Seed Production

No Trade in the Event of Violations

Friedrich Berschauer, Chairman of the board of management of Bayer CropScience, listening to the explanation ot the monitoring program against child labor.

Bayer BioScience Pvt. Ltd. (formerly Proagro Seed Pvt. Ltd.), an Indian subsidiary of Bayer CropScience, produces seed that is grown by numerous contract farmers in a number of Indian states. In the production of hybrid cotton seed, the company cooperates closely with a large number of contract farmers in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

The production of hybrid seed requires painstaking hand labor, as the plants need to be artificially pollinated with different pollen. In the Indian agriculture industry, this manual pollination is traditionally carried out by children. To prevent this in its production channel, Bayer BioScience Pvt. Ltd. has introduced an extensive system of controls. For example, the company regularly sends observers to the farms without prior notice. If children are discovered to be working at a farm, the farmer is given a warning. If the offense is repeated, the farmer faces the termination of his contract, as all suppliers undertake in their contracts not to employ child workers.

Bonus, a small loan program and a continuing education program support the farmers

	All suppliers undertake in their contracts not to employ child workers.

Bayer BioScience Pvt. Ltd. cooperates closely with its seed producers in order to make its production channel as transparent as possible and enable efficient controls. Yet Bayer BioScience Pvt. Ltd. does not just threaten offenders with penalties, it also offers the prospect of rewards. Farmers who can demonstrate that they do not employ children are given a bonus on the customary sale price for seed produced in the current growing period. In the overall 2006/2007 season, more than 340 farmers received such a bonus.

Furthermore, Bayer CropScience helps the farmers to increase their productivity. The reasoning behind this approach is that wherever these efforts are successful, the pressure to hire cheap labor in the form of children declines. To this end, the company maintains a small loan program for farmers, among other measures. What’s more, Bayer CropScience maintains a continuing education program that teaches farmers how to increase their yield per hectare.

[ last update: Tuesday, June 10, 2008 ]