Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN Forum)

Use of Policies and Strategies to Address Child Labour in Agriculture

Unlike the conventional approaches to deal with this issue, this contribution will take a close look at the causes of it because a practical solution to it will have to be directed at what brings it about. It will be shown that those causes are concerned with complex socio-cultural aspects whose distribution has been far wider than some modern humanists in affluent societies might presume. Hence, the present approach is holistic and pragmatic.

Let us recall that until just a few decades ago, the autumn school holidays in Scandinavia were called ‘potato holidays’, because the school children were needed to harvest potatoes. Theoretically this is child labour, and most of those children successfully finished their education and now hold responsible positions in their countries. The point is that it is not child labour per se that leads to problems, but its duration, nature and the other background details. Other things being equal, it might be argued reasonably that safe child labour may indeed be beneficial, for it provides gainful physical activity and induces in the youngsters a feeling of achievement and will contribute to family cohesion. Moreover, it entrusts them with some sense of being responsible, which is important for their development into adults.

Unfortunately however, this discussion seems to be aimed exclusively at poorer segments of agrarian societies where children have very little chance of securing an adequate education, health care, general security and their parents have little or no means of procuring their daily needs. Under those circumstances, both children and their parents are driven to do what they may in order to live albeit in abject poverty.

Thus, it would be irresponsible to begin a universal condemnation of child labour in agriculture because it does not reflect the reality. Judicious and reasonable child participation in agriculture is commendable when it does not deprive children from procuring an appropriate education, have access to health care, are secure and have ample opportunities to engage in games, sports and other cultural activities. What is a blot on humanity is that children are not only forced to engage in heavy labour for many hours daily, but are also deprived of all those other necessities.

Hence, it is clear that penalising legislation is the last thing that could succeed in offering millions of labouring children any glimmer of hope. Indeed, if such legislation is effectively enforced, one can anticipate an incredible rise in juvenile crime in both cities and villages. Anyone who is even slightly au courant with the reality as it is and not through a window in a comfortable office will know how many children are sold by poor parents in villages to city procurers to be ‘employed’ as child prostitutes. A short walk in any south or south Asian city would provide any open-eyed researcher indisputable evidence/reference on this subject even though most academics might reject it out of hand because it is not in print.

Furthermore, such legislative action or signing of signatures to an international convention on the issue will automatically condemn the beneficial child participation in agriculture. Even if effective law enforcement is able to keep children from working in agriculture or in other field, one has to ask the simple question how are they going to live then? After air and water, food is the most essential thing we need. Without it, all the rest is well, academic.

I think the foregoing introductory remarks are essential to inculcate in the potential reader a sense of proportion and reality as it is, rather than as it is perceived through some popular theoretical and reductive perspective. The problem is real and it adversely affects millions of children in the poorest areas of the globe. True, a large proportion of child labour in use is absorbed by agricultural pursuits, but many other areas some of which involve handling dangerous materials also employ child labour. As a result, any punitive legislation restricted to agriculture could only induce those children to take up some even more dangerous or unsavoury means of existence. Therefore, punitive legislation should be rejected not only as counterproductive, but as positively dangerous. Besides, law enforcement is well-known for being extremely ponderous since the time of Dickens. Child hunger has lasting consequences within a very short time. Thus, our approach would have to involve policies and strategies that may eliminate harmful child labour in general and from agricultural pursuits in particular.

At a minimum, it is necessary simultaneously to concentrate on several policy domains. These include agriculture, health, education, communications i.e., transport and other related infra-structure, trade and finally finance needed to establish/up-grade and run those. Even though it is necessary, I shall not include security here because it will only result in lengthy discussions leading to very meagre results while more critical issues are left unresolved. Thus, this partial completeness of the present submission is intentional.

I intend to use legal policy as an adjunctive tool owing to its limited usefulness, but hope what is proposed here will be enforced as rigorously as possible. Legal tools will be used to ensure that policy and strategic actions proposed here will be carried out as efficiently as possible. Before we look at any strategic action within those policy domains, we need to ensure two general requirements obtain.

First of those is that an inter-policy harmony obtains among all the policy domains of a country with reference to their common goal which is not only to avoid harmful child labour in agricultural pursuits, but also to enable their parents/guardians to earn enough to support those children and allow them to lead more or less normal lives. At this point, let us firmly remember those adults are poor and hardly well-educated, and are thus comparatively unskilled.

