom industry-wide through lower and lower contract prices. For the first time, the company is now speaking in public of its support for the concept of ‘shared responsibility’ between producers and sellers and is part of a group of German retailers that is wanting to ensure living wages are paid to all workers in its banana supply chains. From 2023, Banana Link understands that Aldi will follow the UK-based retailer Tesco in rewarding those producers who are paying living wages.

In the case of both Tesco and Aldi, an open question remains about the role of independent trade unions in verifying and negotiating to close living wage gaps and beyond. The living wage benchmarks produced in recent years are just a guide to the lowest wages that anybody should earn to guarantee a basic standard of living. They are not a ceiling, but a floor. The next key step will be to see how the big buyers demonstrate to their customers that living wages are indeed paid.

A global banana costs and value distribution observatory

The World Banana Forum (WBF), with seed funding from the French government and the FAO of the United Nations, has been working since late 2020 on a methodology to make the costs of sustainable production and the distribution of value along the chain more transparent. The controversy over the Aldi price and retail buyer behaviour in general has hampered the producers’ will to be transparent about the detailed costs of production, based on a real fear that powerful buyers will use the figures to squeeze the growers even more.

Now that, for the first time, there is an apparent recognition of the reality of rising costs by Europe’s biggest buyer, the Global Banana Observatory should be able to move forward in piloting its methods of making transparent costs, margins and taxes along the chain. The hope is that this can become a real tool for counting in costs like living wages and other ‘hidden costs’ in pricing along the chain.

Banana Link encourages Aldi to keep moving in the new direction that yesterday’s white smoke appears to signal. Other buyers now need to follow the lead of two of the WBF’s leading retail members. We could then be shouting from the rooftops that the game is really changing. The joint statement by WBF on the concerted global effort towards living wages for all banana workers will then be seen to have real meaning.

As it stands today, Banana Link gives a cautious welcome to the move. The proof of the pudding will be in whether working conditions, wages, industrial relations and a whole range of very negative environmental impacts change for employees across the global industry.

Alistair Smith
6 December 2021

Protests over Palm Oil Sourcing in Guatemala

Chapter 2 / Case studies / Palm Oil

In December 2021, a number of NGOs signed a letter protesting against the resumption of palm oil sourcing by multinationals such as Nestlé, Cargill, PepsiCo, Proctor and Gamble  and others, from REPSA (Reforestadora de Palma S.A.) in Sayaxcha, Guatemala. This followed an inadequate response by the REPSA/HAME Group to an Open Letter sent in June 2021. The controversy, however, started in 2015 and was explained by Sheila Amoo-Gottfried for the newsletter of the Environmental Network for Central America (ENCA 84, March 2022). We are grateful to Sheila for her permission to reproduce the article in The Violence of Development website.

 The letter and campaign are promoted by Forest Peoples.org, Friends of the Earth USA, Rainforest Action Network and ActionAid USA. Many other NGOs such as ENCA signed on to the letter.

 By Sheila Amoo-Gottfried, March 2022

 

In 2015, spills from REPSA’s crude palm oil plant in Sayaxcha, Petén, led to an ecological disaster along the Pasión River, harming the livelihoods and access to water and food of Indigenous communities and causing lasting damage to the ecosystem. Fish, reptiles and mammals were massively affected along more than 100km section of the river.

Following legal action by civil society against REPSA in 2015, a court order led to the temporary closure of the plant. In the aftermath of this injunction, violence, intimidation and threats were unleashed, with the illegal detention of three human rights defenders from CONDEG (National Council of Displaced People – Guatemala) and the assassination of Rigoberto Lima, a REPSA critic. Although company personnel and security guards associated with REPSA were thought to be implicated, REPSA has denied any involvement and refuses to acknowledge and address the underlying abuses, labour exploitation, escalating violence or environmental damage.

Nothing has yet been resolved and REPSA continues to use delaying tactics and intimidation to avoid further legal action or the formation of an independent third-party verification process to assess REPSA’s progress in meeting a set of minimum requirements. These requirements include acknowledging and taking responsibility for the devastating consequences of the contamination of the Pasión River basin on the environment, public health and social fabric of the surrounding communities and establishing effective grievance mechanisms for unresolved past problems and for the future.  Meanwhile, many multinationals (Cargill, Nestlé, Unilever, Ferrero, etc) have resumed resourcing palm oil from REPSA, failing to reconsider their decisions based on the evidence and recommendations provided in the Open Letter.

The UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights said in a 2020 letter to the Guatemalan government that the contracting and labour practices of REPSA could be “indicators of human trafficking and forced labour and other severe forms of labour exploitation.”  REPSA and its buyers have not responded to these allegations of human rights violations affecting their largely Indigenous workers. This is a systematic problem across the palm oil cultivating regions of Guatemala. The criminalisation of four Indigenous human rights defenders, given a suspended four-year sentence on 22nd November 2021, along with the violent displacement of the Maya Q’eqchi community ‘Palestina’ in Chinebal, El Estor on November 16th [2021] are further indications that human rights violations in this sector are ongoing and endemic.

In December 2021, numerous national civil society organisations (CSOs) and international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) maintained their call on these multinationals to continue the suspension of sourcing palm oil from REPSA until judicial process has reached a satisfactory conclusion regarding the case of ecocide. REPSA also has to accept the undertaking of a thorough, objective and transparent independent investigation into the complaints represented in ongoing reports of human rights violations and environmental damage caused by its operations and supply chain.

Furthermore, taking into account the issues raised in the UN Human Rights Rapporteur’s letter, REPSA is required to enter into serious and responsible dialogue with impacted communities and Guatemalan CSOs for verifiable and practical solutions, and to repair and redress the environmental and economic damage done in the affected communities.

https://enca.org.uk/blog/2022/03/11/newsletter-84/

 

Seed production in Guna Yala – A challenge with COVID

Chapter 2 / Prospects

Geodisio Castillo

Gubiler Blog

26 December 2020

Translated for The Violence of Development website by Jill Powis.

Geodisio Castillo is the Director of CENDAH, the Centre for Environmental and Human Development (CENDAH). CENDAH is an Indigenous Gunadule organisation working with communities in Panama’s Atlantic coast. Geodisio maintains a blog – https://gubiler.blogspot.com – in which he enters articles about various aspects of the Guna Indigenous life.

 In his blog, Geodisio Castillo, CENDAH’s director, reflects on the vital importance of Indigenous seed production in both the short term and the longer term as a means for the Gunadule  communities to achieve true food sovereignty, and looks at the various initiatives that have so far been taken, and what more can be done.  Below is a summary of his blog, translated by ENCA member Jill Powis. (ENCA is the Environmental Network for Central America, a small UK-based NGO that has supported CENDAH in several of its projects – www.enca.org.uk). We are grateful to Jill for her work on this.

Key words: Indigenous Guna; San Blas Islands; native seeds; COVID pandemic; food sovereignty; ancestral knowledge.

 

Knowledge about native seeds is assuming increasing importance for the Gunadule communities. It is vital for ensuring agrobiodiversity in family farming. Produced by the farmers themselves, the aim should be to obtain seeds of native species, guaranteed in quality, which should have a high chance of success because they are adapted to their agroecosystems. Local and resilient seed systems are of great importance, because they lay the foundations for food sovereignty and security.

There is still a lot of work to be done to achieve this. Gunadule communities have been encouraged to increase food production during the COVID pandemic as these communities went into self-imposed lockdown.  Producers made great efforts in the nainugan [traditonal agroforestry plots], and there was strong intercommunity cooperation, for example, in exchanging seeds. Despite this, they found that the chief obstacle was the availability of seeds – there were simply not enough to continue sowing and growing crops. Nonetheless, their efforts showed that it was possible to increase production if there were greater support from the government.

It is true that there has been a government initiative, the Agro Vida programme, funded by MIDA (Ministry for Agricultural Development), which specifically targets family farmers in the poorest districts of Panama as part of a government anti-poverty drive.  Agro Vida has been supporting the agriculture of the Gunadule people by providing tools and, vitally, a range of seeds to farmers, so they can produce their own, good quality food.  Although this support is appreciated, it is also obvious that it has been inadequate to cover all 3,206 sq km of the Comarca and its 51 communities.

To address the lack of seeds, the Gunadules themselves as small entrepreneurs contributed through Gunayala’s two General Congresses.  Support has also come from Gunadule NGOs, including CENDAH, which gave assistance to the communities of Yandub-Nargana and west Gardi, in collaboration with the IPCPG (Institute of the Guna People’s Cultural Heritage) of the Onmaggeddummad Namaggaled (Guna Congress of Culture).  This ‘Breath of Life’ initiative was sponsored by Cultural Survival, the international Indigenous organisation, and finished at the end of December [2021].

