agricultural workers and peasants

By Federico Pacheco - La Via Campesina, July 6, 2022

European Coordination Via Campesina calls for solidarity with the workers of the company Sudaphi, part of the Premium Foods Solutions group, located in the province of Inezgane Ait Melloul in Souss Massa, Morocco. Sudaphi specializes in the processing and export of tomato-based products. It produces the Sud’n’Sol and Sunblush Tomatoes brands and sells its products to supermarkets and food processors in Europe.

In December 2021, Sudaphi unilaterally announced that it was subjecting all of its incumbent staff to a new written contract that threatens workers’ job security and their transfer to production sites far from their homes, without consulting the company’s employees or their elected representatives. Workers under the new Sudaphi contract have been protesting these changes outside the company’s gates since May 26.

A staff delegate affiliated with the National Federation of the Agricultural Sector (FNSA-UMT) was dismissed by Sudaphi on 27 May 2022. Two other delegates were sanctioned with 8-day layoffs and 3 members were forced to change positions. Sudaphi’s abusive practices represent a violation of the right to free association and collective bargaining. The delegate has organized a sit-in in front of Sudaphi’s offices in Inezgane Ait Melloul since his dismissal over a month ago. The FNSA demands respect for trade union rights and a serious and responsible dialogue with its regional authorities for a settlement of this collective dispute.

By Morgan Ody, Andoni García Arriola, and Antonio Onorati - La Via Campesina, July 4, 2022

The European Commission concluded negotiations on a free trade deal with New Zealand on Thursday 30th of June. The European Commission is talking about a deal that “contains unprecedented sustainability provisions and that takes into account the interests of EU producers of sensitive agricultural products”.

But for the European Coordination of Via Campesina (ECVC), the voice of peasant’s farmers in Europe, this deal is still based on the obsolete trade paradigm, in which agricultural products are used in exchange with other commodities, disregarding the climate crisis and the income crisis European farmers are facing. With this additional free trade agreement the Commission loses all credibility in its proposals for the European Green Deal and the F2F by continuing to prioritize the agro-export business and the elites that benefit from it over the necessary changes that farmers, citizens and the planet need.

It is well known that New Zealand has much lower production costs than Europe for some animal products, such as milk, sheep and beef meat, which tend to depress world market prices. Opening new markets with New Zealand will impact even more the agricultural price crisis and farmers’ income crisis in Europe. Furthermore, New Zealand does not apply environmental, animal welfare and climate standards in the same way as European farmers do.

“How can such an agreement that includes sensitive agricultural products which can be sustainably and agroecologically produced in our territories be compatible with the Paris Agreement? Today, such kinds of agreements do not make any sense anymore” says Andoni García Arriola member of the coordinating committee of ECVC. “Agricultural trade should be considered as a sensitive sector and dealt separately from other trade commodities. The priority should be the construction of market regulation mechanisms that allow farmers everywhere in the world to get a fair income for producing for local sustainable food systems.”

“In the context of the current international food crisis and in order to reach the Farm to Fork objectives the EU should instead be engaging at an international level to promote a new Global Multilateral Framework for Executing International Trade, based on Peoples’ Food Sovereignty principles and per the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP)”, says Morgan Ody, General coordinator of the peasant international movement La Via Campesina. For more information on La Via Campesina’s position, you can read this statement following the WTO negotiations here.

By Bridget Huber, Nancy Averett and Teresa Cotsirilos - Food & Environment Reporting Network, June 29, 2022

Last June, as a record-breaking heatwave baked Oregon’s Willamette Valley, Sebastian Francisco Perez was moving irrigation lines at a large plant nursery in 104 degree Fahrenheit heat. When he didn’t appear at the end of his shift, his co-workers went looking for him, and found him collapsed between rows of trees. Investigators from the Oregon Occupational Safety and Health Division determined that Perez died of heat-related hyperthermia and dehydration. 

