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Child labour in India linked to cotton seed price |
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A new study on the use of child labour in hybrid cottonseed production in Andhra Pradesh has identified that the procurement price paid by seed companies to contract farmers is an important factor in perpetuating the use of child labour.
The report, ‘The Price Of Childhood’, was commissioned by the India Committee of the Netherlands, the International Labor Rights Fund (USA) and Eine Welt Netz (Germany). It contends, in essence, that seed farmers cannot afford to pay the higher wages necessary to attract adult labour and still make reasonable profits.
The study was based on primary data collected in 38 sample villages spread in the districts of Kurnool and Mahabubnagar in Andhra Pradesh. The research suggests that farmers would incur a net loss if they were to hire adults at the local minimum wage instead of children and teenagers. The report argues that, if seed companies paid for the substitution of child labour for adult labour (at the level of the minimum wage) it would cost them between 4.2% and 21.3% of their profit.
Companies such as Bayer, Monsanto and Syngenta have acknowledged that there is substantial child labour in their supply chain. Syngenta, moreover, has joined the US Fair Labor Association as a means to address this issue. However, seed companies do not commonly recognise a relation between the use of child labour and the procurement price paid to cotton seed farmers.
“Unless this issue is addressed, other interventions to address the problem of child labour in this sector will not be very effective,” state the report’s authors, adding that the contract farmers of the seed companies employ children, particularly girls, basically to minimise costs. The report shows that the number of working children aged between 6 and 14 has decreased to roughly half of all labourers. However, 70% of the other half now consists of young people aged between 15 and 18. |
