A/HRC/13/33 countries. It should naturally be seen as a minimum, above which countries and social partners should be encouraged to move as speedily as possible, through laws and collective agreements. In the agricultural sector, it is sometimes understood that the minimum wage can be paid, in part, in the form of allowances in kind, when the employer provides housing, food rations, or health care to the workers. States should ensure that such allowances are appropriate for the personal use and benefit of the worker and his family and that “the value attributed to such allowances is fair and reasonable”.26 At the same time, the imposition of a living wage should not increase the incentive to develop informal forms of employment in the agricultural sector, in which this is already one of the major obstacles to the effective monitoring and implementation of existing safeguards. 2. Monitoring compliance with labour legislation 18. Agricultural workers should benefit from the same level of protection as workers in other sectors. This implies that agricultural workers should be protected by the social security schemes applicable to the industrial and commercial sectors. A first step towards achieving this is to establish a scheme making the registration of agricultural workers compulsory, as has been done in Argentina under pressure from the Argentine Union of Rural Workers and Stevedores (UATRE). Similarly, labour providers should be registered and should only be authorized to work under a licence, and any violation of the applicable legislation should lead to the licence being revoked.27 19. Agriculture is often excluded from coverage under national occupational health and safety regulations, and such standards are usually not enforced even when they do exist. As a result, agriculture is one of the three most dangerous occupations to work in, along with construction and mining.28 This is a direct cause of poverty in rural areas: families are left without protection when the main breadwinner is killed or injured at work. ILO Convention No. 184 (2001) on Safety and Health in Agriculture and its accompanying recommendation No. 192 (2001) formally recognize that agricultural workers are guaranteed the same rights and protection with regard to their health and safety as other categories of workers. Innovative solutions, such as that experimented with in Sweden, where unions have won the right to send safety representatives onto farms located in their region, may have to be scaled up further. 20. The single most important obstacle to the enforcement of labour legislation and the reason for the continuing existence of high levels of informal employment is the weak capacity of labour inspectorates to monitor employment conditions in the agricultural sector. ILO Convention No. 129 (1969) on Labour Inspection in Agriculture requires governments to establish a system of labour inspection in agriculture and describes the main functions of labour inspection, including that of playing a proactive role by bringing gaps in protection to the attention of the competent authorities and making proposals as to how to bridge those gaps. However, although some progress has been made on this front in recent years,29 more political will is needed in this respect: Convention No. 129 has been ratified by significantly fewer States than Convention No. 81 (1947) on Labour Inspection 26 27 28 29 8 ILO Convention No. 99, art. 2, para. 2 (b). See also ILO Convention No. 110 (1958), art. 27, para. 3. See, for instance, the role of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority in the UK. In May 2009, in order to make enforcement more effective, the GLA and firms including Tesco and Sainsbury’s have drawn up a draft protocol on joint checks of suppliers and sharing information on any abuses. Peter Hurst, Agricultural workers and their contribution to sustainable agriculture and rural development, ILO, FAO, IUF, 2007, sect. 2.8, p. 51. ILO General Survey of the reports concerning the labour inspection conventions and recommendations, report III (1B), International Labour Conference, 95th Session, 2006, para. 13. GE.09-17776