Production | Summer 2009
Bayer grows kids as well as crops.
By Scott Garvey
While Bayer management recognizes the need to forge ahead with research and economic activities across the globe, the company has adopted a remarkable standard for governing itself in the process. To ensure its corporate operations do not exploit people or societies, Bayer is a participating member in the United Nations Global Compact.
The compact is a policy initiative with 10 core principles related to human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption. Not only is it a participating member, but Bayer was one of the founders of this initiative.
By following the 10 principles adopted as central to the compact, corporations distribute the wealth and benefits they generate to people and societies across the world, and not just the privileged few. This guides the activities of global business toward a sustainable and inclusive world economy. Today, more than 5,100 businesses from 130 countries have joined together under the compact.
One of the compact’s principles is the abolition of child labour. The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) estimates more than 200 million children around the world between the ages of five and 17 have to work full time, especially in poor regions of Latin America, Asia and Africa. To avoid profiting from this kind of exploitation in any way, Bayer ensures none of its subcontractors permit child labour either.
Notably, the company goes beyond this standard and actively supports educational opportunities for children in developing regions — programs that offer children an alternative to working in farm fields, particularly in India where child labour rates have traditionally been high.
As part of that initiative, Bayer supports the Creative Learning Centres which prepare children for enrolment in state-run schools. And it has established a children’s agricultural vocational school in Hyderabad, India. This gives children who had been unable to attend school an opportunity to learn an agricultural trade.
Bayer also encourages farmers to support these initiatives through programs designed to maintain productivity without the need for child labour. Farmers receive special payments, effectively allowing them and their children to share in the economic gains of a global corporation.