They also found that Perez had not been provided with basic information about how to protect himself from the heat. It wasn’t the farm’s first brush with regulators; it had previously been cited for failing to provide water and toilets to its workers. Later, in a closed conference with Oregon OSHA, an Ernst Nursery & Farms official blamed Perez for his own death, claiming that employees should “be accountable for how they push their bodies.”

This year, in a move to avert similar deaths — and force employers to take responsibility for protecting workers during hot weather — Oregon adopted the most stringent heat protections for outdoor workers in the country. The rule kicks in when temperatures reach 80 degrees F and requires employers to provide cool water, rest breaks and shade, as well as to make plans for how to acclimatize workers to heat, prevent heat illness and seek help in case of an emergency. 

The new standard has been praised by advocates, but industry is already pushing back. On June 15, the day the rule took effect, a coalition of Oregon business groups representing more than 1,000 companies filed a lawsuit seeking an injunction against the heat standard and another new rule governing workers’ exposure to wildfire smoke, arguing that they are unconstitutional. But the rules stand for now, making Oregon the third state to enact such standards for outdoor workers, after California and Washington. 

In the rest of the country, as climate change drives increasingly brutal heat waves, farmworkers lack protection. How they fare will largely depend on whether their employers voluntarily decide to provide the access to water, shade, and rest breaks that are critical when working in extreme heat. There are currently no nationwide regulations that spell out what employers must do to protect workers from heat and, while efforts to draft a federal rule recently began, it will likely be years before the standards are in place.

By staff - Capire, June 21, 2022

Free trade is an enemy of food sovereignty—this is what grassroots, peasant, and ecological movements strongly stated last week on the streets of Geneva, Switzerland. Between June 13^th and 16^th, 2022, government representatives met for a ministerial conference at the World Trade Organization (WTO). The WTO’s decision-making spaces are responsible for formulating the free trade agenda around the globe and facilitating corporate agreements across several industries, including the food industry. This is why, concurrently with the official meeting, delegations of grassroots organizations promoted an intense mobilization, with spaces for discussion, press conferences, and a demonstration. La Via Campesina sees it as a moment to denounce: free trade fuels hunger.

In an international statement, La Via Campesina called states to exit the WTO and proposed the creation of a new framework that considers the peoples’ ways of living, based on food sovereignty. The organization also shared statements by peasant leaders. Jeongyeol Kim, from the Korean Women Peasant’s Association and an International Coordination Committee (ICC) member of La Via Campesina, pointed out that “it is time to keep agriculture out of all free trade agreements,” adding that “the pandemic, and the shock and disruptions induced by war have made it clear that we need a local and national food governance system based on people, not agribusinesses. A system that is built on principles of solidarity and cooperation rather than competition, coercion, and geopolitical agendas.”

La Via Campesina brought a diverse delegation to Geneva, with more than forty people coming from southern Africa, southern Asia, Europe, and the Americas. “We are speaking from outside this institution, which we do not want to recognize, because there is no possibility of intersection. The WTO must be dismantled and destroyed, it must disappear, because its origins have been damaging peasant, Indigenous, and fishing communities around the world,” said Perla Álvarez from Paraguay, and member of the Latin American Coordination of La Via Campesina (CLOC-LVC).

By Yesica Balderrama - Prism, June 22, 2022

Josue Josue has been a farmworker all his life. The 34-year-old immigrant from Mexico has lived in the U.S. for 20 years, picking produce like grapes, tomatoes, yams, and tobacco. He has worked in Florida, New Jersey, and California during extreme cold and hot weather, and he has experienced firsthand the impact that rising temperatures can have on agricultural workers—especially in the last few years.

”Every year it gets hotter,” Josue said. “Before I didn’t notice it, and now it’s unbearable.”

Josue works in North Carolina and has noticed unpredictable weather patterns, an increasingly felt effect of climate change. According to National Geographic, weather catastrophes such as heat waves, droughts, and ice storms have become more frequent during the last four decades. The most vulnerable areas are coastal and mountainous regions. Josue said that three years ago two hurricanes flooded the season’s crops, the following year’s crops were affected by a drought, and last year they had the opposite problem. 

