International Labour Organisation (ILO) Symposium on Decent work in Agriculture

Delegates from trade unions in more than 50 countries met from 15-18 September in Geneva to participate in an ILO-sponsored symposium on "Decent Work in Agriculture." Senior officials from FAO, the International Cooperative Alliance, UNCTAD, WTO, government agencies and NGOs also attended and participated in the event.

The purpose of the meeting was to examine how rural workers and their organisations could best contribute to achieving sustainable agricultural growth, food security and poverty alleviation objectives, while at the same time improving rural employment conditions in today's globalized market setting. The Symposium was particularly timely as it occurred exactly one-day after the unexpected breakdown of the 5th WTO Inter-Ministerial Conference deliberations in Cancún, Mexico.

The Symposium was opened by Juan Somavía , ILO Director General who pointed out that two thirds of the estimated 840 million persons living under the poverty threshold are presently found in the rural sector and constitute more than half of the world's labour force. Unfortunately, he also noted that rural worker are seldom consulted by government or involved in the formulation of agricultural and rural development policies that affect their family livelihoods. In short, they remain largely invisible to policy makers-- regarded more as inanimate "factors of production" than as people.

The main work of the symposium, however, focused on reaching trade union consensus for action on a number of key issues, including: labour standards and conventions, employment in agriculture, social protection, health and safety, the role of multinationals and follow-up to Cancún. Some of the main findings arising from these discussions were that:

• 70 percent of all child labour takes place in agriculture totalling around 175 million children.
• Rural workers and their organizations are not yet actively involved in the preparation of Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers now being promoted by World Bank and IMF-promoted in selected Highly-Indebted Poor Countries.


• There was broad consensus that the main issue blocking the development of agriculture and rural employment in Least Developed Countries (LDC) is the continued subsidies (direct and indirect) that larger industrialized countries provide to their export agriculture which, depending on how one defines the terms amounts to between $295-300 billion per year and make it possible for these countries to sell their produce in LDC markets at below production cost prices.


• WTO, UNCTAD, FAO and TUAC participants all expressed disappointment at the failure of Cancún talks and trade union and NGO leaders were especially vocal in criticising the attitude of industrialized countries that refused to make concessions on export subsidies which stifle the agricultural potential of developing countries.


• Most trade unions regarded the developments at Cancún in a positive light, in that it was the time first that a group of 21 developing countries (led by large agricultural exporters: Brazil, India, China, South Africa and Argentina) had opposed the US, EU and Japan position in support of continued agricultural export subsidies and refused to negotiate further reductions in agricultural trade barriers until that position changed.

The symposium ended with a final call for all trade unions to step-up their efforts to reach out to all workers in agriculture and in the rural sector, particularly women workers and male and female migrant workers in order to increase their representative and mobilizing strength.

Participants also strongly recommended that there be closer technical collaboration among other agencies, such as FAO, IFAD, the World Bank aimed at strengthening the institutional capacities of rural workers organizations to deal more effectively with food security and poverty reduction. Increased information sharing on production and trade-related issues and collaboration in joint capacity building (training) activities was also recommended. Other collaborations should be made between ILO and FAO on capacity building of rural youth on HIV/AIDs prevention and coping as well as research looking at the impact of Agricultural trade adjustment on rural employment and livelihoods.

With regard to post-Cancún reform ideas, there was broad consensus that the existing WTO mechanism for negotiating agricultural trade liberalization agreements requires rethinking and reform. Current decision-making is not transparent and tends to favour well-placed and financed industrialized country delegations at WTO. There was broad agreement that the ultimate objective of the agricultural trade liberalization process should be an equitable trading system which eliminates trade distortions.

To downlaod the synthesis of the Symposium working paper, please click here.