Consider an appropriate agriculture policy and its implementation. It does not operate in isolation, rather in an environment of diverse other policy domains. Now suppose it is accompanied by a trade policy supported by the country’s legal system that allows the establishment of very large scale farming operations. Regardless of their ownership, such farms are capital-intensive and use extensive monoculture to ‘maximise profits’. Obviously, this would lead to unemployment among semi-skilled farmers and leave their children even more helpless than they were before. This is a clear case of inter-policy disharmony which leaves even a good agriculture policy ineffective.

I have intentionally avoided the use of currently fashionable ‘policy congruence’, for it is all too general as it emphasises what is called ‘the economic progress’ i.e., increasing personal incomes without clearly specifying how that could help unless what one needs for sustenance like food for a balanced wholesome diet is also available and affordable. Increase in personal income does not entail a simultaneous increase in the availability of a sustained, affordable supply of wholesome and varied food needed for a balanced diet. This is an uncomfortable logical fact; hence it is liable to be ignored.

Before we look at the next pitfall, it is necessary to re-introduce a term I have often used in this forum viz., appropriateness. Appropriateness has two logically inseparable elements; an appropriate means or a method can be comparatively rapidly mastered by its future users i.e., it is within their present knowledge and skill set, thus it is adequately acquirable by a given target group more or less quickly. After all, one cannot wait for 2 years while potential users are learning their new skills without being fed, and shortage of food is a powerful creator of child labour.

The second element of appropriateness involves the physical materials necessary to implement a plan by a chosen method. In agriculture, this may involve seeds, breeding animals, feed, fertiliser, farm implements and machinery, fishing gear etc. It is often here great deal of resources is wasted due to the use of inappropriate methods under the cover names ‘modernisation’ and ‘innovation’. Let us briefly consider how this happens:

• It would be agreed that the distribution of actions to address child labour in agricultural pursuits will predominate in poor countries where the majority subsists by those activities. Moreover, most of those countries display high humidity and daytime temperatures.
• Parents of children engaged in child labour are often among the very poor, badly educated, physically and cognitively not well-developed.
• This limits their capacity to acquire new agricultural skills or reduces it to improve the existing ones. Hence, methods appropriate for their use should not be ambitious i.e., ‘innovative’ nor yet ‘cutting-edge’.
• This is vitally important because reducing child labour in agricultural pursuits depends on how soon the development plans could bear fruit. Speedy results are of the essence.
• As for crops and animals used, they should be able to perform well under the relevant geographic and climatic conditions. Usually, traditional crops and animals are optimally suited for this purpose. Further, they are a part of the local food culture and do not require heavy use of fertilisers and biocides whose adverse environmental effects are well established. This consideration also precludes farmers resorting to destructive monoculture in industrial farms.
• Introduction of cash-crops or replacement of existing food crops with them is highly dangerous, for the main intention is to reduce child labour while improving people’s access to their customary food at an affordable price. This purpose is not served by enabling them to earn enough by selling cash crops to buy cheap junk food of foreign origin.
• Agricultural machinery and implements will have to be robust and easy to repair and maintain in line with the abilities of those who will be using them. Keep firmly in mind that parents of children forced to work are not graduates of universities of agricultural institutions whose knowledge and skills may be of use in industrial countries but not at all relevant to those with whom we are concerned. Indeed, they may be able to ‘direct’ farms and use some unskilled farm labourers to grow ‘green crops’ that fetch a high price in local cities, but farm labourers are hardly paid a decent wage, nor yet this ‘green entrepreneurship’ makes local food available to them at affordable prices. Beware of those who advocate such exemplars of altruism.
• Thus, appropriateness represents the pragmatic suitability of material means use to achieve a goal combined with its potential users’ ability to master how to use and maintain it with the resources actually at their disposal. Naturally, this must not be a new skill acquisition beyond them, nor should it impose a continued financial burden that would exacerbate their present situation even more.

Now we can easily understand the second condition a policy domain must obtain to ensure its success. When for example, agriculture policy displays intra-policy harmony it would be the most suitable for the area to which it applies. In other words, all strategies of its implementation will be in harmony with the end the policy is intended to achieve, in the present case, addressing the problem of child labour in agricultural pursuits.

