Hi to all,
Apart from family farming, there are also pregnant questions about ending child labour in large scale plantations (timber, rubber, cocoa, oil palm) throughout the world.
Child labour might exist either through direct employment by the plantation or its subcontractors, or through work for food procuction for the family, as both parents are busy with plantation crops and cannot take care of the family garden, cattle or ponds.
A large part of agroindustrial products are sold on European and US markets, which have managed to maintain a high level of stringency on the quality component of imported raw material. Il many cases, quality is attested through national or regional (EU) regulation, or by certification systems.
More and more, such certifications systems (such as FSC for timber or RSPO for palm oil) are incorporating new principles and criteria which relate to issues such as traceability, geographical origin or GHG emissions. A proper way to fight child labor in agroindustrial plantations would be to incorporate child labour assessment into principles and criteria qualifying certified products. Multistakeholder platforms for certification standards have the power to design "Child Labor-Free" certification systems and to make them visible to the buyers and the large public.
In several commodity chains, governments (both local and provincial) are also involved in national certification schemes which are piloted by public bodies. It is of paramount interest to make such schemes sensitive to child labor issues, as they can establish connection to social services and point out subsectors and/or regions in which risks are high.
Concommitantly, this will send a signal to investors in the sector, which are increasingly requiring trustable criteria for ethical investment.
I hope this would help.
Take care of yourselves and your loved ones,
Alain.
Prof. Alain RIVAL