Reaching marginalised farm workers

ETI steered collaborative work across the UK food industry and down the supply chain to produce a comprehensive set of guidelines aimed at improving the conditions of smallholders and their workers. Since then, ETI members have started using the guidelines to help drive up labour standards on smallholdings.

Why smallholders?

Millions of small-scale farmers around the world help ensure a year-round supply of tea, coffee, fruit, flowers and vegetables to our supermarkets. But smallholders - farmers with very small plots of land - are often marginalised and vulnerable, lacking access to market information, training, credit and agricultural inputs. Both they and their workers suffer some of the poorest working conditions in the supply chain. Urgent action is required to improve their conditions.

Making a difference to working conditions on smallholding farms is a huge challenge for companies. Their geographical remoteness, and the length and complexity of the supply chain, make it difficult to trace them, and resource-intensive to monitor their labour practices. And the fact that employment practices on smallholdings are also far more informal than on large farms or in factories makes it harder to interpret how codes of conduct should be applied to them.

Guidelines developed across the food industry

ETI's Smallholder project was set up to develop guidelines for companies to help progressively improve the conditions of smallholders and their workers. The specific aims of the project were to:

• establish how the ETI Base Code applies to smallholders, and how it could be implemented and monitored with smallholders and their workers
• establish a methodology for working with smallholders in order to help them and those sourcing from them to observe the ETI Base Code; and
• document approaches to implementing the Code in different types of supply chain

The guidelines were developed over a three-year period, using field research carried out in Kenya of the needs and priorities of over 500 Kenyan smallholders and workers. After a formal launch in Kiswahili, Spanish and English in September 2005, individual ETI member companies have been rolling out the guidelines across their supply chains.

In March 2006, a group of companies met with ETI trade union and NGO members to discuss their experience and learning so far from using the guidelines. Many reported that the shift from an approach based heavily on audits, which many were previously using, to one based on drawing out workers' own priorities through focus group discussions, was a significant and powerful step forward in engaging smallholders and their workers in this process. Simple tools contained in the guidelines, including a photo story depicting all the links in the supply chain, were also helping motivate smallholders to take steps to improve working conditions.