CENDAH’s other initiative, in collaboration with ENCA, was with Olonagdiginya, the young farmers’ organisation, based on the western edge of the Comarca, bordering the province of Colón, Santa Isabel district.  Its focus was environmental conservation and education.

While the Gunadule have been struggling to cope with the impacts of COVID, both in Panama and elsewhere the pandemic has exposed and further entrenched inequalities between rich and poor and between the developed and developing worlds.  This has given rise to calls for an inclusive and equitable green COVID recovery programme that puts climate, nature and development at its heart, to ensure that decades of development gains are not wiped out.  The recovery process presents a crucial opportunity to focus global efforts on supporting communities to become more resilient and adaptable so they can respond to a variety of urgent threats today and in the future.

Nature-based food solutions are increasingly seen as a credible means of addressing this three-pronged agenda of climate, nature and development. Organisations such as the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation acknowledge that Indigenous peoples are already prime practitioners in this, respecting and protecting Nabgwana – Mother Earth – as a living and sacred entity, applying  their  ancestral knowledge and agroecology.

It is vital for Gunadule communities to devise their own strategies, not only to cope with the immediate impacts of the COVID pandemic, but to ensure food security and sovereignty on a permanent and sustainable basis. In 2020, COONAPIP  (National Coordinating Committee of Indigenous Peoples of Panama), which represents all seven of Panama’s Indigenous peoples, launched the “Agricultural Development Plan of Indigenous Peoples of Panama”.

Gunayala has also developed its own 10-year strategy covering 2015 to 2025. Unfortunately, for various reasons, this has yet to be implemented. It is essential for the Gunadule to devise a specific strategy on seed production and sovereign food security, with a vision to generate income for the family, through local marketing and, eventually, at the national level.  Specific measures should include innovating agricultural techniques, storage methods, savings plans, and access to markets: these are all strategies that farmers must learn to overcome crises, whether natural disasters, wars or pandemics.  As part of this, local seed production systems should be strengthened and decentralized, in the drive towards natural food, free of agrochemicals.

It is hoped that this strategy will provide the foundation on which to build a framework for a range of public policies capable of adapting to changes and firmly rooted in the knowledge, culture and customs of the Gunadule nation.  This is a task for all Gunadule, not just their General Congresses.

References

Geodisio Castillo. Rescatando semillas y plantas nativas en Gunayala http://gubiler.blogspot.com/2015/12/rescatando-semillas-y-plantas-nativas.html

International Institute for Environment and Development

https://www.iied.org/green-recovery-covid-19-not-without-climate-nature-development-solutions

Global Forest Coalition https://globalforestcoalition.org/forest-cover-61/

FAO, Fondo Indígena, 2015. Sistemas alimentarios tradicionales de los pueblos indígenas de Abya Yala. [miskiyu, garífuna, mayangna, telpaneca]. Volumen II. La Paz, Bolivia. 216 p.

NACLA (North American Congress on Latin America). Semillas de Esperanza en Tiempos Inciertos, https://nacla.org/produccion-semillas-coronavirus

PEGY, 2015. Gunayala 2025. Plan Estratégico de Gunayala – 2015-2025. ‘Hacia una gestión territorial’. Congreso General Guna, Comarca Gunayala, Panamá. 112 p. + Anexo A: Programa PAC (InfoIIDKY/Rev. 7).

Concerns raised about pesticides in Costa Rica

Chapter 2 / Case studies / Pesticide (ab)use

By Fabiola Pomareda García | pomaredafabiola@gmail.com

22 September 2022, Semanario Universidad

We are grateful to Fabiola for permission to translate and summarise her article in Semanario Universidad, the Costa Rican weekly paper. Translated and summarised for the Environmental Network for Central America (ENCA) and for The Violence of Development website by Jill Powis with minor additions by Stephanie Williamson of the Pesticide Action Network. 

A virtual seminar ‘From the global pesticide complex to the agripoisons crisis in Costa Rica’, discussed worrying aspects of Costa Rica’s pesticide licensing system and use.  It was jointly organised by a number of Costa Rican organisations:  Biodiversity Coordination Network (RCB), CoecoCeiba – Friends of the Earth Costa Rica, Bloque Verde (Green Block) and Frenasapp (National Front of Sectors Affected by Pineapple Production).

Soledad Castro, doctoral researcher at Barcelona’s Autonomous University, presented the results of research into Costa Rica’s pesticide licensing system carried out from 2018-21 with Marion Werner, professor and researcher at the University at Buffalo, New York State.