Consider now the case where an agriculture policy requires wide spread mechanisation of cultivation in an area of high unemployment and the level of public education is limited. In such areas one often encounters a high incidence of child labour. This action may increase the food output provided that appropriate crops have been chosen, but it could easily make more farm labourers redundant and thus exacerbating our problem. This undesirable result arises from the evident internal disharmony in the agricultural policy in question.

To anyone who has read this contribution thus far, it may seem that we face a hopeless task. It is because we have concentrated our efforts in a reductive fashion, which we condemn elsewhere as ‘thinking/acting in silos’. True, FAO cannot take on the role of advisor in formulating every other national policy, nor yet provide technical support thereto. The inevitable conclusions from the argument thus far are the following:

Addressing the problem of child labour cannot be successful unless all other national policies are effectively coordinate towards its mitigation. Confining such mitigation to one policy domain may result in an undesirable increase in the incidence of child labour in other areas like building, textile, leather goods manufacturing industries etc. Moreover it may increase child migration into nearby urban centra.

Punitive legal measures would require the investment of considerable financial resources that would prove unrealistic to most regimes in view of the other pressing needs they face. Further, finding and training the requisite personnel for the purpose may prove very difficult. Most importantly, this reductive solution may make lives even more precarious for ‘working ‘children should they be deprived of their meagre incomes.

Education with financial support is often suggested as a solution in conjunction with punitive legislation. Examples of short-term success from some areas of the world have been presented as evidence of its universal applicability. However, a careful examination of some important aspects of such an approach remains to be undertaken:

• What work will the proposed education qualify the children to undertake? Will there be enough jobs for all those who are going to be qualified?
• Is the proposed education compatible with a child’s innate abilities? Or is it prescribed by some potential employer?
• If the answer to both questions above is yes, will such a job enable the trained person earn a decent living, and for how long? In other words, what job security could one anticipate?
• This should convince the realistic analyst that even under optimal conditions an appropriate education and agriculture, could successfully address only a part of a wider problem.
• Even so, provided that the other national policies could be harmonised with the food and agriculture policy of a country to counter child labour in agricultural pursuits, a way forward could be found for its gradual disappearance. Although this may not sound very ambitious, progress in it may induce other policy makers to follow suit due to the publicity it may receive.

A Way Forward:

The way forward presented here comes in two parts; first, it outlines the minimal inter-policy harmonisations which will have to be undertaken in a set of national policy domains. Secondly, it proposes some strategies to implement an appropriate food and agriculture policy that would serve the twin goals of enhanced sustainable public nutrition and elimination of child labour from the domain. It must be borne in mind that specific implementation of certain strategies at the field level may vary according to the geographic, climatic and food cultural considerations. For instance, dairy farming may prove inappropriate in high Andes while raising Cavia is not.

• Sustainability is the foundation of every successful effort to enhance the living conditions of us all. At a minimum, it should enable the present and coming generations to enjoy the same culinary enjoyment as well as adequate nutrition, not to mention a sufficient living space, access to nature, decent shelter, good health, security, education, etc. the Possibility of having all of these depends on how sustainable is the way we husband our finite material resources.

Should the world population continue to increase at any rate, this becomes physically impossible. Even with zero population growth, it is difficult to see how one may reduce the mentally and physically unhealthy high population densities one sees in nearly all cities.

As for nutrition, ‘novel foods’ have been advocated by some as the ‘way of the future’. However, they have not consulted those who are supposed to live on such stuff about their preferences. This seems suspiciously similar to old religion-dictated press codes prescribed by the clergy to the ‘natives’ in the past.

Recall that every culture has spent centuries to evolve their own culinary tradition, and eating is not just re-fuelling the body, but it provides culinary pleasure as well as enjoyable social interaction. Indeed, food culture as a part of a national culture is a priced social good and a part of one’s cultural patrimony. No innovator has a right to deprive people of this and offer them some insipid substitute as a ‘novel food’.

Therefore, a serious and effective population policy is an essential need; high birth rates seem to be endemic to poor countries where the incidence of child labour is the highest. It is hoped the decision-makers everywhere would recognise population growth as the greatest current danger to mankind, and in a world with fewer and fewer available resources, competition for them may rapidly lead to a world-wide loss of the values and standards of civilised existence.

