Retailers called to action on India

A UK economic planning and marketing consultant is calling on UK retailers to take action to prevent worker exploitation in India.

Peter Wynne-James of MPC Associates believes the time has come for UK supermarkets to declare the profits they are making on food, including fresh produce, imported from India; and if their profits are excessive, to return them for the benefit of Indian producers.

His research has found that Indian farmers and growers are caught up in a cycle of debt due to low prices paid and sourcing expensive inputs from multi-nationals, resulting in extremely high suicide rates.

Wynne-James said: “Figures from HM Revenue & Customs (Customs and International Trade Statistics) show that from January to December 2008 the total value of fruit imported from India amounted to £32 million. Some 40 per cent of all fruit imported from India was for fresh grapes - 13.2m kg with a value of £12.8m. The average import value of these grapes was 96p per kg. Grapes sold in UK supermarkets have often been selling at three to four times this amount.”

MPC Associates would like to see a revised protocol from the Gangmasters Licensing Authority to prevent labour exploitation in the supply chain of food that is imported from India and other countries to the UK.

But a spokesman for the GLA said: “We cannot do anything about worker exploitation in India. If farmers can’t make a profit and that leads to suicide, it may be a shame from a moral standpoint, but we have not got the remit or the resources to deal with it… If produce is imported and then packed in the UK, then we would have some remit over the workers involved in the UK.

Wynne-James said: “An Indian farmer today is now a consumer of costly seeds and costly chemicals sold by powerful landlords and backed by local money-lenders. The farmer is forced to take out loans at higher interest rates. Many small farms do not qualify for bank credit, forcing the farmer to turn to money-lenders who charge up to 20 per cent interest on a four-month loan.”

MPC Associates is talking to Indian government sources concerning setting up Indian farmers supermarkets where Indian farmers’ produce is sold directly to the Indian public. These would be fully-fledged supermarkets and not just open-air farmers markets.