Agricultural Workers

Fair Trade USA, in response to organized pressure, has revoked the fair trade certification for melons sold in the US produced by Irish fresh fruit giant Fyffes on their Suragroh plantations in Honduras. Suragroh-Fyffes workers have faced continuous retaliation for joining STAS, the Honduran union organizing workers on fruit, sugar cane and palm oil plantations.

On World Food Day 2018, the IUF joined with over 200 organizations and food rights advocates in calling for a halt to the use of 'gene drives', a genetic engineering technology designed to force genetic change through entire populations of plants, animals and insects.

On October 10, thugs accompanied by members of the army and police again attacked striking packing house workers on picket lines at Sumitomo's Sumifru Philippines Corporation (Sumifru) operations in Compostela Valley in Mindinao. The union has been on strike since October 1 over the company's refusal to engage in collective bargaining negotiations for more than a decade.

IUF affiliates in West and Central Africa have affirmed their determination to defend workers' livelihoods and work together for a peaceful resolution to the worsening crisis in Cameroon.

The jury in the Dewayne Johnson v. Monsanto Co. court trial has found the company guilty of concealing the dangers of glyphosate, the world's most widely-applied herbicide, and awarded the terminally ill groundskeeper total damages of USD 289 million.

Tea workers in West Bengal held a three-day strike on the tea plantations August 7-9 in response to a deadlock in wage negotiations and the government's refusal to apply the Minimum Wage Act to workers on the tea estates. Tea workers are excluded from the Minimum Wage Act and instead subjected to tripartite agreement at the state level that perpetuates starvation wages.

2017 was a year of record violence against environmental and land rights defenders, according to a recent Global Witness report, and agribusiness has surpassed mining as the most dangerous sector.

Despite mass opposition, Brazil's notoriously corrupt Congress has paved the way for a vote on easing authorization for still more pesticide use in the country which is the world's largest consumer of toxic agrochemicals. Brazil's already low standards of pesticide protection permit the massive import of dozens of chemical products like paraquat whose use is prohibited in their countries of manufacture.

In response to legal action by the IUF together with the affiliated Estates' Staff Union of South India (ESUSI) and other unions, the Supreme Court of India has ordered the governments of Assam, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala to make interim payment of long standing wage and benefit arrears to tea workers within 60 days.