Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN Forum)

Question 3) Family farming

Effects of land related factors on child labour in agriculture: evidences from Peru



This study analyzes the relationships occurring between household characteristics, children

individual factors, community/rural context, and their effect on agricultural child labour in

Peru. In particular, land related factors were explicitly taken into account. In Peru the

majority of child workers are engaged in farming systems characterized by great

heterogeneity. Data used in this research derives from the 2013 Peruvian National

Household Survey. A child labour supply model shows that a strict relation exists between

land related factors and child labour in agriculture, both in terms of its incidence and

intensity. Moreover, this relation changes according to land size patterns likely related to

different agricultural systems. Policy makers should take in count the complex relationship

between land and child labour especially with respect to child labour eradication and other

development program that could directly and indirectly increase child productivity in

agriculture as well as labour demand and supply.

Dear participants,

Thanks to all of you for the rich contributions and perspectives. In recent days, we have heard more much on mechanization, the link between environmental degredation and child labour (especially in cocoa production) along with the importance of cross-sectoral and inter-agency collaboration in policies and strategies.

One issue that has come up in some contributions, in which I would like to provide some clarity on, is the definition of child labour. We should not consifer the term 'safe child labour'. As mentioned in the definition above, there are many tasks that are age-appropriate, not hazardous and do not interfere with a child's education. These tasks would not be considered child labour and would should simply be refered to as age-appropiate tasks in agriculture or children's involvement in work.

Child labour, by definition, is work that engages children below the age of employment, is hazardous, interferes with compulsory education and/or any work that is mentally, physically, socially, morally harmful to a child. Children working in school gardens or assisting their parents in safe, age appropriate tasks on the farm is not child labour. Yet, it is important to recognize that child labour, as per the definition above, is found in both enterprises and family farms. Moreover, child labour in familyis more prevelant in farming in relative terms. Therefore, when looking into appriopriate policy or strategies to address child labour in agriculture, it is essential that we have a strong understanding of what is and what is not child labour in order to make appropriate deicsions that benefit vulnerable rural families and the sustainability of the agriculture sector. This may involve, for example, looking at the national hazardous work list that have developed for all countries that have ratified the ILO Convention 182 'Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour' or consulting with agricultural stakeholders for an updated national list on hazardous work in agriculture.

I want to thank all of you again for the rich knowledge brought forth thus far, and we encourage you to continue the discussion, and for new participants to share their insights or case studies until Monday, May 25. You can also post your contribution on Monday.

Warm regards to all,

Jessie River Fagan [Facilitator]

Child Labour and Mechanisation

In Ghana, there are about 2.1 million children aged between 5-17 years who are engaged in child labour. The Agriculture sector employs 18.5% of these children in child labour (ILO and CEIS, 2017). In the rice value chain, children aged between 5-14 years normally work on family farm for free but children age between 15-17 years normally work on family farms for a pay. Child labour which exists in rice value chain is in the form of exposure to hazardous environment and children combining school work with strenuous farm work. Some examples and nature of child labour in the rice value chain are; Felling of trees and removal of stumps during land preparation of newly cultivated areas, contact with agrochemicals without appropriate personal protective equipment before, during and after spraying, carrying loads like fertilizer, seed (above 30kg) over long distances from home to farm, working for longer hours (>3 hours) on the farm.

In adequate access to agriculture mechanization, limited access to adult labour and poverty is one of the major causes of child labour in agriculture sector (ILO, 2017). However, agricultural mechanization influences demand and supply of farm labour and agricultural profitability (Schmitz and Moss, 2015). In short, agricultural mechanization is to reduce farm labor and improve the livelihood of farmers (FAO and UNIDO, 2008). Rice farming is labor intensive and majority of the rural poor farmers resort to their children to actively participate in farm work at the expense of their education and health in the future. A field survey conducted in rice growing areas of the Volta region of Ghana showed that family work on rice farms contributed 50% out of an average 84 mandays work on a hectare (Bockel et. al, 2020). Activities in the rice value chain where child labour is commonly seen are application of pesticides, removal of weeds, fertilizer application, scaring, carting, drying and milling. Appropriate mechanization in the rice sector of Ghana can greatly reduce labour by an average of 50% and targeted mechanization at activities which involve children have the potential of reducing child labour to a larger extent.

