Gender and Ethical Trade – A Mapping of the Issues in African Horticulture

Codes of conduct covering employment conditions of Southern producers exporting to European markets mushroomed throughout the 1990s. A recent article (Blowfield 2000) cited over 200 codes related to worker welfare specifically, and over twenty codes applied to agriculture in developing countries. Codes have become very prevalent in the UK food retail sector, and most of the large supermarkets are now implementing codes along their supply chains to cover their own brand name products and fresh produce. But codes of conduct are also evolving at multiple levels both internally and externally to supply chains as various actors such as importers, exporters and local trade associations have adopted their own codes. Externally, independent standards have been established through organisations such as Social Accountability 8000 in the US and the Ethical Trading Initiative in the UK. As a result, suppliers of horticultural products are faced with a plethora of codes, some of which are similar, but amongst which there can be considerable variability.