Monoculture is often attacked from an ecological perspective: it causes the buildup of pests and diseases, it depletes the soil, it requires intensive chemical inputs. Granted, these realities have serious social consequences, but monoculture has a more immediate and often unrecognized impact on labor relations, particularly in the Third World.
Today’s broadcast of Democracy Now! illustrates the unjust conditions that result from greenhouse-based flower production in Colombia and Ecuador. Workers are required to work long hours, exposed to toxic chemicals, and their unions are suppressed. Workers are also subjected to seasonal shifts in labor demand, like right now when 1/3 of Ecuador’s flower exports are shipped to the United States for Valentine’s Day. As the surge in demand for flowers subsides, so too does the demand for labor. This makes it difficult for workers to hold steady employment, and all but eliminates the possibility of benefits like health care and paid leave.
It is only natural that production cycles will follow predictable fluctuations in the market. Nobody would argue that it makes sense to overproduce flowers in August. That just wouldn’t make practical business sense.
What does make practical business sense is the diversification of the production system. A myopic pursuit of flowers, as we have seen, leads to all sorts of social problems, and is certainly not the most ecological (nor the most profitable) way to design a production system.
A much better approach is “niche” farming. By paying close attention to seasonal cycles, and trying to match crop requirements with market demands AND seasonal shifts, one can take a system that produces a single product (with a single source of income), and turn it into something that produces a multitude of products for both export and local consumption.
No doubt its quite a balancing act to do this. But farm diversification offers benefits that improve the sustainability of the system, create more equitable labor relations, all the while improving the producer’s bottom line.
One response to “The Social Cost of Monoculture”
I suspect that after the USA and Iran begin to fight, demand for flowers will be next to non existant and food will all that is grown in these greenhouses.