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Women’s right and the right to food 2013, para. 9
- Paragraph text
- Women are disproportionately represented in the "periphery" part of the workforce that coexists with the "core" segment of permanently employed farmworkers. This "periphery" segment of the workforce is made of unskilled workers, often without a formal contract of employment, and their work is often seasonal or temporary (or classified as such even when it is in fact continuous). The main reason why women are disproportionately represented in this segment is because they have fewer alternative options and are thus 'easier' to exploit.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Person(s) affected
- Women
- Year
- 2013
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Human rights criteria for making contract farming and other business models inclusive of small-scale farmers 2011, para. 22
- Paragraph text
- While the ability of buyers to purchase inputs at wholesale prices might allow them to pass savings on to farmers through lower prices, it may also be that when a farmer has access to inputs only through a buyer, the buyer will charge farmers higher than market prices for those inputs. In the course of consultations, the Special Rapporteur received a communication indicating that in the absence of public services, contract farming can create potentially devastating dependence by small farmers on the technology, credit, inputs and services provided by their contracting companies. This not only points to the danger of the Government relinquishing its duty to support farming communities by providing adequate public goods in the hope that private investors will fill in the gap, it also highlights one of the main negative effects of contract farming for farmers, which is its potential to trap them in cycles of debt. One common occurrence is that farmers must borrow money to invest in agricultural production as required under the contract and then do not earn enough money to cover their debts, for instance, because of falling market prices or poor harvests. This risk is particularly important where the investment on the land is related specifically to one type of production for which the contracting firm is the only buyer, a constraint that may be exploited by the firm as a way to exercise monopolistic power and thus gradually impose lower prices on farmers. Crops that rely on complex production and processing technologies and substantial specialized inputs that are unfamiliar to most growers and require large capital outlays significantly increase the level of risk confronted by growers, as illustrated by the Smallholder Sugar Authority and Smallholder Tea Authority contract-farming schemes in Malawi. The resulting cycle of debt can trap farmers into contractual arrangements that are neither optimal nor easily abandoned, either because of the debt itself or for other reasons, for example, because the soil was degraded by heavy pesticide use or because farmers have lost their relationships with former transaction partners, are unable to re-establish traditional cultivation methods or products or have become too dependent on the firm for other services.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2011
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Access to land and the right to food 2010, para. 19
- Paragraph text
- Finally, the creation of a market for land rights may itself have a series of undesirable consequences. The primary justification for the establishment of such a market is that it facilitates the reallocation of land towards more efficient users, thus providing an exit route from agriculture for rural residents for whom farming is not sufficiently profitable. Accordingly, the World Bank notes, "secure and unambiguous property rights … allow markets to transfer land to more productive uses and users". However, the impact of titling on farm productivity has often been unclear when it has not been complemented by schemes providing producers with appropriate levels of support. Land sales tend to favour not those who can make the most efficient use of land, but those who have access to capital and whose ability to purchase land is greatest. In fact, the creation of a land rights market can cause land to be taken out of production in order to be held as an investment by speculators, resulting both in decreased productivity and in increased landlessness among the rural poor. The poorest farmers could easily be induced to sell land and then be "priced out", particularly if they have fallen into debt as a result of a bad harvest or other circumstances. Thus, considered in isolation from other policies, individual titling may have counterproductive effects, increasing the vulnerability of the poor. Indeed, the idea that individual titling contributes to poverty reduction as land is transformed into capital presupposes that property is transformed into collateral, collateral into credit and credit into income. However, the poor, for whom land is an essential social safety net where no others are available, may in fact be reluctant to mortgage their land in order to gain access to credit. Nor does titling necessarily result in significantly greater access to the credit offered by private financial institutions.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Person(s) affected
- All
- Year
- 2010
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
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