The slow death of Ecuadorian Banana workers

Magali Marega

Jo Vervecken

‘In reality, the work in the field implies a slow death, because it kills you inside’ says Luis, a 59 year old banana worker. ‘Paradoxically, it’s the only way of surviving but it kills you anyway.’[1]

This testimony comes from one of 30 in-depth interviews in Vitali’s (2015) study of work conditions and workers’ health in the banana-producing sector in Los Rios province of Ecuador.

Luis is one of 200 000 people working on banana plantations in Ecuador, the world’s leading banana exporter. The global banana supply chain is under a lot of pressure from food retailers, forcing down producers’ prices. Workers and the environment suffer the consequences. Rights violations create serious health risks for the banana workers.
One of the main health risks is daily exposure to pesticides. Aerial fumigation is done at any hour of the day. María describes: ‘They fumigate during lunchtime, also where we are eating. They force us to sign a paper stating that we agree with aerial fumigation and that we receive the necessary protection. If we don’t sign, we get into trouble.’

Winelands, Wealth and Work

Kees van der Waal

Profits made by landowners through real estate development in the Cape Winelands have social costs for workers on this land despite measures to mitigate the consequences. A group of researchers in social anthropology, history, psychology and planning, based at the University of Stellenbosch or associated with the Solms-Delta farm project has come to this conclusion in a research project they have completed on social transformation in the Stellenbosch wine-farming area[1]. The researchers argue that the financial gains of converting agricultural land into lifestyle benefits were offset by social disruption and costly adaptations experienced by the working class.

The Cape Winelands region is well known for the economic value derived from producing export wines. It is a landscape of exquisite beauty, with towering mountain ranges protected by conservation management and valleys treasured as agricultural land. Heritage is a rich resource here, evidenced by the Cape Dutch architecture of Boschendal and a recorded history going back to the 1680s. The Cape Winelands area is presently strongly associated with elite tourism and a wealthy lifestyle, embedded in viticulture and deciduous fruit production. However, the obvious visual importance of landscape and heritage hide the mundane relations of production experienced by agricultural workers. Relations between workers and owners in the wine industry were extremely exploitative during the slave era and have remained paternalistic to this day. Farm labour unrest in the Western Cape in 2012 attests to the tension generated by extreme inequalities.