• High cost of military equipment and weaponry is well known. It would be a wise decision if the authorities everywhere could make useful reductions in their defence budgets and channel the savings into food production and appropriate improvements in infra-structure. Donors of military aid might be induced to make statesman-like decisions and re-direct their aid to civilian needs.
• Even though this step may be unpopular in some quarters, it is imperative to re-model our current education systems so that they may serve their real purpose viz., nurture the young minds in a way that enables each individual to fully develop his inborn abilities. It is unfair to the young to shape them in a way that meets the needs of trade, industry, political party or to become an insatiable consumer. Education should underline the inescapable logical fact that we emerged from the rest of brute creation thanks to cooperation among ourselves and not competition. A basic understanding of the theory of knowledge would convince anyone that competition would have left cave man where he was with his predecessor from Neander valley.
• Education policy should admit that not all children are capable or interested in technical or intellectual learning as amply shown by the ‘drop-out’ rates in affluent countries. Those who possess amazing manual skills in craftsmanship, painting, pottery, are compelled to ignore their innate abilities and engage in academic skills to which they are indifferent, thus making them ‘problem students’. It is time we openly acknowledged this unpalatable fact in recognition of reality and formulated the education policy accordingly.
• Youngsters involved in child labour are seldom completely healthy, and work makes further inroads into their health. Thus, they become progressively more and more vulnerable to a variety of diseases. Matters are further exacerbated by the general inadequacies in health care in the areas where child labour takes place. Therefore, a health policy to extend and expand basic health care in general and child health care in particular is a very necessary adjunct to the fight against child labour.
• Elimination of child labour in general and from agricultural pursuits in particular will require a vigorous reduction of unemployment relevant in where child labour obtains, for parents’ inability to support their children is a major cause of it. Thus is it essential to put in place an effective employment policy funded by national and international sources. Types of employment envisaged here should be compatible with the potential employee’s current abilities or require apt short-term training. Obviously, such work should be sustainable, small to medium scale operations, and above all, labour-intensive. Sustainability as used throughout this submission entails no adverse effect on our environment.
• Industrial devolution into regional and local units should be required by the national industry policy. It must deprecate unlimited automation and should actively encourage labour-intensive approaches wherever appropriate. Greater emphasis should be placed on products required by a country rather than on wares for export. The latter not only deprives a country of its finite natural resources, but will also create a false sense of being wealthy while placing it in a state of reverse dependence, for example by compelling a country to import many essential items including food. It should actively discourage industrial practices harmful to the environment, and actively promote those benign to it.
• Trade policy can play the role of a major enhancer in our efforts. Restrictions should be placed on the manufacture and import of food foreign to national food culture. Massive imports of industrial food and drink or their local fabrication are not examples of cultural diffusion, rather concentrated attempts at increasing profits through professional promotion.

Devolution of trade in general and food in particular is an absolute necessity. Contrary to anti-trust rhetoric which has now become a stale joke, in most affluent countries, a few retail chains have a monopoly on food sales and purchase. Through Byzantine legal machinations, those chains arrange what food stuffs to buy at which price, thus leaving the food producers poorer, and end-users with a symbolic choice. This is why that in many affluent countries, domestic farmers receive massive annual monetary subsidies.

A really transparent devolution of food trade would create many employment opportunities in agriculture, small retailers, family-run restaurants, etc., as well as enhance the food producer’s income and provide the end-user a real choice and lower prices. This requires a trade policy that deprecates both the dictatorship of the ‘market place’ and that of the legendary ‘proletariat’ where some comrades were very much more equal than the others. Instead, what is needed is a cooperative exchange of goods and services, and value tokens where gain is dictated by a sense of common decency and fairness.

It is high time a simple fact is recognised; every competition results in losers, and in economic activities, this manifests itself as rich and poor with some in the middle.

• The need for zero population growth is an integral component of a holistic environment policy. It has two logically inseparable components; prevention of any further man-initiated environmental degradation and active regeneration of it using endemic species for this purpose. Justification of both actions is quite simple as long as one has no vested interests.

At the emergence of life, the possibility of any living thing remaining alive on earth depended on its having an adequate access to certain mineral resources. As reproduction is an attribute of life, multiplication of the original species led to a diminution of those mineral resources. In order to sustain life on earth, nature introduced a dual strategy to overcome this threat to the continued existence of life; there are death and saprophitism i.e., subsistence on the dead.