Activities and Recommended Mechanisation

• Application of pesticides: District agric directorates can deploy drones in spraying farm lands as lowlands and irrigation schemes for rice cultivation are usually connected and close to each other. There is evidence of demonstrations done on some rice farms in different areas of Ghana to show drone technology in spraying (VOA, 2019). Government can subsidize this package as part of it mass spraying exercise or subsidy policy to promote precision farming and reduction in child labour. Children don’t have to go and fetch water for pesticide application, mixing of pesticide and washing of spraying machine.
• Weeding: locally manufactured simple hand held rice weeding equipments which can be operated by women who usually undertake this activity. This equipment is suitable in rice fields that have been planted in rows. Majority of rice farmers know that row planting gives higher yields than broadcasting method of planting. However, this majority of rice farmers are unable to plant in rows due to limited labour and poverty. If simple rice planting machines can be added to the government subsidized mechanization package for agriculture machinery service providers, more farmers can begin to plant in rows.
• Fertilizer application: simple locally manufactured hand held fertilizer applicators must be promoted among rice farmers to encourage precision farming. This is suitable for rice farms planted in rows.
• Scaring: suitable fishing nets can be is use to cover rice farms and prevent birds from eating rice farms at the milking stage. Majority of farmers are not able to afford the cost of these nets as they are expensive. Government can add this to the subsidy programme or state owned financial service providers can offer flexible payment plan to rice farmers to be able to afford these nets. There is evidence of women rice farmers using bird netting to cover their rice fields to reduce child labour. (Cocoa Initiative, 2018 )
• Milling: State owned banks must offer reasonable payment plan to agro-processing companies to be able to buy basic equipments which reduces labour during rice milling. One of such machines is an elevator bucket which carries paddy rice from one point to another point in processing.

REFERENCES

Bockel, L., Gopal, P., Abedi, A., Aminou, A., & Ouedraogo, A. (2020). Rice Value Chain in Ghana

Prospective Analsis and Strategies for Sustainable & Pro-Poor Growth. Accra: FAO RAF Draft

Document.

FAO and UNIDO. Agricultural mechanization in Africa. Time for action: planning investment for enhanced agricultural productivity. Rome: FAO; 2008.

Cocoa Inititiative. 2018. How rice cultivation has help reduce child labour in Ghana. Cocoa Initiative (online) cited 10th May, 2020. https://cocoainitiative.org/news-media-post/how-rice-cultivation-has-be…

VOA. 2019. Farmers in Ghana using drones for pest, disease surveillance (online) cited 10th May, 2020. https://www.voanews.com/episode/farmers-ghana-using-drones-pest-disease…

ILO. 2017. Child Labour in Agriculture (online) cited 10th May, 2020. https://www.ilo.org/ipec/areas/Agriculture/lang--en/index.htm

Schmitz A, Moss CB. Mechanized agriculture: machine adoption, farm size, and labor displacement. AgBioForum. 2015;18(3):278–96.

ILO and CEIS. 2017. Not Just Cocoa: Child Labour in the Agricultural Sector in Ghana (online) (cited 10th May, 2020. https://cocoainitiative.org/knowledge-centre-post/not-just-cocoa-child-…

Poverty is the main cause of child labour in agriculture, especially in the context of family farming. The prevailing ‘slash and burn’ shifting cultivation, is the predominant farming system of family farming. Every year farmer prepare new land for new crops and make agricultural work more intensive. This may lead children’s labour.

A need to cultivate greater land area to produce more food to fight against food insecurity and poverty shrinks the fallow periods and disrupts the restoration of soil fertility and rejuvenation of exhausted soils. The short fallow periods lead to rapid degradation of the environment. and increases weed infestation and soil fertility decline. This practice is not sustainable as crop yields are declining while labour required to control weeds is increasing and needs children’s labour.

Therefore, to stopped child labour in agriculture need to promote safer agricultural practices, in regarding, mechanization, good duration of the fallowing phase and rotation, natural soil fertilization, accessing to credit, insurance for famers, improving rural livelihoods and income-generating activities for women could prevent children to work in agriculture. These solutions contribute to restore soil fertility and biodiversity.

In Addition, the armed conflicts and the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/AIDS epidemic have devastated many families, left millions of children orphaned, have disrupted the life in the villages and rural communities and increasingly have contributed to the poverty growth.

For stopped child labour in agriculture means to implement strengthen the program for the care of orphans and promote access child to education, especially for girls.

Dear All

The issue of child labor is a challenge in many places in the world, and is an issue which we have learned more about through a partnership between the FAO and Hanns R. Neumann Stiftung (HRNS). As an international non-profit, HRNS has been implementing programs since 2005, working to  improve the social situation of people in tropical countries (especially the producers of agricultural crops such as coffee), the welfare and education of youth, and the protection of nature and the environment. Through our partnership with the FAO, we examined the coffee landscape in Western Guatemala (Huehuetenango), regarding youth and child labor. Some of the lessons we learned include: 

1. National regulations on child labor vary from country to country; it is important to learn and understand more about these laws in order to develop tailored approaches and solutions within each country context together with international requirements 

2. It is key to realize a regional study on the socio-economic and cultural context within communities as well as value chains (ex. coffee, cocoa, etc.) to build a more in-depth understanding and knowledge of the local context and the situations which could be contributing to child labor.

