Table Of ContentThe Food Crisis
Implications for Labor
Labor and Globalization
Volume 2
Edited by Christoph Scherrer
Christoph Scherrer
Debdulal Saha
(Eds.)
The Food Crisis
Implications for Labor
Rainer Hampp Verlag München, Mering 2013
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche
Nationalbibliothek
Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the
Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.
ISBN 978-3-86618-393-3
Labor and globalization: ISSN 2196-5382
First published 2013
Photographer: Christoph Scherrer, Palm oil processing in the vicinity of
Cape Coast, Ghana, 2011.
© 2013 Rainer Hampp Verlag München, Mering
Marktplatz 5 86415 Mering, Germany
www.Hampp-Verlag.de
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted or
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In case of complaints please contact Rainer Hampp Verlag.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Notes on Contributors viii
Introduction: The Neglected Labour Dimension 1
Debdulal Saha and Christoph Scherrer
I. Food Insecurity
1. Addressing the ‘Slow Violence’ of Food Insecurity 9
Jacklyn Cock
2. The Origins of the Food Crisis: The Case of East Africa 29
Thomas Ogola and Jane Sawe
3. Market Queens and the Blame Game in Ghanaian Tomato Marketing 53
Akua O.Britwum
II. Decent Work Deficit and Rural Labor
4. “You entered through that gate and you will leave through that gate”.
The Decent Work Deficit amongst Farm Workers… 73
Edward Webster and Mbuso Nkosi
5. Indonesian Oil Palm Plantations:
Decent Work Deficit Despite Employment Growth 99
Hariati Sinaga
6. Rural Development and the Decent Work Agenda:
The Role of Smallholders and the Rural Poor 127
Lars Thomann
III. Social Protection
7. Food Security Requires Income Security.
The Case for Universal Social Protection Floors 153
Frank Hoffer
8. The Brazilian Food and Nutrition Security Policy: Concept and Results 173
Walter Belik
9. Food or Cash: Assisting the Urban Poor in India 197
Sharit K. Bhowmik, Indira Gartenberg, and Kanchan Sarker
v
vi
Acknowledgments
The idea for this book arose at a conference on the “The Food Crisis: Implications for
Decent Work in Rural and Urban Areas” of the International Center for Development and
Decent Work in Kassel 2012. The neglected dimension of labor in the public and
academic discussion of the food crisis provided the motivation for the conference. The
many papers presenting original research on labor in agriculture and the effects of social
protection on access to food encouraged us to invite the conference participants to
contribute to this book. Many thanks go to all contributors, who make this volume
possible by writing insightful chapters in a timely fashion.
Since not all of us our native English speakers we are very thankful Amanda Schimunek,
for a superb job in copy editing. Special thanks go to Maryam Zaheri and Halyna
Semenyshyn for the formatting of all texts. Many thanks also to Rainer Hampp at Hampp
Verlag who was enthusiastic about the book project from the very beginning. Financial
support was granted by the International Center for Development and Decent Work
which is one of the five Centers of Excellence for Exchange and Development program
managed by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) using funds from the
German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). Finally
we would like to thank the International Labour Organisation for the support and
encouragement for the research conference and this publication.
Christoph Scherrer / Debdulal Saha
Berlin / Guwahati
July 2013
vii
Notes on Contributors
Walter Belik is a Professor at the Institute of Economics and Coordinator of the Center
for Food Studies in the University of Campinas, Brazil. He was one of the coordinators
of the Zero Hunger Project and a member of the National Food Security Council (2003-
06) in Brazil. He also was in charge of implementation of the Initiative Latin America
and Caribbean without Huger, a project hosted by FAO, during 2007-08. His current area
of research is Food and Nutritional Security and Rural Poverty.
Sharit Bhowmik is Professor and Chairperson at the Centre for Labour Studies, Tata
Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. He has been engaged in research on informal
employment, especially street vendors, for the past 15 years. He was a member of the
National Task Force on Street Vendors and of the Drafting Committee for the National
Policy (2004) appointed by the then Ministry of Urban Employment and Poverty
Alleviation. He has edited a volume on Street Vendors in the Global Urban Economy
(2010) and has published a book titled Industry, Labour and Society (2012) as well as a
monograph on tea plantation labour.
Akua Opokua Britwum is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Development
Studies, University of Cape Coast, Ghana where she is engaged in teaching and research
in the area of gender and labor studies. Her publications cover gender based violence,
gender and economic participation as well as trade union democracy and informal
economy labour force organisation. She is in addition the academic coordinator for the
GLU Alumni Research Group on Gender and Trade Unions and Convener for the
Network for Women’s Rights in Ghana.