However, these strategies alone could not cope with the unpredictable periodic changes of earth’s climate and geography. Thus, the secondary survival strategies of adaptation to the environment and predation became necessary. There are logical reasons to believe that predation was subsequent to the former as plant species have comparatively free access to energy and generally live long. It is reasonable to postulate that the herbivores emerged first while carnivores and omnivores came later on.

Thus, existence of life on earth today depends on the equilibrium between the availability of certain essential mineral resources and the living species. This equilibrium depends on the balance between the rate at which those minerals are taken up and the rate at which they are made available for re-use. Their total amount is finite. This balance depends on the equilibrium among all the living species.

The equilibrium among the living species depends on the number of individual species and the sustainable number of each individual species. These respectively indicate the qualitative and the quantitative aspects of biodiversity on earth. No species is exempt from this requirement; hence the urgent need for zero human population growth, an immediate halt to environmental destruction and its regeneration with endemic species. Therefore, we urgently need an environment policy embodying strategies to achieve these three objectives. Range and scope of those three strategies may show a wide variation owing to the differences in the size of population, economic activities, climate and geography of the countries involved; thus, it is impossible to generalise at this level of decision-making.

A food and Agriculture Policy to Address Child Labour:

I hope that I may be pardoned for the preceding introductory remarks. I am convinced that they are necessary for the reasons given there. Moreover, it is my intention to offer a holistic policy approach, which entails the inclusion of all the policy domains which may influence the incidence of child labour. However, it must be underlined that I do not claim the list of adjunctive policies mentioned here to be complete, nor yet are those included explored comprehensively. The interested reader may add to them in any relevant way to suit the conditions he faces.

Let us remind ourselves that the main purpose of a sound food and agriculture policy is to ensure the sustainable availability of victuals a country’s or any other political entity’s people need for a diverse, wholesome, balanced diet at an affordable cost. At least, this is the ideal many claims it should be. As the majority will have to purchase their food, Success of our policy would depend at least in part, the employment policy of a country. However, labour-intensive, cooperative agricultural pursuits could go some way to serves as a source of decent income to a significant segment of world’s rural population where child-labour obtains.

Therefore, the term ‘food’ will henceforth refer not only to comestibles but how they are made available to end-users of it. Some of the actions needed here are best undertaken by trade, industry, health and education policies and have been briefly noted. The following strategic elements concerning food may be easily incorporated into an agriculture policy:

1. Highest preference is given to environmentally sustainable methods.
2. Appropriateness of the approaches in use.
3. Highest priority given to cooperative ways and means.
4. Due attention paid to the local food culture.
5. Preference is given to labour-intensive methods.
6. Modernisation ought to be gradual to avoid the distress of sudden redundancies which will re-create the current problem.

These strategic necessities are embodied in the following tactical approaches:

• Facilitating the establishment of small-holder and fishermen’s cooperatives to dispose of their produce/harvest through other cooperatives, family-run restaurants, consumer groups, etc.
• Financial and technical support for the establishment of appropriate local food storage and processing facilities. Traditional methods of preservation ought to be preferred to more expensive modern ones which cost a great deal to buy, run and maintain, hence, inappropriate. Cold storage may preserve some nutrients in food, but unless a good transport network is in place, it can only add to running costs.
• ‘Luxury cash crops’ like exotic flowers, meats, etc., often do not pay the producer a fraction of what the sellers gain. Further, it does not increase the local food production, rather compels the local people to import food with the money they have earned from cash crops. This creates an unhealthy reverse-dependence, and it may lead to soil salination as such crops depend on the extensive use of fertilisers. This is a pitfall every policy maker ought to avoid.
• Encourage and support the establishment of family-run restaurants in towns and cities who may be supplied by the farm cooperative near them. In deference to William of Okham, I shall not create an extra category to describe such nearby cooperative ventures.
• While promoting coordination among every food and farm cooperative, any effort to form chains owned by a few should be actively discouraged.

The above tactical actions concerning food are by no means exhaustive. The interested policy maker should use his discretion to determine what actions are appropriate and must pay due attention to cultural sensibilities of the target group. He must constantly bear in mind that what one wants to achieve is to successfully combat child labour and not reforming social norms. Even in financially Poor societies, child labour is seldom the norm; hence, one should resist bringing in other social issues to cloud the picture. It is very easy to forget that what constitutes norms in industrialised world took centuries to evolve and it is unrealistic to impose them on societies where they are not. A holistic approach does not entail achieving everything; rather it strives to achieve what is possible through a joint action by all those who may contribute to its success.