She explained that a total of 1,800 pesticides are still licensed for use in Costa Rica without up-to-date studies on their potential risk to health and the environment.  The problem goes back to 2004, when Costa Rica’s Comptroller General formally declared that the pesticide licensing system needed to be changed.  Health and environmental risk assessments would be mandatory, with evaluations carried out in Costa Rica itself before pesticides would be licensed. In 2007 new legislation gave a 10 year deadline for these old licences to comply with the new requirements, which, however, led to a huge backlog of license updating

In 2016, executive decrees were issued relaxing these requirements, a move described by critics as a form of deregulation. Following legal challenges, these decrees were suspended by the Constitutional Court and then countered by legislative attempts to extend further the ‘useful life’ of these outdated pesticides. There is now a Registration of Agrochemicals bill before the Legislative Assembly under which an affidavit would be sufficient for a substance to be approved for use and studies carried out in other countries would be acceptable. The State Phytosanitary Service confirmed to the researchers that 1,800 pesticides licensed before 2007 are still being used, without any updated risk assessments carried out. Soledad Castro expressed concern at their social and ecological impact.

Fernando Ramírez, researcher and professor at the Regional Institute for Research on Toxic Substances (IRET) of Costa Rica’s National University explained that 80% of the pesticides applied in Costa Rica qualify as highly hazardous.  Furthermore, Costa Rica uses 10 times more pesticides per hectare than the United States – on average 25kg/ha of active ingredient as compared to 2.5 kg/ha in the States.

Since 2007, Costa Rica has become an exporter of pesticides, mainly due to its high importation of technical grade active ingredients for making formulations – mixing them with adjuvants to make their application more effective.  The formulated products are then exported to other countries. Costa Rica mainly imports active ingredients from India (63%), China (30%), the United States (3%) and Poland (2.5%).

According to Henry Picado, a researcher with the RCB and member of Bloque Verde, Costa Rica’s pesticide industry has large yearly profits of $2.5 billion for imports and $700 million for exports, while, according to agronomist Elidier Vargas, the state annually loses $22-$27 million in tax exemptions to the sector.  It is concentrated in only a few hands – according to statistics from the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Trade (MEIC), 63% of glyphosate, 50% of paraquat and 98% of 2.4-D, respectively, are imported by one company each.

Costa Rica is also one of the cheapest countries in Latin America to license a pesticide product, with an average cost of $400, as compared to $1,500-$4,500 in Mexico, $2,000 in Uruguay and $8,500 in Argentina.

While the industry accumulates profits and enjoys tax exemptions and very low licensing costs, 64.3% of the fresh food consumed in Costa Rica contains pesticide residues. “It’s basically an invasion by these businesses of our homes, our tables, our bodies,” Picado said.

La Via Campesina and the Global Struggle for Food Sovereignty

Chapter 2 / On food security and food sovereignty

By Brittany Oakes

October 2022

La Via Campesina is an international movement that promotes and celebrates agro-ecology as the most suitable form of agriculture to provide for the food needs of humanity. We asked Brittany Oakes who ran workshops on La Via Campesina at the El Sueño Existe Festival in August this year to write a brief article for The Violence of Development website. Brittany interned with the Rural Workers’ Association in Nicaragua, a co-founding La Via Campesina (LVC) member, and has been involved in international Nicaragua solidarity campaigns, including Friends of the ATC and Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign. She currently volunteers with the LVC UK member, Landworkers’ Alliance.

This year (2022) La Via Campesina (LVC), the largest international grassroots social movement in the world, celebrates 30 years of collective organising for food sovereignty. Today, LVC represents more than 200 million rural workers, Indigenous people, foresters, fishers, migrants, peasants and small-scale farmers around the world, spanning 81 countries across five continents. There is a strong Latin American presence through the Latin American Coordinator of Campesino Organisations (or CLOC), which itself represents 84 organisations in 18 countries across Latin American and the Caribbean.

 

Logos of CLOC and LVC

 

Why and how did this global movement arise, and what is their shared vision of food sovereignty? To understand this, we need to take a step back and look at the food system, and how it has dramatically changed over the past decades.