Jacklyn Cock is a professor emeritus in the Department of Sociology at the University of
the Witwatersrand and an honorary research associate of the Society, Work and
Development (SWOP) Institute. She has written extensively on militarization, gender and
environmentalism in Southern Africa. Her best known book is Maids and Madams: A
study in the politics of exploitation (1981). Her latest book is The War Against
Ourselves: Nature, Power and Justice (2007). She has a PhD from Rhodes University
and has been a visiting scholar at Wolfson College, Oxford University, the Institute for
Advanced Study, Princeton, the Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University and the
Center for Historical Analysis, Rutgers University. She is currently very involved in the
environmental justice movement in South Africa and is working with the trade union
federation COSATU on climate change issues.
viii
Indira Gartenberg is a PhD scholar at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, and
a fellow of the International Center for Development and Decent Work (ICDD). She is
also a trade union activist with Labour Education And Research Network (LEARN) in
India. Her research interests are urban informal labour, women's work and trade unions.
Frank Hoffer works as research officer in the Bureau for Workers' Activities of the
International Labour Organisation (ILO). He studied in Bremen, London and Moscow
and holds PhD in Economics. His main areas of work are social protection and wage
policies. Frank Hoffer is the international coordinator of the Global Labour University
(GLU) and serves on the Steering Committee of the International Center for
Development and Decent Work (ICDD).
Mbuso Nkosi was born and brought up in Soweto. He holds a BA honours degree in
industrial sociology and a Masters’ degree in commerce (Development Theory and
Policy) both from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. He is a former
Society, Work and Development Institute (SWOP) intern at the University of the
Witwatersrand.
Thomas Ogola is currently a doctoral fellow in Egerton University and of the
International Center for Development and Decent Work (ICDD) where his research
interest is in evaluating linkages in Dairy production, marketing and working conditions
with emphasis on decent work. He holds a Masters degree in Agriculture Economics and
a Bachelor of Science in Animal production all from Egerton University. He has also
contributed some articles in referred Journals.
Debdulal Saha is Assistant Professor at Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS),
Guwahati Campus. He completed his PhD from TISS Mumbai. As a PhD scholar, he
received a scholarship from the International Center for Development and Decent Work
(ICDD). He has co-authored (with Sharit Bhowmik) a book on Financial Inclusion of the
Marginalised: Street Vendors in Urban Economy (2013). He has published several
articles in peer reviewed journals and as chapters in edited books on street vendors and
the informal economy.
Kanchan Sarker is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of British
Columbia, Canada. He has done his research on food security. He has published in peer-
reviewed journals like Work and Occupation, Economic and Political Weekly, and Indian
Journal of Industrial Relations.
ix
Jane Sawe is a PhD student at Egerton University, Animal Sciences Department and a
fellow of the International Center for Development and Decent Work (ICDD). Her
research topic is Evaluation of Urban and Peri-urban Dairy farming and their
contribution to decent work in Nakuru municipality, Kenya. She holds a Masters degree
in Agroforestry from Moi University with specific focus on Nutrition of meat goats. She
has a Bachelor of Science in Animal Production from Egerton University.
Christoph Scherrer is director of the International Center for Development and Decent
Work at Kassel University and a member of the steering committee of the Global Labour
University. He works on international political economy and labor. His most recent
books are: Sozialkapitel in Handelsverträgen (co-edited with A. Hänlein, 2012), China's
Labor Question (2011) and The Role of Gender Knowledge in Policy Networks (co-
edited with B. Young; 2010).
Hariati Sinaga is currently a PhD student at the International Center for Development
and Decent Work (ICDD) Graduate School of Socio-ecological Research for
Development, Kassel University, Germany. Her PhD project focuses on trade
liberalizations and labour rights in Indonesia, focusing on the oil palm plantations and the
automobile sectors. Her main research interests are labour, trade and gender issues.
Lars Thomann received his PhD from the Bremen International Graduate School of
Social Sciences (BIGSSS). His research interests are international labour standards, rural
development, migration and international trade. He has been working as a researcher and
lecturer at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES), the University
of Mannheim, and the TU Darmstadt. He currently lives in Rome and works as a
consultant for International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and Food and
Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
Edward Webster is Research Professor in the Society, Work and Development Institute
(SWOP) at the University of the Witwatersrand and director of the Chris Hani Institute, a
think tank based in South Africa’s leading trade union federation, COSATU. He is
Editor-in-Chief of the Global Labour Journal, a new journal run in collaboration with
McMaster University in Canada. He is currently researching precarious work in Gauteng
and comparing work and livelihoods in Johannesburg, Mumbai and Sao Paulo. Among
his recent publications are Grounding Globalisation: Labour in the Age of Insecurity,
written with Rob Lambert and Andries Bezuidenhout, which won the American
Sociological Association Award for the best book on labour in 2008.
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