ETI REPORTS 2005

ETI smallholder guidelines
recommendations for working with smallholders

These guidelines present the recommendations and working tools developed by the ETI Smallholders Project Group for those working within international supply chains that source from smallholders. They seek to provide guidance on how retailers, purchasers, smallholders and others can take action to help improve the working conditions of smallholders. The ultimate aim is to work towards the implementation of internationally agreed labour standards on smallholdings, and specifically, those of the ETI Base Code.

 

 

About the smallholder guidelines

• Extracts from Chapter 1:
  • Who these guidelines are for
  • Why we need the guidelines
  • Status of these guidelines.

• Detailed contents
• Download the guidelines.

 

Who these guidelines are for

These guidelines are intended for use by the full range of groups active within international supply chains sourcing from smallholders. They are primarily aimed at the commercial actors integral to these chains, but also contain chapters for use by non-commercial groups, such as trade unions and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) active in improving labour standards in this field. The guidelines were developed by ETI members, primarily for other members, but are also intended for a wider constituency of non-members, particularly:

• retailers
• purchasers, including agents, co-operatives, exporters, packing houses and suppliers
• commercial auditors involved in inspections of smallholders or purchasers
• smallholders
• trade unions
• non-governmental organisations.

The guidelines will also interest academics working on smallholder issues.

 

Why we need the guidelines

The application of codes of practice to small agricultural producers is emerging as an important and complex issue for retailers and purchasers as well as trade unions and NGOs active in the labour rights field. Research and members’ experience has shown that smallholders and their workers frequently have poor terms and conditionsof work.

Concurrently, smallholders appear to be increasingly prevalent in ETI company members’ international supply chains. The degree to which markets depend on products sourced from smallholdings varies by product, but in certain cases, such as coffee, smallholders produce the majority of the commodity sold on world markets. In a significant number of developing countries, smallholdings are the most commonly found unit of agricultural production.

Despite their significance within supply chains however, smallholders present a number of challenges to retailers and suppliers committed to implementing labour codes. Such challenges include

• the number and traceability of smaller producers involved;
• the cost of monitoring large numbers of scattered producers;
• the problems of identifying and classifying smallholders, due to the variety of definitions of smallholding and mechanisms by which they may be linked into international supply chains;
• the remoteness of retailers from the smallholder, due to the length and complexity of the supply chain linking the two;
• the need to interpret how codes based on international labour standards, designed primarily for formal workplaces, should be applied to less formal labour situations, such as smallholdings.

There is therefore a pressing need for specific guidance and tools for use by those involved at different levels in supply chains to enable all to work towards improving the working conditions of smallholders. These guidelines aim to provide such a resource.

 

Status of these guidelines

These guidelines are still a work in progress. The Group’s company members plan to test the guidelines individually in their supply chains across different produce and countries. We will use the learning gathered from this work to revise the guidelines and produce a second edition in 2006. The Kenyan case study referred toabove has informed the development of the guidelines, but they have been written to be as generic as possible and so will need to be adapted by the different users of this document to local situations and conditions.

 

 

Download the guidelines

You may choose to download the entire document (or entire toolkit) from the first box below or select particular chapters to download individually. The links below give you the main chapter headings and indicate for whom they are primarily written. Before choosing, you may wish to follow this link to view the detailed table of contents.

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See also:

ETI Activities: Experimental projects: Smallholders.

ETI Events: Seminars: Smallholder guidelines UK launch seminar.

ETI Events: Conferences: Biennial conference 2005: Workshop - Smallholders