 

The dominant globalised, industrial food system 

The food system is everything that goes into keeping us fed: from growing, harvesting, packing, processing, and preparing the food, to marketing, consuming and disposing of it. Half of the global workforce (1.3 billion people) are employed in some form of agriculture, with an estimated 2.6 billion deriving their primary livelihoods from the food system as a whole.1

If you look at the dominant food system worldwide today, it is largely controlled by an increasingly consolidated corporate chain. A 2013 report by Oxfam showed the top 10 food companies make a profit of more than £917 billion (GBP) a day and represent more than 10 per cent of the global economy.5 Power is concentrated at the very top of the system, with corporations investing billions in influencing and dictating national and international government policy, and farmers and workers required to become dependent on the terms set by these corporations to make any kind of livelihood.

This model of globalised, industrial food production grew during the Thatcher-Reagan era of international free market policies in the late 1980s and into the early 1990s.3, 6 This shift in the food system has had drastic implications for local markets, and it was during this expansion that LVC coalesced.2

 

Image of consolidation of food system (from Oxfam, 2013)

 

The rise of La Via Campesina

At the same time as international trade agreements and forced ‘development’ schemes were imposed in the 1980s, regional and national peasant organisations strengthened and began forming transnational coalitions, particularly across Latin America and especially in Central America. Peasant workers recognised that their influence within their own countries was weakening and they lacked representation in international fora. Grassroots mobilising also took place across India and Europe, with demonstrations of tens of thousands of farmers marching in protest against free trade treaties which severely undercut local markets and threatened the livelihoods of millions. As Europe and the US were celebrating 1992 as the 500 year anniversary of Columbus’s arrival in the Americas, we also saw that Indigenous and peasant organisations coordinated the Continental Campaign – 500 Years of Indigenous, Black and Popular Resistance from 1989-1992.

In 1992, peasant farmer and rural worker organisations from Central America, the Caribbean, North America and Europe met in Managua, Nicaragua, during a convening of the Rural Workers’ Association (ATC) and the 10th anniversary celebration of National Union of Farmers and Cattle Ranchers. It was at this gathering that the idea took root of forming an international, intercontinental movement without mediating representation by non-governmental organisations (Martínez-Torres and Rosset, 2010). At a follow-up convening in Mons, Belgium, in 1993, more than 70 farm leaders from around the world gathered to formally launch LVC. Through these initial gatherings and subsequent international assemblies, LVC developed a shared vision of food sovereignty.

 

A shared vision for food sovereignty

Food sovereignty can be understood as a concept, an ongoing social and political process and a movement. The concept was put forward by LVC, in coordination with other international allies, at a UN Conference in Rome in 1996, and it was refined and developed over the following years into what culminated in the Nyeleni Declaration in 2007.4 The full definition is over a page long; it is radical and holistic, and it should be read in its entirety, but it is often summarised in the first line:

“Food sovereignty is the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems.”

 

How does La Via Campesina work for food sovereignty?

LVC member organisations work for food sovereignty at local, national and international levels through a wide range of activities and processes. Lobbying, campaigning, outreach, awareness-raising and political education are crucial for building broader public support to change the dominant food system. LVC focuses on preserving traditional knowledge of sustainable farming methods, including seed saving and protecting Indigenous varieties of seed that are resilient in a changing climate. LVC also supports training and research in traditional farming methods.

With the climate crisis and the many social and political crises we face today, the work and vision of LVC is a beacon of hope for a sustainable and just future based on respect for people and the planet. Around the world we unite in saying, Globalise the struggle, globalise hope!

Learn more about La Via Campesina through their website: https://viacampesina.org/en/

References

  1. Gladek, E., Roemers, G., Muños, O. S., Kennedy, E., Fraser, M., & Hirsh, P. (2017). The global food system: An analysis. Retrieved from https://www.metabolic.nl/publication/global-food-system-an-analysis/
  2. Martínez-Torres, M. E., & Rosset, P. M. (2010). La Vía Campesina: The birth and evolution of a transnational social movement. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 37(1), 149-175. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150903498804
  3. Masters, J., & Chatzky, A. (2019). The World Bank Group’s role in global development. Retrieved from https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/world-bank-groups-role-global-development
  4. Nyeleni.org. (2007). Nyeleni declaration. Retrieved from https://nyeleni.org/spip.php?article290
  5. Oxfam. (2013, February 26). Behind the brands: Food justice and the “Big 10” food and beverage companies [Briefing paper #166.] Retrieved from https://www.behindthebrands.org/images/media/Download-files/bp166-behind-brands-260213-en.pdf
  6. World Trade Organisation. (2019). Understanding the WTO: Basics: The Uruguay Round. Retrieved from https://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/tif_e/fact5_e.htm

Environmental Racism? Pesticide banned in UK and EU shipped in vast quantities to Costa Rica.

