Farm Labour Neglected: Ilo

The report will be released in Geneva today to coincide with the beginning of the five-day tripartite meeting of employers, workers and government representatives on improving conditions of employment in the context of economic restructuring.

The document bears out the widely held notion that farm wage workers are the poorest of the rural poor. It also reveals that the share of women in agricultural employment is increasing. They now account for 20 to 30 per cent of total agricultural wage employment. Child labour is pervasive in rural areas, in some developing countries, as much as 30 per cent of the workforce. The report defines subsistence wage as An hourly wage sufficient to buy one kilo of the lowest-priced staple cereal. Going by this definition, nearly 40 per cent of the countries lack in ensuring subsistence remuneration to farm labour.

 

The working time required to obtain this kilo of cereal ranges from less than five minutes (in Sweden) to over six hours (in Central African Republic). The median working time comes to 37 minutes which corresponds to the position in India. In five countries of Asia and Africa, the working time is over three hours.

The report points out that while trade in international commodities expanded by roughly three per cent annually throughout the last decade, agricultural wage workers shared unevenly in the growth. A sample survey from 45 countries from all regions shows that real wages declined for agricultural workers over the last decade in 18 of the countries, withted by investment in infrastructure to generate more employment in and around agriculture.