The six strategies given earlier also apply to an agriculture policy needed to weed out child labour from its domain. Once again, health, education, trade, industry, financial and other policy adjuncts play a key role in its success. Their part here may be envisaged as their necessary intersections with our trade and agriculture policy in a Venn diagrammed. Thus, it represents a distributed policy cluster where food and agriculture policy occupies its centre intersected by the relevant portions of the adjunctive policies.

It must be stressed that the implementation of the following tactics will have to be undertaken more or less simultaneously in order to achieve our objective. I have emphasised a labour-intensive approach at present, which may be gradually made more technically advanced in an appropriate, gradual manner. Greatest good of all the needy children is our aim, and not that of any vested interests.

• Identify the current transport facilities to and from a target area, and determine how they may be improved rapidly. This does not mean the introduction of most modern methods, rather improving the existing ones. What is needed is a quick and inexpensive solution.
• Ensure sufficient funds are available to purchase the equipment, put up the necessary buildings, for salaries of the training personnel, allowances paid to participants, etc.
• Before proceeding with the following, ensure that funding for follow-up support will be available for at least three years after the conclusion of the undertaking. This lack often leads to the breaking down of initially successful endeavour.
• Establishment of small to medium sized farms where the former is family-owned while the latter run on a cooperative basis. Both should enjoy secure legal tenure.
• Medium-sized units could be used as on-the-job training facilities for families and/children.
• Preference may be given to children already engaged in child labour, but does not have to exclude others who are interested in agricultural pursuits.
• Children undergoing such training should spend some time on acquiring a general education. However, standard education may be totally inappropriate for children who have not had a sufficient formal education before they were driven to work. Modest academic expectations combined with dedicated vocational training seem to offer them a greater chance of success in life.
• A suitable family/child allowance during such training may be needed to supplement the participants’ income. In many cases, there is no social help available to deprived families or when available, meagre.
• An appropriate number of technical training units ought to be established at suitable central locations to train adults/youth in the use of small farm machinery, their maintenance and repair. Same unit may also train suitable candidates in food preservation and proper storage. As the farm machines, preserving and storage units are to be run on a cooperative basis, the number of people needed here will not be very large.
• Ensure that the crops and animals used are compatible with the local food culture, geography and climatic conditions. This will reduce the need for extensive irrigation, use of fertilisers and biocides Moreover it contributes to the preservation of agricultural biodiversity.
• The foregoing also applies to fishermen and aquaculture. The use of trawlers and factory ships is deprecated; every support should be given to local fishermen. En passant, fish caught with nets made of natural fibres do not spoil or loose their firmness as fast as those caught by nets made of artificial material. This has been noted since the introduction of Nylon nets.

Concluding Remarks:

The most useful points to emerge from this discussion seem to be obvious. First, A given relevant policy domain will only achieve a partial success in its efforts to address child labour even under the best of circumstances. Unless some pressure can be brought to bear on other involved policy domains to undertake some necessary changes in them, eradication of child labour seems to be an untenable goal. However, an appropriate food and agriculture policy implemented at a regional or a local level may have a greater chance of success.

This appears to be the case in the example from Brazil sent to this forum, which has then been integrated into a greater programme well-known for its progress. However, Brazil has enormous resources both in human skills and material as well as a considerable number of concerned people. Not many of the countries where child labour obtains have these advantages.

Population growth is not only a generator of child labour but an open threat to civilised life on earth. It is essential that concrete action is undertaken to deal with this problem without delay. Thus far, most efforts have been directed at the top to act so that it may work down to the ground level. As they seem to have yielded but indifferent result, we need the reverse strategy viz., initiate local and regional action with reference to a holistic policy framework.

What this means in practice is simple. It is easy to draw up such a national policy framework to suit the conditions of a given country, and then determine the region/locale where the relevant food and agriculture policy is to be implemented. Then, one may select the tactical measures required for the purpose with reference to the strategic considerations listed earlier. When successfully completed, it will resemble the Brazilian example.

Finally, cooperation should replace the current notion of competitive approaches while the need for rapid economic devolution has become a vital necessity. If we are to come anywhere near achieving SDG-2 in time or ever for that matter, food production and disposal should be fully devolved. I hope the current discussion would lead to action that could soon ameliorate the lives of children forced into labour.

Best wishes!

Lal Manavado.