Chapter 2 / Pesticide (ab)use

By secretary of the Environmental Network for Central America (ENCA) Sheila Amoo-Gottfried.

Sheila has summarised the results of an investigation made largely by Greenpeace and Public Eye into what she calls ‘environmental racism’ by European agri-business transnational companies like Syngenta which have been sending fungicides that are banned here in Europe to countries of the Global South such as Costa Rica in this case.

Cipreses, a town on the fertile slopes of the Irazú volcano, north of San José, traditionally held ceremonies at the Plantón spring, praying for rain for the crops. Nine years ago, Isabel Méndez noticed a strong pesticide smell at the spring.  She raised her concerns to ASADA (the local water administrative association), but these were brushed off.

Chlorothalonil, the chemical used widely as a fungicide is banned as a potential carcinogen in the UK and EU and yet is shipped in large quantities to Costa Rica, and other countries in the Global South, by European companies like Syngenta.

Méndez, determined to fight for her community, partnered with Ricardo Rivera, a former ASADA administrator, and other concerned residents to form EcoCipreses.  Noticing that many people were getting sick in such a small place, samples were sent for testing and scientists confirmed the water springs were contaminated in Cipreses and the neighbouring town of Santa Rosa.  EcoCipreses advocacy led to national calls for a ban on Chlorothalonil, following these scientific reports. The government issued instructions not to drink tap water, and since then trucks have been rolling in to deliver drinking water to the affected communities.

“For nine years now”, says Méndez, “I’ve been fighting with other women in Cipreses to get Chlorothalonil banned, and we are making progress on what used to feel impossible:  Costa Rica’s Constitutional Court has given the Executive Branch of Government a deadline of six months to issue a ban.”

This ruling came into force in June 2023, but Isabel Méndez is well aware that Costa Rica’s complex decision-making system which requires relevant government ministries to all agree to the ban, along with the strong lobbying pressure coming from the agrochemical industry, could seriously delay definitive action.

In the meantime, to keep the pressure up, she has launched an online petition, gathering more than 52,500 signatures to put pressure on government ministers. “These last years have been very tough on my community.  Besides never having enough water, my daughter, Fiorella, had polyps at 16 and has now, at 23, lost her sense of smell and taste.  One of my neighbours has tongue cancer and several young people have been diagnosed with stomach cancer.  It’s alarming….   To make matters worse, some locals with the support of the pesticide lobby regularly harass, intimidate and threaten us with death because of our activism.”

EcoCipreses has concerns about the broader health and environmental impact on the whole region, which produces 80 per cent of Costa Rica’s vegetables, using similar quantities of fungicides, vastly exceeding safe consumption limits. The solutions are not easy. No-one knows how long people have been drinking contaminated water or what the effects on their health will be.  No one knows how widespread the contamination is across the country or how the pesticide traces can be removed from the springs already found to be tainted.

So, Isabel Méndez and her colleagues are determined to maintain maximum pressure. “As hard as it is, as hard as it’s been, we won’t give up because it isn’t just Cipreses’ and Santa Rosa’s springs … there could be plenty more. We feel we can’t let Syngenta use countries like ours – from Latin America to Africa – as dumping grounds for chemicals they can’t sell legally in Europe.”

Sources

  • Unearthed, (June 2023), ‘”Water is sacred too”: How a pesticide banned in Europe robbed a Costa Rican town of its drinking water’, Greenpeace, Public Eye, https://www.publiceye.ch/en/topics/pesticides/chlorothalonil-a-banned-pesticide-exported-from-europe
  • Euronews, 26 June 2023, ‘The EU and UK exported 1,000 tonnes of a banned pesticide to poorer countries, investigation reveals’,
  • Vinicio Chacón, 20 septiembre 2023, ‘Más de 52 mil personas piden prohibición de Clorotalonil’, Semanario Universidad.
  • Eko, 16 August 2023, Online petition: ‘EU: stop spreading banned chemicals’.

 

Notes on food security issues in El Salvador in 2023

Chapter 2 / On food security and food sovereignty

Summarised by Martin Mowforth

January 2024

Key words: El Salvador; food insecurity; Food and Agriculture Organisations (FAO); World Food Programme (WFP); world grain prices; El Niño.

