Introduction

This chapter explores the supply end of the fresh fruit and vegetables (FFV) chain. It looks at the way in which the production of FFV in Kenya is integrated within the global market and the various regulatory regimes that orchestrate the process. It argues that unequal gender relations in relation to social reproduction within the community and family are replicated within labour laws and built into the global trading regime. It questions whether, as a consequence, women’s labour in Africa is subsidising consumption in the Global North.

Global North consumer culture enables consumers who want to buy at any time in the year a wide range of high quality, ‘good value’, sometimes ‘exotic’ or luxury, FFV. Customers want to take pleasure in eating a ripe mango, unmarked because it has been protected in a plastic container although packaging is not only or primarily for the convenience of customers: fruit needs to be bagged to obtain a barcode for stock control; vegetables need to be packaged because they are transported over hundreds of miles (once in the UK) from centralised supermarket distribution centres (Lawrence 2004). To meet demand, retailers scour the globe to source products, which they then display at the entrance of their stores, thereby encouraging their customers to purchase items that usually provide, through the added value elements, a considerable profit.