3. Based on the results from steps 1 and 2, it is important to develop strategies to address child labor, rather than only identifying issues and leaving smallholders without support to identify solutions. 

4. To fully address the topic, a multi-sector approach is needed, involving civil society, public and the private sector.

5. This is not a short term process. After our intervention with the FAO, we have continued to support families in collaboration with private partners and other NGOs. We are looking to create better capacities promoting organizational development, climate-smart agriculture, youth development and inclusive participation, and developing family business. We believe that delivering these services to smallholders is key to building upon our original findings in Huehuetenango. 

Some additional information can be found in:

https://www.hrnstiftung.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Nueva-Generación…;

https://www.coffeekids.org/2018/04/25/coffee-kids-expanding-coffee-comm…;

http://www.fao.org/guatemala/noticias/detail-events/es/c/1127151/ 

Regards,

Pablo

Child labor is common in domestic/local supply chains. As long as it is volunatry and doesn't interfere with the children's education, it is a healthy trend in learning the life skills by helping their parents by participating in certain tasks, like delivering the vegetables to a local store, getting some supplies from shops, etc. 

Often girls are engaged in fetching water from distant wells for family use and it may interfere with their regular education. In such cases, provision of potable water and sanitation to poor families is critical to prevent the engagement of children in demanding tasks that interfere with their normal development and education.

While formulating policies on child labor in agriculture or other enterprises, we must differentiate family farms vs. commercial farms or enterprises. Children often work in family farms or home gardens after school hours to help their parents and to learn the practical aspects of food production. In some schools, they have school gardens where children participate and learn on how to grow and manage crops and it is is part of the education. Thus, voluntary participation of children in family farms or home gardens is an education process and it is vital for their full development.

In commercial farms and enterprises, children are employed to supplement the family income in poor families. Unless the poor families are elevated from their level of poverty through rural employment generation and decent wages for work by adults, it is difficult to abolish the forced child labor. The root cause is poverty and it must be addressed first before preventing forced child labor.

Thank you.

Pesticide Action Network-UK has not done policy analysis in this area but we have some relevant experience to share from our work in West Africa and Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia (EECCA).

2) Climate change and Environmental Degradation and 3) Family farming

Many of the smallholder farmers with whom we work with have little training or information concerning the pesticides they use and the hazards they present for human health and the environment. This can have a significant negative impact on their livelihoods as well as the ecosystem services on which they depend (such as pollination, soil health, natural enemies of pests). This, in turn impacts on family livelihoods, nutrition and the welfare of children. In addition, children are particularly susceptible to the impacts of pesticides on their health and development. Evidence suggests that even low exposure to certain pesticides can impair their neurological and behavioural development. Women of child bearing age are also particularly vulnerable to these toxic effects which can be passed through the placenta to the foetus and in breast milk.

In 2016 PAN-UK undertook small scale surveys of children living on small farms in 5 countries (Armenia, Belarus, Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine). In each country except Armenia, the surveys revealed that children were directly handling pesticides on the farm. The survey teams in Kyrgyzstan and Moldova in particular were surprised to find more than a quarter of participating children directly involved in applying pesticides (26% and 39% respectively) as well as undertaking other tasks around the farm that may expose them to these hazardous chemicals, such as picking fruit and washing spray equipment. These were small scale studies and the age profile was not comparable, but still indicates a potentially significant issue for children. In Kyrgyzstan, the issue was debated in parliament and efforts were made to raise public awareness about the dangers to children.

3) Family farming and gender

PAN-UK has worked with partners in Benin for over 20 years to support organic cotton production. Two key features of this work are i) protecting livelihoods through resilient and biodiverse agricultural systems ii) empowering women to engage in decision-making and diversify livelihoods. Both of these aspects have proved to be important for children’s welfare and school attendance.

The situation of women in poor, rural communities can be bleak. As one report puts it ‘In rural areas women traditionally occupy a subordinate role and are responsible for much of the hard labour on subsistence farms.’ (2010 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices). This attitude is reflected in girls’ opportunities from a young age. Just 11.2% women in Benin over 25 years of age have a secondary education. In order to improve the situation of children, it is also important to address the constraints on adult women.

Our work has successfully supported women to engage in decision-making at family and community level and to engage in a wide range of income-generating activities. Securing their own income has helped to increase the status of participating women, who are now taking on leadership roles in local cooperatives and other forums. In a meeting with the Women’s Cotton Cooperative in Djamadji village near Glazoué in 2019, for example, a participant said ‘I think that having my own income has given me more power concerning household decisions, particularly about sending my children to school. I have often argued with my husband about keeping my daughters in school and, with my own money, it is easier to win’. The group agreed that they had experienced similar conversations and said that they wanted their children to get as much schooling as possible. This is anecdotal, but we hear similar feedback again and again.

