Seasonal Workers in Mediterranean Agriculture
Over the last three decades there has been a rapid expansion of intensive production of fresh fruit and vegetables in the Mediterranean regions of south and west Europe. Much of this depends on migrating workers for seasonal labour, including from Eastern Europe, North Africa and Latin America. This book is the first to address global agro-migration complexes across the region.
It is argued that both intensive agricultural production and related working conditions are highly dynamic. Regional patterns have developed from small-scale family farming to become an industrialized part of the global agri-food system, which increasingly depends on seasonal labour. Simultaneously, consumer demand for year-round supply has caused relocations of the industry within Europe; areas of intensive greenhouse production have moved further south and even into North Africa. The authors investigate this Mediterranean agri-food system that transcends borders and is largely constituted by invisible seasonal work. By revealing the story of food commodities loaded with implications of private profit seeking, exploitation, exclusion and multiple insecurities, the book unmasks the hidden costs of fresh food provisioning.
Three case study areas are considered in detail: the French region of Provence, a traditional centre of fresh fruit and vegetable cultivation; the Spanish Almera region, where intensive production has accelerated dramatically since the 1970s; and Morocco, where counter-seasonal production has recently been expanding. The book also includes commentaries that refer to complementary insights on US-Mexico, Philippines-Canada and South Pacific mobilities.
Jrg Gertel is Professor of Economic Geography at the University of Leipzig, Germany.
Sarah Ruth Sippel is a geographer and Senior Researcher at the Centre for Area Studies, University of Leipzig, Germany.
Other books in the Earthscan Food and Agriculture Series
Food Systems Failure
The global food crisis and the future of agriculture
Edited by Chris Rosin, Paul Stock and Hugh Campbell
Understanding the Common Agricultural Policy
By Berkeley Hill
The Sociology of Food and Agriculture
By Michael Carolan
Competition and Efficiency in International Food Supply Chains
Improving food security
By John Williams
Organic Agriculture for Sustainable Livelihoods
Edited by Niels Halberg and Adrian Muller
The Politics of Land and Food Scarcity
By Paolo De Castro, Felice Adinolfi, Fabian Capitanio, Salvatore Di Falco and Angelo Di Mambro
Principles of Sustainable Aquaculture
Promoting social, economic and environmental resilience
By Stuart Bunting
Reclaiming Food Security
By Michael S. Carolan
Food Policy in the United States
An introduction
By Parke Wilde
Precision Agriculture for Sustainability and Environmental Protection
Edited by Margaret A. Oliver, Thomas F.A. Bishop and Ben P. Marchant
Agricultural Supply Chains and the Management of Price Risk
By John Williams
The Neoliberal Regime in the Agri-Food Sector
Crisis, resilience and restructuring
Edited by Steven Wolf and Alessandro Bonanno
Sustainable Food Systems
Building a new paradigm
Edited by Terry Marsden and Adrian Morley
Seasonal Workers in Mediterranean Agriculture
The social costs of eating fresh
Edited by Jrg Gertel and Sarah Ruth Sippel
For further details please visit the series page on the Routledge website: http://www.routledge.com/books/series/ECEFA/
Seasonal Workers in Mediterranean Agriculture looks behind the faade of a modern agro-food industry that links not just producing regions in France, Spain and Morocco but sources of migratory labor from North Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin America without which the entire system would yield neither fresh produce nor profit. This excellent monograph, based on exceptionally rich historical and ethnographic case studies, exposes the ugly underbelly and the radical precarity of a contemporary industrial agriculture operating in the long shadow of economic and social crisis. The authors provide a path-breaking and yet unsettling account of the social life of what passes as fresh and sustainable produce. A tour de force.
Michael Watts, Professor of Geography, Class of 1963 Chair, University of California, Berkeley, USA, author of Silent Violence: Food, Famine and Peasantry in Northern Nigeria and co-editor of books such as Globalizing Food: Agrarian Questions and Global Restructuring, Liberation Ecologies, Violent Environments, and Living under Contract
Proof yet again there is no such thing as a free, or even cheap, lunch! SeasonalWorkers in Mediterranean Agriculture reminds us that what appear as externalized costs for consumers are deeply and literally internalized for the millions who toil so we can eat fresh. It is a sophisticated book with many important take-home messages, one of which being that we cant afford to keep eating this way.
Michael Carolan, Professor and Chair of Sociology at Colorado State University, USA and author of such books as The Real Cost of Cheap Food, Reclaiming Food Security, and Cheaponomics: The High Cost of Low Prices
Focusing upon Mediterranean agriculture, but drawing upon case studies from throughout the world, this collection offers a fascinating and detailed account of contemporary agrarian change. Contributors provide extensive evidence about how the burgeoning trade in fresh fruit and vegetables has produced a number of hidden costs including the exploitation of foreign workers as companies seek ways of reducing labor costs, and environmental degradation as a more industrial form of agriculture takes hold. The book demonstrates that while eating fresh might engender visions of happy and healthy consumers, a more nuanced examination of the spatio-temporal dynamics of agri-food globalization reveals an underside of social disadvantage and ecological destruction. In presenting an up-to-date and vivid account of social relations in the fresh fruit and vegetable trade, this book is a must read for all scholars desiring a critical understanding of current global food provisioning.
Geoffrey Lawrence, Professor of Sociology, University of Queensland, Australia and President, International Rural Sociology Association.
Seasonal Workers in Mediterranean Agriculture
The social costs of eating fresh
Edited by Jrg Gertel and Sarah Ruth Sippel
First published 2014
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