Author: Carla Hill
Munir Hachemi’s Living Things (2024) tells of four Spanish friends who travel from Madrid to the south of France to work the grape harvest. But when they arrive, they find there is no grape harvest. Instead, alongside migrant workers, they are pulled into work in industrial chicken farms, experiencing precarious housing, brutal working conditions, threat, abuse, and violence. Living Things may be a novel, but its horror story is more fact than fiction – as ORFC’s session – ‘Who Works, Who Eats: Justice in Supply Chains’ – brings to light.
‘What is the true cost of the cheap, imported tomatoes on our plates?’
Starting the discussion, Unite representative Steve Leniec shares that 25% of labour in European food supply chains is undertaken by migrant workers. Last year, 45,000 workers came to the UK on the seasonal agriculture workers scheme. Coming from countries in South America and the Indian subcontinent, these workers are recruited through agencies. They may be in debt and are often tied to sponsoring employers. Undervalued and under-discussed, this work is invisible for a reason: migrant workers can face intensive productivity demands, dangerous conditions and difficulties meeting union membership qualifying periods. At worst, this can mean tragedy: Steve remembers the Chinese cockling disaster of 2004, where 30 Chinese people drowned while harvesting cockles at Morecambe Bay.
Sabrina Espeleta from the War on Want reminds us that the price of cheap food is that such conditions are not only faced by migrant workers in the UK, but also by workers at home in export-oriented economies where land is used to meet global demand for out of season fruit and vegetables. Watching War on Want’s video on ‘Megafarms in Morocco’, we learn how female workers in particular face low wages and sexual harassment, with little to no legal protection.
Leaky Caravans in the UK
How do we witness and advocate for workers in the global supply chain and migrant workers, whilst also acknowledging the precarity of work for many domestic landworkers in the UK? Perhaps more discussed but still overlooked is the struggle of UK food and farming workers, who often experience unstable, underpaid and sometimes unpaid employment, often accompanied by less than ideal living situations (see SALT’s sessions throughout ORFC for more). As one audience member asks: how can we recognise the difficulties of farm managers and owners in the UK, whilst still holding them to account when it comes to treatment of migrant labourers?
Justice for All Workers
Jyoti Fernandes of La Via Campesina prompts us to see that the struggles of domestic and migrant workers, across the globe and the supply chain, often go hand in hand. The transition to global food supply chains has disrupted agroecology networks across the world, displacing people from their land to become workers within supply chains. This violent economic system harms many. The challenge is not to see the most vulnerable as against one another, but to understand the systemic change that is needed if we are to achieve food justice. Instead, we must hold privilege to account as a responsibility, and move to a rights-based approach that protects the most marginalised. Consumer choices, political resistance and unionisation are all solutions. I wonder too, how we can include all voices in this discussion, in spaces that are often inaccessible to seasonal migrant workers.
If Hachemi’s novel Living Things tells us anything, it is that the struggles of the most vulnerable in our supply chains, are the struggles of all of us. Jyoti warns that resource conflicts and climate migration may make this very real indeed. If food is to be seen as a right not a commodity, then workers must be treated not as costs, but as human beings. This starts with acknowledging the struggles of the most marginalised in our food systems. It ends when food and labour justice is achieved for all.
About the author: Carla Hill (@gr0w.with.me._) is the Communications Coordinator for ORFC. She is also an Assistant Gardener at Sharpham Trust, Devon, where she grows fruit, vegetables and cut flowers. Having worked in food systems communications and policy for several years, she trained as a food grower by undertaking the Apricot Centre’s Level 3 qualification in Regenerative Land-Based Systems: Agroecological Food & Farming, in order to work closer to on-the-ground, community solutions to our food and farming challenges. She writes about her food and farming journey at wwww.growwithmeblog.substack.com.
To learn more, check out this session in the ORFC archives.