4) Innovation

One of the requests of participating cotton farmers in Benin was for milling equipment. This equipment saves many hours of arduous and repetitive work milling maize and other dry produce by hand. In a survey of 498 farmers in 2018, 50% farmers reported that proximity to milling equipment was an important factor for girls’ school attendance. Without a mill in the village, girls are often kept from school to process maize and millet manually.

Discussion topic: Climate change and environmental degradation (subject: cocoa farming)

For many years, deforestation has been attributed to smallholder and family cocoa farming. This practice continues to increase greenhouse gas emissions and has a hugely negative impact on biodiversity, soil fertility, water quality and quantity. It affects local rainfall and threatens farmer livelihoods. Many areas in West Africa have observed a substantial decrease in cocoa production due to climate change (e.g. changing rainfall patterns and amounts, increasing temperatures). Under these circumstances and because of economic necessity, a growing number of children are pushed into child labour to act as a “buffer” against these shocks. With school closures and farmers’ disrupted livelihoods, the COVID-19 pandemic is putting them at greater risk.

Through public-private partnerships, some promising actions are being implemented on the ground to halt cocoa-related deforestation in West Africa and other regions such as Central America. Agricultural stakeholders such as farmers’ organizations and cooperatives and their communities should not be left behind. They need to be brought at the forefront and be fully capacitated to address these critical issues in an integrated manner and in collaboration with governments and companies in the cocoa and chocolate business. Agroforestry, labour-saving technology, good agricultural practices, livelihood-enhancing schemes, skills development for youth and migrant workers, women’s empowerment, community awareness raising and action planning, and traceability are among the action areas that could make a difference in the context of a collaborative approach. Until solid monitoring mechanism systems are in place, it will be also difficult to assess whether these critical issues of forest protection and child labour elimination are effectively addressed.

Policy coherence needs to be ensured in order to address the intertwined challenges of child labour in agriculture and youth employment.

Special attention should be given to the youngest category of youth (15-17) living in rural areas. These youth have reached the minimum age for employment (the general rule is 15 but some developing countries are allowed to set it temporarily at 14) yet are still considered children, therefore, they experience greater vulnerabilities in preparing and accessing for decent work opportunities.

Some of the barriers and challenges they face include:

1. Limited access to secondary education: While education, in particular primary education, is compulsory in most countries, it does not always ensure that children in this age bracket are indeed in school for secondary school. Access to education can be further hindered by household poverty, school fees, long distances to school, poor quality of education and perceptions of irrelevance of curriculum to local life styles and needs, cultural norms, etc.
2. Limited access to adequate (agricultural) education and skill development courses: courses are often not up-to-date and in line with market demand, and educational facilities can be situated in urban areas;
3. Gaps in legal protection: for example, they may not be able to legally sign formal contracts which can push them into informal work or exploitative conditions;
4. Exclusion from policy-making processes because these often take place in urban areas, and local leaders in rural areas often only interact with family heads;
5. Limited experience and lack of competitiveness, when unemployment is widespread, youth are less competitive in terms of skills and expertise and often experience a skills gap compared with their urban counterparts. They may also experience more difficulties in accessing markets;
6. Insufficient capital, which makes starting a business highly risky for youth;
7. Minimum age constraints that impede access to land, financial services and business development services;
8. Limited access to and participation in producer organizations, cooperatives and trade unions;
9. Exclusion from government and employment related programmes where the focus is often on youth 18 and above.

Although the 15-17 age cohort have reached the minimum age for employment, when they are involved in hazardous work, it is considered child labour. Moreover, because the cohort can experience greater barriers to decent employment, especially in rural areas, they are at greater risk of exploitation, including child labour.

According to the Global Statistics on child labour released by Alliance 8.7 in 2016, there are almost 38 million children – 24 million boys and 14 million girls – of this age cohort in child labour. This is reinforced by country-level statistics indicating that the 15-17 cohort in child labour suffer higher levels of work-related illness and injury than other employed children in this age range. They are also more likely than other employed 15-17 year-olds to have dropped out of school prematurely. Most of them work in agriculture and undertake hazardous tasks in crop production, livestock, forestry or fishing because of rural poverty, lack of access to quality education and training, the informality and the seasonality of agriculture and other aggravating factors, such as climate change,. Thus, the 15-17 age cohort requires greater protection from occupational hazards and greater support in preparing and accessing decent employment opportunities in rural areas.