For those who succeed, the business is very profitable. Because many of these crops are labor-intensive, expanding production has generated hundreds of thousands of jobs, especially for women. The trade boom has spurred growth in the transport, packaging, and marketing industries, as well as in intermediary firms that broker sales. Yet, as Dr. Thrupp and her colleagues reveal, this market success has come at a cost in workers' health, inequitable distribution of economic benefits, and environmental degradation in many of the exporting countries. Exposure to these highly toxic chemicals causes serious health problems, especially for women engaged in flower production, who suffer high miscarriage rates, recurrent headaches, and dizzy spells.
Economic problems arise too.
The benefits of these new crops tend to be concentrated in the hands of wealthy investors and foreign distributors in several Latin American countries. In Central America, for example, transnational corporations control about 25 percent of total production of non-traditional export crops and much of the distribution and transport as well. Large economic uncertainties cloud the outlook for these new crops. Prices are highly volatile, inputs costly, market requirements demanding, competition fierce, and export windows narrow. The authors conclude that these drawbacks call into question the sustainability of non-traditional agricultural export strategies.