Farmer exploitation imperils food integrity: UN

According to the Food Integrity Campaign's Foodwhistleblower.org website; a recent United Nations special report on the right to food, released to the UN General Assembly, argues that the worldwide expansion of contract farming arrangements, in which farmers agree to provide their products to processing or marketing companies at pre-set prices, can result in negative environmental, social and economic impacts.

The impacts include an increase in local food prices and the expanded use of fertilisers and pesticides at the expense of human health.

The report stresses the need to increase the rights of small-scale farmers in negotiations and dispute settlement processes. It finds that farmers often don't have enough information when negotiating these contracts, resulting in inequitable agreements that are heavily biased toward the buying firm. As a result, farmers struggle to reap benefits from their produce and can wind up, the report says, as "disempowered laborers on their own land," the report says.

Foodwhistleblower.org reports that the Food Integrity Campaign (FIC) is concerned about "disempowered" contract farmers, many of whom raise commercial crops for export, who are reluctant to blow the whistle on food integrity issues. Contract farming is often associated with production methods that require heavy use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides, which are often provided by the buyer. Even when farmers witness the negative impact of these production methods, they may not feel safe enough to become a whistleblower, given that contracts often favor the buyers. The report offers alternative business models that could potentially be more beneficial to small-scale farmers, such as farmer-controlled enterprises.

Read the full article on http://foodwhistleblower.org.

Read the
United Nations special report on the right to food.