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	Agricultural cooperatives are key to reducing hunger and poverty by WFP, FAO, Fund for Agricultural Development   Smallholder farmers gain big benefits from agricultural cooperatives including bargaining power and resource sharing that lead to food security and poverty reduction for millions, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Food Programme (WFP) stressed on the occasion of the launch of the International Year of Cooperatives 2012 (IYC).   The importance of agricultural cooperatives in improving the lives of millions of smallholder farmers and their families cannot be overstated, the three Rome-based United Nations (UN) agencies said. Empowered by being a part of a larger group, smallholder farmers can negotiate better terms in contract farming and lower prices for agricultural inputs like seeds, fertilizer and equipment.   In addition, cooperatives offer prospects that smallholder farmers would not be able to achieve individually such as helping them to secure land rights and better market opportunities.   Ranging from small-scale to multi-million dollar businesses across the globe, cooperatives operate in all sectors of the economy, count over 800 million members and provide 100 million jobs worldwide -- 20 per cent more than multinational enterprises.   In 2008, the largest 300 cooperatives in the world had an aggregate turnover of US$1.1 trillion, comparable to the gross domestic product (GDP) of many large countries.   Cooperatives: a pillar of agricultural development and food security   Agriculture, including farming, forestry, fisheries and livestock, is the main source of employment and income in rural areas, where the majority of the world''s poor and hungry people live. Agricultural cooperatives play an important role in supporting men and women small agricultural producers and marginalized groups by creating sustainable rural employment.   Producer cooperatives offer men and women smallholders market opportunities, and provide them with services such as better training in natural resource management, and better access to information, technologies, innovations and extension services.   In several countries, FAO provides quality seeds and fertilizers to farmers and agricultural cooperatives and works with them in applying more suitable and productive farming practices.   IFAD works with local agricultural cooperatives in Nepal on goat resource centres that help farmers develop markets for a sustainable supply of high-quality breeding goats. Under the Purchase for Progress (P4P) pilot initiative, WFP and partners are working with smallholder farmers'' organisations in 21 countries to help them produce surpluses, gain access to markets and increase their incomes.   Through support such as this, smallholders can achieve sustainable livelihoods, improve food security in their communities and play a greater role in meeting the growing demand for food on local, national and international markets.   In Brazil, cooperatives were responsible for 37.2 percent of agricultural GDP and 5.4 percent of overall GDP in 2009, and earned about US$3.6 billion from exports.   In Mauritius, cooperatives account for more than 60 percent of national production in the food crop sector and in Kenya the savings and credit cooperatives have assets worth US$2.7 billion, which account for 31 percent of gross national savings.   The Rome-based UN agencies will promote the growth of agricultural cooperatives by:   • Carrying out initiatives to better understand cooperatives and assess their socio-economic development impact, and to raise awareness of their role and impact on the lives of men and women smallholder farmers -- such as FAO''s database of good practices in institutional innovations;   • Supporting cooperatives to form networks through which smallholder producers can pool their assets and competencies to overcome market barriers and other constraints such as a lack of access to natural resources;   • Assisting policy-makers in the design and implementation of policies, laws, regulations and projects that take into consideration the needs and concerns of both men and women smallholder farmers and create enabling environment for agricultural cooperatives to thrive; and   • Strengthening the dialogue and cooperation between governments, agricultural cooperatives, the international research community and civil society representatives on analyzing the best conditions for cooperatives worldwide to develop.   During the year ahead and beyond, the Rome-based UN agencies will remain committed to supporting agricultural cooperatives, which provide members with economic advantages and offer them a wide range of services that build up their skills and improve their livelihoods. Cooperatives offer a sound and viable business model suited to the needs of rural communities in developing countries. Visit the related web page
