The WTO and the World Food System: a Trade Union Approach

By IUF

All agricultural workers and small farmers are both producers and consumers of food, and their livelihood is tied to the livelihood of those who consume the food they produce.

This is a simple but fundamental link in the world food system.

A commonsense approach to understanding the world food system raises some basic questions. If access to safe, nutritious food is a fundamental human right, why are 820 million people living in hunger today? Why are people in food exporting countries living in hunger, and why are agricultural workers among the malnourished? If the value of annual global exports in agricultural products in $US545 billion, why do waged agricultural workers and small farmers register among the highest levels of global poverty?

Also more than half of the world's workforce is engaged in agricultural production. Why then are the conditions under which food is produced so destructive to the health and well-being of these people? According to the ILO at least 170,000 agricultural workers are killed every year as a result of workplace accidents.

The World Trade Organisation and the elites that back them have a vision of global agriculture, but the plight of these workers is not a concern for them as they seek to extract more profit from agriculture at the expense of the workers who produce and the workers who consume the products.

They fail to recognise, or rather do not want to recognise the social and environmental crises that are built into the global food system as it exists.

The labour movement internationally must meet the challenge of building a long-term comprehensive strategy to ensure that the world food system is primarily geared towards fulfilling the right to food safety, food security, food sovereignty and the rights and livelihood of working people engaged in food production.

This publication from the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Associations (IUF-UITA-IUL) is part of that building process.

(IUF: Geneva, 2002)