“There were heavy rains, and we couldn’t grow anything,” he said.

The increasingly volatile and extreme weather has been affecting Josue’s health. After working in high temperatures outdoors, he feels exhausted and has regular stomach aches and dizziness. These are common symptoms of heat stress, which also include dehydration, nausea, and heat stroke, the leading cause of work-related death in farmworkers. Statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that 815 workers died from heat exposure between 1992 and 2017. For farmworkers, heat can negatively impact their cognitive performance and behavior and threaten their overall well-being. Many agricultural workers also experience respiratory issues caused by exposure to pesticides, dust, and fungi.

A paper published in the Environmental Research Letters revealed the global number of agricultural workers has decreased due to rising temperatures. “Heat stress among farmworkers is becoming more prevalent as temperatures continue to rise,” said Alexis Guild, the director of health policy and programs at Farmworker Justice, an organization created to protect agricultural workers’ rights. “Farmworkers generally are not provided adequate protection.”

By staff - La Via Campesina, June 15, 2022

La Via Campesina, the global peasant movement representing the voices of more than 200 million small-scale peasants from Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas, has been mobilizing all week against the WTO. The food crisis that is currently hitting the world is further proof that free trade – far from bringing about food security – is making people starve.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) has once again failed to offer a permanent solution on public stockholding for food security purposes. For more than eight years, rich countries have been blocking concrete proposals from African and Asian members of the G33 in this regard.

Jeongyeol Kim, from the Korean Women Peasant’s Association and an International Coordination Committee (ICC) member of La Via Campesina, points out that:

“Free Trade Fuels Hunger. After 27 years under the rule of the WTO, this conclusion is clear. It is time to keep agriculture out of all Free Trade Agreements. The pandemic, and the shock and disruptions induced by war have made it clear that we need a local and national food governance system based on people, not agribusinesses. A system that is built on principles of solidarity and cooperation rather than competition, coercion, and geopolitical agendas.”

By Irene Calimlim, Dr Jose Pablo Ortiz Partida, Elizabeth Strater, Kimberly Warmsley, et. al. - The Climate Center, June 8, 2022

Over the past few years, extreme heat episodes have been on the increase throughout California and especially in the Central Valley. Home to 4.3 million Californians and nearly one million people working in agriculture, the Central Valley faced more than 35 days of extreme heat in 2021. This number is expected to double in the next few decades. In this webinar, presenters will discuss the impact on Central Valley residents, workers, and the agricultural sector, along with how to build community resilience in the face of these climate-fueled hazards.

Spanish interpretation brought to you by Linguística Interpreting & Translation.

En los últimos años, los episodios de calor extremo han ido en aumento en todo California y especialmente en el Valle Central. California es hogar a 4.3 millones y casi un millón de personas que trabajan en la agricultura, el Valle Central enfrentó más de 35 días de calor extremo en el 2021. Se espera que este número se duplique en las próximas décadas. En esta videoconferencia, los presentadores analizarán el impacto en los residentes, los trabajadores y el sector agrícola del Valle Central, además de cómo desarrollar la resiliencia de la comunidad frente a estos peligros provocados por el clima.

Interpretación en español presentada por Linguística Interpreting & Translation.

By Matteo Tiratelli - Red Green Labour, May 19, 2022

In late March, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation warned that the war in Ukraine risked unleashing a “hurricane of global hunger”. With climate change-induced droughts in east Africa and intense heatwaves in India, they feared that a war in Europe’s most fertile and productive region could compound the situation and lead to food shortages on an unprecedented scale. The UN’s concerns were made terrifyingly concrete earlier this month, when the World Food Programme estimated that “44 million people around the world are marching towards starvation”.

The problem is, this narrative – that war and climate change are leading to mass starvation – is wrong.

The recent news cycle has been driven by the explosion in the price of wheat, which has gone from $7.58 per bushel at the start of the year to nearly $12 a few months later. But the prices of basic commodities are extremely volatile. And these spikes have little to do with the amount of food going around, or how much people are eating. Instead, they are driven by financial speculation.