BANGKOK (AP) — Just a few years ago, Indonesian shrimp farmer Julius Kahyonugroho operated more than 20 ponds, employed seven people and produced enough to feed his family.
Since then, the 39-year-old has seen the prices he gets from buyers drop in half, has had to downsize his workforce to four, or about a third of Ike’s, and has struggled to break even some months. said. His wife had to work on a watermelon farm to support their two children.
“It’s more stable than shrimp farms,” said a farmer in Indonesia’s Central Java province.
While major Western supermarkets reap windfall profits, their aggressive pursuit of lower wholesale prices creates dire conditions for those at the end of the supply chain, people like Kahyonugroho who produce and process seafood. A survey by a coalition of NGOs revealed that this is occurring. A review provided to The Associated Press in advance of Monday’s publication highlighted three of the world’s largest shrimp producers.
An analysis of the industry in Vietnam, Indonesia and India, which supplies about half of the shrimp in the world’s top four markets, found that as producers struggle to reduce labor and meet price demands, It found that revenues were down 20-60% compared to pre-pandemic levels. It costs money.
In many places, this means long hours of unpaid or low-wage work, wage insecurity due to fluctuating rates, and many workers not even being paid the low minimum wage. The report also revealed unsafe working conditions, particularly in parts of India and Indonesia, and even child labor in some parts of India.
“As supermarket sourcing practices have changed, working conditions have been directly and rapidly affected,” wrote the regional report, published by Sustainability Incubator, a Hawaii-based nonprofit that led the study of the Vietnam industry. Katrin Nakamura said. “These two go hand in hand because they are tied together through pricing.”
Tubagas Haer Rahayu, head of the Indonesian Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries’ Aquaculture Bureau, said he was surprised by the report’s findings and had already contacted industry stakeholders to investigate price pressures.
“If there is such pressure, there will definitely be a backlash not only in Indonesia but also in Vietnam and India,” he told The Associated Press in an interview at his office in Jakarta.
Officials in India and Vietnam declined to comment.
Supermarkets linked to facilities where sweatshop labor has been reported by workers include Target, Walmart and Costco in the US, Sainsbury’s and Tesco in the UK, and Aldi and Co-op in Europe.
The Swiss co-op said it had a “zero-tolerance” policy against labor law violations and that producers “receive fair and market-driven prices.”
Germany’s Aldi did not specifically address the pricing issue, but said it uses an independent certification system to ensure responsible sourcing of farmed shrimp products and would continue to monitor the allegations.
“We are committed to fulfilling our responsibility to respect human rights,” Aldi said.
Sainsbury’s referred to comments from the British Retail Consortium industry body, whose members are committed to sourcing products at “fair and sustainable prices” and that the welfare of people and communities in the supply chain is the key to purchasing practices. He said that it is the basis of
Other retailers named in the report did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the report, titled “The Human Rights of Dinner.”
Research shows that in Vietnam, workers who peel, gut and devein shrimp typically work six or seven days a week in rooms kept in frigid temperatures to keep the product fresh. discovered by the people.
About 80% of the shrimp processing workers are women, who wake up at 4 a.m. and go home at 6 p.m., with the exception of pregnant women and newborns who can finish work an hour earlier.
“A skinner’s daily job consists of standing in a refrigerated, disinfected room and working very quickly with a knife, being careful not to make mistakes,” the researchers said.
Wages are usually not disclosed in advance and are determined based on output. In some cases, workers are paid minimum wage, but often they are not.
The Vietnam Seafood Export Producers Association issued a statement calling the report’s claims “unfounded, misleading and tarnishing the reputation of Vietnam’s shrimp exports.”
The four-page statement cited the government’s labor policies, but did not specifically address the survey results or respond to questions.
With food supply chains disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission said earlier this year that some grocers were “using the situation as an opportunity to further raise prices to increase profits.” “and profits remain high.”
Sustainability Incubator analysis finds that rising production costs and oversupply, combined with the demand for lower wholesale shrimp prices, means farmers are having to sell their product below cost just to stay in business. That means there are a lot of things.
Kahyonugroho said he is stuck selling the shrimp at the price offered by a middleman and then selling the shrimp to a factory for processing. You won’t be able to scrape together the initial costs needed to sell directly to factories and markets for higher profits.
“The opportunity is there, but if you want to jump into something like that, you need a lot of capital,” he said.
