Movie & panel discussion `The Pickers´

'We want cheap fruit and veg, all year. No problem. The Pickers deliver, but they are paying the price for us.'

'"The Pickers" is a journey to European fields where our fruit and vegetables are grown: in Southern Italy, Seydou from Mali is picking oranges. He has no contract and is paid per crate. He lives in a self-built hut in a settlement without water and electricity.  

Blueberries in Portugal, olives in Greece, strawberries in Spain – one million migrants are currently working in European fields. The pickers are the mobile workforce that fills our supermarkets’ baskets, most of them without contracts or minimum wages, some without papers or with high debts with agents.'

This event consists of a film showing and panel discussion.

Panellists: 

Berîvan Aymaz, Mayoral candidate of the Green Party for Cologne

Dr. Kristian Möller, appellando GmbH (Alliance for effective complaints mechanisms in supply chains)

Martin Schüller, Fairtrade Deutschland e.V. (Development Policy, Climate & Environment Officer)

Marijke Mulder, FEMNET e.V. And köllektiv e.G.

Full house at the film event 'The Pickers' at Cologne University. The great panel provided a 360-degree view of important topics in a short time: Supply Chain Act, human rights, migration policy, illegality, capitalism and the power of food retailers.

More than two million seasonal harvest workers work in European agriculture. They are an important part of our food production. However, this work often means living in inhumane conditions, being paid below the minimum wage, receiving inadequate healthcare and disregarding basic freedoms and human rights. This film follows several harvest workers in Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Germany as they harvest olives, oranges, strawberries and blueberries. They take center stage, they are given voices and faces, they tell their stories defiantly and bitterly.

The film also shows solutions, describing how the EU Parliament fought for a new Europe-wide supply chain law that makes supermarkets more responsible. And documents how a cooperative in southern Italy produces fair oranges and thus creates humane conditions for its workers.

The panel discussion is about the implementation and protection of supply chain legislation, social responsibility, questioning certification procedures and exploring alternative distribution models: The discussion about (European) trade policy and the behaviour of people who want to buy as cheaply as possible was particularly impressive - “morality dies in front of the shelf”.