Human Rights Concerns in European Fruit Production

It is a season of giving, but what sort of conditions are being offered to farm laborers who produce the fruit that delights Europeans over the holidays? The Guardian (19 Dec 2006) explores the issue in and around the region of Calabria in the southern tip of Italy, where illegal immigrants form a major component of the agricultural workforce.

An estimated 20,000 migrant workers from the African continent have crossed the Mediterranean to work for Italian fruit and vegetable producers under conditions that the Guardian notes "would fail to meet the UN's basic standards for refugee camps." Their living conditions (no heating, no sanitation, extremely low wages, and so on) are so dire that Medecins Sans Frontiers dispatched a team to investigate the conditions in Calabria. "It may seem surprising that MSF needs to work in mainland Europe but we were shocked by the conditions of migrants here. Italy is not a victim of this migration. They are needed by the agriculture in the area which wants cheap labour to produce cheap food. This is the hypocrisy of the system," said the MSF operations coordinator, Kostas Moschochoritis.

In this separate article from the BBC, the problem of unemployment in the Calabria region is documented. While migrant laborers toil in fields and farms, the official unemployment figure for the region is approximately 15%. Migrant workers fill some of that gap, or perhaps they displace local workers? Local producers combat downward price pressure due to growing competition by employing illegal immigrants. If illegal laborers earn just €25 a day (€3 / hour) for picking Southern Italy's clementines and oranges, most of which are exported to other EU countries, it's easier to understand why production costs of the fruit remain low. The lower wage cost component derived from the use of illegal labor ensures the profitability of businesses against global competition from lower wage countries, perhaps even their survival.

Meanwhile, 94% of the workers have some kind of health problem, according to MSF. More than 30% of Calabrian migrant workers have been subjected to violence, mostly by locals.

It might be interesting to know to what extent food retailers, such as the Finnish Kesko and S groups, are aware of the abuses and what their response might be as far as procurement from the affected regions is concerned.