Palm oil plantations, for one, are increasingly struggling with the sector’s declining attractiveness, which has hardly changed since the colonial era.
Behind basic foodstuffs like palm oil, cocoa, coffee and bananas that are part of our daily diet lies a rarely asked question. Who will agree to work in the fields of the world’s large tropical plantations in years to come? Since producing countries gained independence, the sectors that deal with field crop production have relied on a model largely inherited from the colonial period when export crops were produced for global markets, and their profitability long depended on abundant, compliant, and inexpensive labour.
But this model is running out of steam. While public debate around major tropical crop production sectors has long focused on environmental issues, the central challenge today is the social attractiveness of these horticultural systems.
