Below is the synthesis of Landless Voices: Land & Agricultural Workers held April 2024. LANDLESS VOICES is a series of online consultative forums where rural people’s groups can share their land issues and struggles amid the global food crisis. The outcomes of the consultation series were shared during the May 13 Speakout of the Landless and served as reference to the Rural People’s Development Agenda of the Global People’s Caravan for Food, Land and Climate Justice.
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Agricultural workers bear the weight of the world’s supply chain yet they are subjected to modern day slavery and unimaginable oppression and exploitation. Their brackbearing work should not be met with meager wages. Worse, reports of agri-workers working without pay are now being common in some parts of the world such as in Pakistan.
They are borne out of the landless peasants who were compelled to sell their labor to plantations. In addition, farmers who are unable to afford the high cost of production are forced to lease their land to landowners. As they lose control over their land, they are relegated to the status of wage earners.
The informality of agricultural labor perpetuated by failed development models and government policies makes agricultural workers highly vulnerable to exploitation and gross violation of even the most basic labor rights. For example, in Indonesia and the Philippines, agri-workers are exempted from existing labor laws; and government agencies in India admit to the low coverage of government programs which are supposed to aid plantation workers. Furthermore, policies that favor plantation companies are well placed and being implemented in different countries.
Agri-workers are subjected to unsafe working conditions. Plantation workers in the Philippines are obliged to work early in the morning. Every day, more than 575 agricultural workers die due to occupational hazards. Without occupational safety equipment, cases of deaths at the plantations caused by snake bites and tiger attacks keep coming in. Additionally, actual numbers are certainly higher given that ignored toxic agrochemical poisoning, prolonged exposure to extreme heat made worse by the climate crisis and El Nino.
Plantation work enables child labor. The case of the death of a 12-year old girl from India who walked for days from the chili fields back to her village highlights the exploitation and hazardous working conditions children are subjected to.
In the face of these problems, we remain steadfast in our fight for land and wages. #