Promoting Decent Employment in Agriculture and Food Sectors of Developing Countries: What Role for CGIAR

by Jean Baliéand Andrew Clayton

One of CGIAR's five core impact areas is poverty reduction, livelihoods,and jobs. Our ambition needs to go beyond creating jobs and generate higher income for farmers. We must also look at the quality of the jobs and livelihoods created through agricultural transformation. This is about providing decent work in rural economies that respect fundamental labor rights and gender equality and provide fair wages and basic social protection.We think that this has not been given sufficient attention in CGIAR's research portfolio. In this blog, we set out why promoting decent employment in the agriculture and food sectors of developing countries should prioritized within CGIAR.

Some basic facts on the agri-food system highlight the challenges:

• Illegal working conditions infringing fundamental human rights: There is evidence of unpaid labor and forced labor in the agricultural sector of many countries in the Global South and Global North.

• Child Labor: the International Labor Organisation estimates that there are 112 million child laborers in agriculture, which is 70% of all child labor.

• Low wages compared to other sectors and insecure employment are pervasive in the agricultural and food sectors: Many agricultural workers, particularly smallholder farmers and farm workers, face low wages, irregular employment, and lack of social protection.

• Poor Working Conditions:Unsafe working conditions, long working hours, and exposure to hazardous chemicals are common challenges in the agricultural sector.

• Limited Access to Social Protection and social safety nets: Many agricultural workers lack access to social security benefits and social protection schemes, such as health insurance, pensions, and unemployment benefits. They also lack social safety nets in case they face risk due to weather, market, and disease-related shocks, preventing them from developing resilient agri-food production systems and potentially exposing societies to food shortages and insecurity.

• Lack of skills and training: A widespread lack of education and training tends to limit the employability and productivity of agricultural workers.

• Gender inequality:Women and youth often face work discrimination and inequality in the agricultural sector, limiting their access to resources, training, and decision-making.

The importance of decent work for economic growth is also recognized in Sustainable Development Goal 8: 'Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all.'SDG 8 targets cover different aspects of decent work, such as Target 8.7, End Modern Slavery, Trafficking, and Child Labor, and Target 8.8, Protect Labor Rights and Promote Safe Working Environments. SDG 8 and its accompanying targets highlight that increasing income is not sufficient but needs to be accompanied by attention to these four core areas of decent work.

The International Labor Organisation (ILO) has identified four main areas that are essential for decent work in the agri-food sector:

• Rights at work

• Decent jobs and full and productive employment in the agri-food system

• Social and labor protection

• Social dialogue and tripartism (including promoting strong workers organizations).

The challenge for CGIAR is two-fold. Firstly, in our work on increasing yields and income through agricultural innovation, we must find innovations promoting decent work. And we need indicators and reporting systems that can measure progress on this. Secondly, we must ensure that our innovations do not undermine labor rights. For example, do the labor demands of innovations increase the risk of abusive labor practices, including child labor? Do these innovations reduce the precarity of small farmers' livelihoods or make them more precarious? What are the tradeoffs between promoting increased incomes through agricultural innovation and addressing decent work concerns, such as fair wages for agricultural workers, improved health and safety, and investing in basic social protection?

The potential of CGIAR research and innovation to promote decent work

Decent work is a wide-ranging agenda, and action to promote decent work requires working at multiple levels. Some of the key areas that need to be addressed through CGIAR research and partnerships include:

• Strengthening and enforcing labor laws and regulations to ensure fair wages, safe working conditions, and social protection while at the same time promoting farmers' organizations to improve their collective bargaining and workers' rights.

• Promoting decent work in agribusiness. This includes using international standards, responsible business practices, and ethical sourcing of agricultural products. It needs to be supplemented by fiscal and other policy incentives to the use of labels and information that discriminate positive business behaviors from bad ones on working conditions.

• Accelerating women and youth empowerment in agriculture by investing in technical assistance and extensions services, education, training, and skill development, especially for small farmers and agricultural workers on modern, fair, inclusive, and sustainable agricultural practices.

• Strengthening Social Policy Dialogue between key stakeholders to address labor issues and adopt international (e.g., ILO) and national guidelines on decent work in the agri-food sector.

• Create an enabling environment for higher agriculture productivity and better jobs that include investing in rural infrastructure (such as roads, irrigation systems, and storage facilities) and services to the population.

These are complex issues to address, and further research by CGIAR will build evidence of what works in different contexts.

The employment situation in the agri-food sector is often dire, marked by unacceptable and unsustainable practices. While promoting decent work conditions may seem challenging, it is both possible and morally imperative. Furthermore, creating more and better jobs in the agri-food sector is economically feasible and socially beneficial, provided the right models are developed.

Many of the strategies outlined in this blog will likely benefit from contributions from CGIAR research, provided decent employment conditions become a priority of focus in the portfolio 2025-30.

Experience has shown that it is possible to create decent agricultural work conditions. Research can provide evidence to quantify the scale of the problem and identify the technical, legal, and policy support needed to transform agri-food systems to be more inclusive, sustainable, and equitable. Ultimately, this can improve the livelihoods of millions of agricultural workers in developing countries, including women, youth, and children.

To promote the decent work agenda in CGIAR we are planning a series of seminars. In January 2025, we will hold a seminar with ILO in which they will introduce their recently issued Policy guidelines for the promotion of decent work in the agri-food sector.We have had some initial discussions with the ILO and will explore potential synergies between ILO and CGIAR, particularly at a country level. We also plan to write further blogs to explore different aspects of decent work in more depth, such as on the complex issue of child labor in agriculture.

Public link

Please use the above public link if you want to share this noodl on another website.