The intermediaries who buy the shrimp obscure the true source of the shrimp in Western supermarkets, and many retailers may not be upholding ethical commitments when it comes to sourcing their shrimp.
Of the 2 million shrimp farms in the major producing countries of India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Ecuador, Thailand and Bangladesh, approximately 2,000 are certified by either the Aquaculture Stewardship Council or the Best Aquaculture Practices ecolabel. Only in places.
“Harvest yields from most certified shrimp farms are so small that it is mathematically impossible for a certified farm to produce enough shrimp each month to supply all the supermarkets that are committed to purchasing certified shrimp. “This is virtually impossible,” the report states.
Ideally, supermarkets should pay higher wholesale prices and ensure that surplus funds are distributed throughout the supply chain, Nakamura said.
He said that rather than penalizing suppliers for labor violations, U.S. policymakers should use antitrust and other laws already in place to encourage fair pricing for Western retailers. He said there is a possibility of establishing surveillance to ensure that
There is growing awareness of trends that negatively impact suppliers.
In July, the European Union adopted a new directive requiring companies to “identify and address the negative human rights and environmental impacts of their actions in and outside Europe.”
The UK Food Law Examiner’s Office has published the results of a “detailed investigation” into suppliers’ views on the supermarket’s conduct, saying the supermarket had chosen to wage “war” with the supplier.
The Sustainability Incubator said higher wholesale prices need not mean higher prices for consumers.
“If shrimp sold in supermarkets in the Global North were produced at minimum wage and in accordance with applicable national laws on labor, workplace health and safety, prices to farmers would be at least 200% higher than they are today. ” states the report. “This does not necessarily mean consumer prices will rise, as supermarkets already make a profit on existing consumer prices.”
Researchers at the Institute for Corporate Responsibility have found that workers in India’s shrimp industry face “dangerous and abusive conditions” and that the salty water from newly dug hatcheries and ponds is contaminated with chemicals. It was discovered that the area was contaminated with toxic algae, contaminating the surrounding water and soil.
The report said unpaid labor was widespread, including wages below the minimum wage, unpaid overtime, wage deductions for labor costs, and “significant” debt bondage.
Child labor was also observed, with 14- and 15-year-old girls being conscripted for skinning work.
In Indonesia, three nonprofit research organizations found that shrimp workers’ wages have declined since the pandemic and now average $160 a month, below Indonesia’s minimum wage in most of the largest shrimp-producing provinces. did. It turns out that shrimp peelers are routinely required to work at least 12 hours per day to meet minimum targets.
Still, given the prevalence of poverty, most workers are happy to have a job, said Karisma Nugroho, a senior researcher at the Mignani Institute.
“This is exploiting the vulnerability of workers because they don’t have a choice,” he said.
“They are paid minimum wage, but they have to work 150% of their normal hours,” he told The Associated Press. “Can they survive? Yes. Can they move? Yes. Will they complain? No, they are still there.”
This regional report brings together more than 500 face-to-face interviews conducted with workers in their native languages in India, Indonesia and Vietnam, supplemented by secondary data and interviews from Thailand, Bangladesh and Ecuador. .
After the recent release of Indonesia’s country report, government officials requested a meeting with the authors, and Nugroho said the authors showed “a real desire to improve the situation.”
Vietnamese officials are also working with the sustainability incubator to discuss the findings.
Government and industry intervention has already helped in Thailand, which has come under increasing criticism after the Associated Press exposed severe labor abuses in the shrimp industry in the past. However, this led to soaring prices for Thai shrimp, prompting some buyers to shift their procurement to India and Ecuador.
Ecuador has taken an industrial approach to shrimp farming, unlike Southeast Asia’s small-scale, family-run farms, and is now the world’s largest shrimp exporter. It has the lowest prices, followed by India. China is not included in the report. Next is Vietnam and Indonesia.
However, due to demands for lower wholesale prices, Ecuador’s exports increased by 12% in volume in 2023 but decreased by 5% in value. India’s exports increased by 1%, but fell by nearly 11% in value.
Meanwhile, due to relatively high prices, Vietnam’s export volume decreased by 25% in 2023, and Indonesia’s by 9.5%.
“Labor exploitation in the shrimp farming industry does not vary by company, sector, or country,” the report concludes. “Rather, it is the result of hidden business models that exploit people for profit.”
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Associated Press writer Edna Tarrigan in Jakarta, Indonesia, contributed to this report.
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This story was supported by funding from the Walton Family Foundation. AP is solely responsible for all content.