 

In July last year (2023), two United Nations agencies warned that El Salvador was at a critical point of increasing hunger and that the situation was likely to worsen if the problems were not immediately addressed. The two organisations are the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) which issued a joint report on world food security.

According to ACAPS (an independent information provider on humanitarian needs analysis and assessment), in 2023 the climate event of El Niño resulted in prolonged periods of drought and decreased rainfall in El Salvador. The climatic event intensified during December 2023 and January 2024 and it is believed that El Salvador will remain under its influence until 2027. According to 2050 projections, the country’s risk and vulnerability are likely to continue increasing.

Referring to the FAO/WFP report, Cindy McCain, Executive Director of the WFP, said, “we must act now to save lives, to help people adapt to a changing climate and, ultimately, to prevent famine. If we fail to do so, the results will be catastrophic.”

Other global factors affecting the likely increase in food insecurity included the delayed effects of the global Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine which has led to uncertainty in world grain supplies.

As at August 2023, food prices had risen above the five-year average increase. 58 per cent of El Salvador’s rural population also lacked access to drinking water, and these factors were expected to lead to increased migration rates to urban areas.

To address the problem, the Food Sovereignty Roundtable proposed the creation of a National Foodstuffs Reserve in El Salvador with the aim of getting the state of El Salvador to intervene in the economy of basic grain provision. Following the FAO/WFP report, specific measures suggested included the following.

  • Irrigation systems – provision to vulnerable agricultural households of systems of water collection and micro-irrigation for the production of vegetables.
  • Monetary assistance – to complement government support following high impact climate events, the provision of cash donations as well as the provision of help towards activities that are appropriate for the affected populations.
  • Dry Corridor – to improve the follow-up on food and nutrition security with preparation for intervention in zones with greatest food insecurity, especially for those affected by the drought in the Dry Corridor.
  • Monitoring of prices – periodic monitoring of food, fuel and fertiliser prices. To improve the monitoring of market prices to allow for adjustments in the cash transfer programmes.

Sources:

  • WFP & FAO. 2023. Hunger Hotspots. FAO–WFP early warnings on acute food insecurity: November 2023 to April 2024 outlook. Rome.
  • Karla Alfaro y Rosa María Pastrán, 21 July 2023, ‘ONU advierte sobre incremento de hambre en El Salvador: Es “muy probable que la inseguridad alimentaria aguda se deteriore aún más”’, El Economista.
  • Rosa María Pastrán, 27 July 2023, ‘Organizaciones presentan al Ministerio de Agricultura de El Salvador propuestas para crear una reserva nacional de alimentos ante alza de precios’, El Economista.

 

 

 

 

New film shows toll of heat stress on workers, plus world-leading protections developed in Nicaragua

Chapter 2 / Case studies / Sugar Cane

Positive news among so much violence and distortion of the meaning of ‘development’ comes from La Isla Network whose research aims to counter the effects of extreme heat stress from work in the sugar cane fields. Initially prompted by the epidemic of Chronic Kidney Disease of non-traditional sources (CKDnt) around the Ingenio San Antonio in Chichigalpa in Nicaragua, the Ingenio (sugar cane processing plant) and LIN were initially very much at odds with each other’s work; but they are now partners in research and in attempts to improve the working conditions of the sugar cane plantation workers.

Below LIN recounts details of the problems encountered in the sugar cane fields and tells of the research behind their videos and interventions. Their videos can be found at:

laislanetwork.org/media/videos/

October 20th, 2023

The latest film from La Isla Network with Talking Eyes Media, funded by the EU ENBEL project, demonstrates how worker protection protocols from extreme heat are saving workers’ lives. Once at odds, now La Isla Network and Ingenio San Antonio in Nicaragua — with a cohort of leading researchers on heat stress — are leading the world in modelling how to protect workers from exposure to extreme heat.

When workers are confronted with a heavy workload, exposure to heat, and poor labour protections, their risk for heat-driven illness, injury, and death increase. Though the body attempts to cool down, factors like ambient heat and the demands of the job mean workers’ bodies cannot cool down properly, note researchers Vidhya Venugopal and Andreas Flouris.

Mr. Flouris is an environmental physiologist studying how heat affects living organisms. He holds teaching positions at the University of Thessaly in Greece and the University of Ottawa, Canada. “There is an urgent need to address exposure to heat at work now, as our climate is changing faster than we had previously anticipated, while there are parts of the world — such as Europe — that are heating up much faster than the global average,” he says. “With heat waves increasing in severity, duration, and frequency in all parts of the world, exposure to heat at work is an issue of utmost urgency to address.”