	Apple and China’s state-managed authoritarian capitalism by Alternet, China Labor Watch USA   Feb 2012   Apple and China’s state-managed authoritarian capitalism, by Arun Gupta. (Alternet)   Electronics manufacturing company Foxconn, says it will raise salaries as much as 25 percent, to about $400 a month, after a global outcry over working conditions at its factories in China. In recent weeks, labor rights groups have staged coordinated protests in various countries after reports that some of Apple’s Chinese suppliers operate harsh, abusive and dangerous facilities. To stem criticism, Apple hired a nonprofit labor group to inspect the plants it uses.   Workers welcomed the announced raises and overtime limits, though some were skeptical they would cause much real change. “When I was in Foxconn, there were rumors about pay raises every now and then, but I’ve never seen that day happen until I left,” said Gan Lunqun, 23, a former Foxconn worker. “This time it sounds more credible.”   Jan 2012   New research shows how disturbing labor conditions at Foxconn, called the "Chinese hell factory," really are.   Behind the sleek face of the iPad is an ugly backstory that has revealed once more the horrors of globalization. The buzz about Apple’s sordid business practices is courtesy of the New York Times series on the “iEconomy. In some ways it’s well reported but adds little new to what critics of the Taiwan-based Foxconn, the world’s largest electronics manufacturer, have been saying for years. The series biggest impact may be discomfiting Apple fans who as they read the articles realize that the iPad they are holding is assembled from child labor, toxic shop floors, involuntary overtime, suicidal working conditions, and preventable accidents that kill and maim workers.   It turns out the story is much worse. Researchers with the Hong Kong-based Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM) say that legions of vocational and university students, some as young as 16, are forced to take months-long “internships” in Foxconn’s mainland China factories assembling Apple products. The details of the internship program paint a far more disturbing picture than the Times does of how Foxconn, “the Chinese hell factory,” treats its workers, relying on public humiliation, military discipline, forced labor and physical abuse as management tools to hold down costs and extract maximum profits for Apple.   To supply enough employees for Foxconn, the 60th largest corporation globally, government officials are serving as lead recruiters at the cost of pushing teenage students into harsh work environments. The scale is astonishing with the Henan provincial government having announced in both 2010 and 2011 that it would send 100,000 vocational and university students to work at Foxconn, according to SACOM.   Ross Perlin, author of Intern Nation, told AlterNet that “Foxconn is conspiring with government officials and universities in China to run what may be the world"s single largest internship program – and one of the most exploitative. Students at vocational schools – including those whose studies have nothing to do with consumer electronics – are literally forced to move far from home to work for Foxconn, threatened that otherwise they won"t be allowed to graduate. Assembling our iPhones and Kindles for meager wages, they work under the same conditions, or worse, as other workers in the Foxconn sweatshops.”   The state involvement shows Foxconn and Apple depend on tax breaks, repression of labor, subsidies and Chinese government aid, including housing, infrastructure, transportation and recruitment, to oncrease their corporate treasuries. As the students function as seasonal employees to meet increased demand for new product rollouts, Apple is directly dependent on forced labor.   The real story of the Apple-Foxconn behemoth, is forged in the crucible of China’s state-managed authoritarian capitalism. Since the 1980s China has starved rural areas to accelerate the industrialization of coastal cities like Shenzhen, where Foxconn first set up shop in 1988. Scholars who study China’s economy and labor market link rural underdevelopment to the creation of a massive migrant work force that serves as the foundation of the country’s industrialization.   Deprived of many rights, migrants are recruited to work in Foxconn"s city-sized complexes by government employees with false promises of good-paying jobs that will help them escape rural poverty. A large percentage of migrant workers are student interns as they are recruited from poor rural regions like Henan and sent to work in coastal metropolises like Shenzhen..   http://www.alternet.org/story/154043/iempire%3A_apple%27s_sordid_business_practices_are_even_worse_than_you_think/ http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2015/03/02/4187424.htm http://www.chinalaborwatch.org/report/103 http://www.chinalaborwatch.org/report/68 http://www.chinalaborwatch.org/reports/brand/2 Visit the related web page
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