Anna Bee

The Fruit Export Sector and Global Supply Chain

We have seen how the fruit sector evolved as a result of a combination of factors, but coalesced during the late 1970s in the context of the neo-liberal economic and political reforms. These reforms not only created a commercialised farming sector which could lock into the export market, but also created a large, landless, rural labour force which could be drawn in as seasonal workers to meet the labour requirements of the producers and exporters. This chapter provides an overview of the structure of the emergent fruit export sector, in order to provide the context in which fruit employment takes place. The chapter concentrates on the period of the 1980s and early 1990s, once fruit exports had become established. It explores the structure of fruit production and exports, which has formed the basis of Chile’s integration into the world fruit market, describing the internal supply chain from producer to the point of export. We then examine Chile’s position within the world fruit export market, and how it connects to the global supply chain for fruit. We explore how the relatively fragmented production process is linked to a more concentrated high tech export ‘funnel’ facilitated by international accumulation and dominated by large multinational firms. These interconnected levels are considered in the context of the constraints inherent within agricultural production, as discussed in chapter 2, which limit the extension of the industrial processes within agriculture, despite monocultivation and the dominance of agribusiness. The fragmented production process, provides the context for employment of the temporeras, which we then examine in more detail in the next chapter.1

Female Fruit Employment — Las Temporeras

The transformation in the rural sector as a result of the expansion in agribusiness and the structure and operation of fruit export production together provide the context for temporary female fruit employment, and help us to understand the nature of women’s insertion into the sector. Fragmentation in the production process is mirrored in fruit employment, and atomisation is most pronounced in the seasonal employment generated in both production and packing for export. This is reflected in a number of ways. Clearly, the cyclical nature of production determines the seasonality of employment itself, but employment is also very insecure within the season, and the temporary labour force itself very heterogeneous. The gender dimension is important in analysing the fragmentation and atomisation of seasonal employment, with women concentrated in some of the most insecure jobs whilst at the same time undertaking the most important tasks for attaining high quality fruit to meet export standards.

Case Study: Rural Fruit Workers in the North

The heterogeneity of the temporeras is partly explained by the fragmented nature of the production process, and the partial nature of their integration into fruit work as seasonal workers. It is also a result of the diverse situations from which the seasonal workforce is drawn, ranging from small traditional campesina households to urban workers migrating from large cities during the season on a daily basis. This reflects the uneven nature of rural ‘modernisation’ as agribusiness has extended across the fruit growing regions, with contradictory effects on the women drawn into the sector. However, given their heterogeneity, the specific experiences of women working in fruit exports can vary markedly according to the diverse contexts of their personal situations. In this and the next chapter we explore two case studies which illustrate the different contexts from which women are drawn into fruit work, and the different experiences women have of undertaking this work, both within the same region and across different regions. These case studies help to depict the heterogeneity of the temporeras.

Global Policies for Temporary Workers in Agribusiness — Conclusion

The global dimension to the expansion of Chilean fruit is an aspect we have explored in relation to production and exports, but which also has potentially important implications for the temporeras themselves. Whilst the temporeras are a heterogeneous, marginalised group of workers, they are at the same time integrated into a global market. Despite fragmentation at the point of production, within Chile there is increasing concentration in the export sector. At the retail end within many developed countries to which they export, there is also a tendency to increased control along the supply chain by large supermarkets. This is a phenomenon which has taken place in the agro-food system generally as globalisation has proceeded (Ward and Almas 1997). Since the mid-1990s in many northern countries there has been an increased consumer awareness of the problems of poor labour conditions among export workers in developing countries. An anomaly of globalisation is that, whereas national democratic governments such as Concertacion in Chile have failed to act in the interest of seasonal agricultural workers, foreign multiples are increasingly moving towards introducing codes of conduct to protect labour standards among their ‘third world’ suppliers.

State Policy and the Temporeras in the Transition to Democracy

The expansion of the fruit export sector and with it temporary female employment really took off under the neo-liberal military regime. The state at this time played a minimal role in terms of promotion of the fruit export sector, and the privately owned parceleros and larger export companies provided the momentum for its expansion. During the period of dictatorship, the state took an ideological stance that promoted the role of women as home-maker, wife and mother. However, as we saw in chapter 3, a paradox of the neo-liberal period was that the military’s economic policies had the contrary effect of increasing female employment. This was seen most clearly in the case of the temporeras, whose entry into the seasonal fruit labour force as waged workers was a direct consequence of the government’s policy of agrarian counter-reform, combined with deregulation of labour markets. However, the military government, in line with its ideological and political stance, provided no support for these workers. They had to fend for themselves as isolated and unorganised individuals, reinforcing their heterogeneity and atomisation. When military rule ended in 1990, the new government took a somewhat different stance. The democratically elected government continued to promote the neoliberal economic model, within which the fruit export sector was central. But this was combined with a policy of promoting greater social equity, and promoting the interests of marginalised groups, particularly women.

Case Study: Urban Fruit Workers in the South

The diversity in the backgrounds of the temporeras is illustrated by the fact that they are drawn at the one extreme from traditional rural households and at the other extreme from urban areas. The previous case study explored some of the ways in which women from the Norte Chico region have mediated the tensions between their traditional roles as campesinas with their insertion into modern agricultural wage labour in the grape economy. In contrast, the case study in this chapter draws on research in the VI and VII Regions, to the south of Santiago, to explore the situation of temporeras from more urbanised backgrounds. These women are engaged in similar processes of change and mediation, combining seasonal waged employment in modern agribusiness with the more traditional demands of home and family. However, these women must cope with the added pressures of ensuring the survival of their households in an urban environment where income-generating options outside seasonal employment in agribusiness are few and far between.

Gender, State and Rural Transformation — Background to the ‘Fruit Explosion’

An important aspect of women’s integration into agribusiness is its mediation of the traditional and the modern. At one level, the commercialisation of agriculture has transformed social and gender relations in the agrarian sector, but at another level it has perpetuated traditional relations as an essential element of its functioning. In the Chilean case, therefore, we must explore the historical context in which agribusiness evolved, before examining women’s employment in NTAE production and the specific effects this has had on gender relations. We need to consider the role of women in more traditional agrarian relations, and the process of change that preceded and was surpassed by the expansion of Chilean fruit export production. This will allow us to assess better the extent to which traditional relations have been transformed and the extent to which they have been reinforced and embedded through the expansion of agribusiness. We shall explore three aspects in particular: the role of women under the traditional agrarian system in Chile; the outcome of state policies in the reform of agriculture and the marginalising effects of these policies on gender relations; and, finally, how the boom in the fruit export sector led to the employment of a large female temporary labour force.

Women and Agribusiness — an Overview

Agribusiness, over the past decade or more, has stimulated an increase in female employment in many countries, not only Chile. In order to analyse the integration of women into Chilean fruit exports, we need to explore some of the broader analytical issues connected with the insertion of female labour into agribusiness. This enables us to draw together the various dimensions relevant to understanding the issues. There are a number of important case studies on women and agribusiness (for example Arizpe and Aranda 1981 and 1986; Barron 1994; Collins 1993; Kritzinger and Vorster 1996; Macintosh 1989; Marcus 1989), and some comparative studies (Barrientos and Perrons 1996 and 1998; Jarosz 1996). However, the development of a broader analytical framework, which links gender and agribusiness in developing countries, remains an area that needs further research (Raynolds 1991), and often the literature on agribusiness itself tends to ignore the gender dimension (Bernstein et al. 1990). While this chapter considers some of the broader analytical issues, our purpose is to obtain further insights into our particular case study rather than develop a generalised perspective, although we hope the issues we raise will help contribute to the latter.