In Nicaragua, by the time the sun has risen, sugarcane cutters at Ingenio San Antonio have begun work. They prepare for the workday. One of them carries a tarp that will serve as the shade tent: light and portable, yet highly effective.

Kristina Jakobsson is a medical doctor and researcher at the University of Gothenburg. She is also a member of the La Isla Network Scientific Advisory Board. For 20 years she has collaborated with colleagues the world over to understand the drivers behind chronic kidney disease of non-traditional causes among industrial agricultural workers.

After years of studies, researchers have found heat stress to be a driver of ill health. “Low-tech workplace interventions with regulated rest in shade, and access to water can protect workers,” she says. “This is old knowledge — nothing new, no rocket science — but our hope is that the combination of scientific evaluation, practical tools for workplace interventions, and a wider awareness of how heat affects work may lead to protection of the most vulnerable workforces.”

Since 2017, that has been possible in Central America, through the Adelante Initiative and the Prevention, Resilience, Efficiency, and Protection (PREP) Programme. They are La Isla Network’s marquee worker protection programmes, being implemented in the world-renowned Ingenio San Antonio, known for producing the sugarcane needed for Flor de Caña Rum.

Dr. Denis Chavarría, Occupational Health Manager at Ingenio San Antonio, notes excitement at the mill’s continued partnership with La Isla network and Bonsucro, the global sustainability platform for sugarcane. He says, “As founding members of the Adelante Initiative, Ingenio San Antonio has helped develop pioneering programmes that have significantly improved worker safety and reduced heat-related risks, but most importantly, we are developing the highest standards in occupational safety and health that will have a profound impact globally not only in our industry, but also across other labour-intensive industries.”

The results from Adelante and PREP have been nothing short of remarkable: a 72% reduction in injuries, a 94% reduction in worker hospitalizations due to heat stress, a 20% increase in productivity and a return on investment of 22%. Further, we demonstrated that preventative measures were over 1,600% more affordable than treatment, providing relief for overstretched healthcare systems.

With results in hand, La Isla Network and its partners now seek to implement the model elsewhere, especially in the United States and Europe.

Jason Glaser, CEO and co-founder of La Isla Network, asks, “Why is it that in Ingenio San Antonio, in Nicaragua, there are better work protections for those field workers than any farm in the United States of America that’s facing similar heat stress?” Now, La Isla Network is making it its objective to bring home what the organisation has done abroad to the United States and Europe. At the same time, now that data is in-hand, the organisation and its partners are pushing for legislation to better protect workers.

La Isla Network and its partners are making good progress. Recently, the team sat before the United Nations Human Rights Committee to bring awareness to exposure to heat at work, for example. La Isla Network will continue the effort hand-in-hand with its partners.

An essential aspect of that objective is to communicate not only the extent of the problem, but also the solutions being implemented, in a visual manner. This film was produced with Talking Eyes Media, a nonprofit production organisation engaging the world in today’s most pressing issues with unmatched documentaries. The organisation began in 2002 when writer, filmmaker Julie Winokur and photojournalist Ed Kashi teamed up. Both bring decades of experience, and world renown, to the table.

Ed Kashi says, “My goal is to continue to raise awareness about exposure to heat at work and CKDnt, but also to create changes, so as to protect workers and disseminate vital stories and information through my storytelling work.” He has worked with La Isla Network for 10 years now.

Julie Winokur says, “Collaborating with La Isla to tell this story gives me hope. Visiting Nicaragua for this film was an opportunity to witness a successful intervention put into practice in one of the most challenging work environments imaginable.

“This film illustrates the level of scientific research and employer commitment needed to ensure worker safety and productivity despite a warming planet.”

The film was funded by the ENBEL project, the EU-funded research project connecting health and climate change. Kristin Aunan, research director at CICERO Centre for International Climate Research and coordinator of the ENBEL project, says, “Workers’ health in the face of climate change is often overlooked despite causing great human suffering and economic consequences in many places in the world. We hope this film and the work showcased in it will contribute to get this important topic higher on the agenda.”

La Isla Network would like to thank: Dr. Vidhya Venugopal, Dr. Andreas Flouris, Dr. Kristina Jakobsson, Dr. Rebeka Lucas, Denis Chavarría, Ed Kashi, Julie Winokur, Tom Laffay, Miriam Stackpole Dahl, and Kristin Aunan.