Fair Food Program

The Fair Food Program (FFP) is a partnership among farmers, farmworkers, and retail food companies that ensures humane wages and working conditions for the workers who pick fruits and vegetables on participating farms. It harnesses the power of consumer demand to give farmworkers a voice in the workplace, and to eliminate the longstanding abuses that have plagued agriculture for generations. The Program has been called “the best workplace-monitoring program” in the US in the New York Times,^[1] and “one of the great human rights success stories of our day” in the Washington Post ^[2] and has won widespread recognition for its unique effectiveness from a broad spectrum of human rights observers, from the United Nations to the White House.

Partners

Coalition of Immokalee Workers

The Fair Food Program emerged from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers' Campaign for Fair Food. The campaign was launched in 2001 by farmworkers in Immokalee, Florida in order to educate consumers on the labor conditions behind the food they eat.^[3]

Fair Food Standards Council

The Fair Food Standards Council (FFSC) oversees the program and ensures that standards are upheld. Judge Laura Safer Espinoza, a retired New York State Supreme Court Justice is the Executive Director of the FFSC.^[4]

Participating buyers

Ahold USA, Aramark, Bon Appétit Management Co., Burger King, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Compass Group, Sodexo, The Fresh Market, McDonald's, Subway, Trader Joe’s, Walmart, Whole Foods Market, and Yum Brands.^[5]

Participating growers

Ag-Mart Produce,, DiMare Homestead, DiMare Ruskin, Gargiulo, Gulfstream Tomato Packers, Harllee Packing, Kern Carpenter Farms, Lady Moon Farms, Lipman Produce, Pacific Tomato Growers, Taylor and Fulton Packing, Tomatoes of Ruskin, and West Coast Tomato/McClure Farms ^[6]

Background

In 2005, after the CIW boycotted Taco Bell for almost four years, the company agreed to sign a Fair Food Agreement, committing the company to pay a “penny more per pound” on its tomatoes, to be passed on as wage bonus to tomato harvesters, and to work with CIW to improve conditions in the fields.^[7] College campuses were a major impetus for this agreement; twenty-two colleges banned Taco Bell from operating.^[8] The CIW then targeted McDonald’s for two years; in 2007, McDonald's signed a Fair Food Agreement with CIW.^[9] Other fast-food chains and food retailers followed suit.

Despite this success, in 2007, the Florida Tomato Growers, which is the state’s largest tomato producer, slowed the CIW’s progress. They threatened farms with $100,000 worth of fines if they passed through "penny per pound" monies. In 2010, Pacific Tomato Growers and Lipman, two of the nation’s largest producers, signed on to the program, effectively ending the industry boycott. Just months later, the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange signed onto the Fair Food Program, which began widespread implementation of the model.^[10]

Walmart joined the Fair Food Program on January 16, 2014.^[11] The company sells 20% of the United States’ fresh tomatoes.^[12] Walmart additionally agreed to help expand the Program outside of Florida and expand into other crops.^[13]

Implementation and expansion

The Fair Food Program has completed four year of implementation across the Florida tomato industry as well as its first year of expansion to Florida-based tomato growers’ operations in Georgia, North and South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and New Jersey. The program is currently expanding to strawberries and green bell peppers in Florida. The Fair Food Standards Council publishes detailed metrics annually, charting the program's implementation.^[14]

Program Elements

The Fair Food Program has six major components.

• A wage increase supported by the “penny per pound” price premium Participating Buyers pay for their tomatoes;
• Compliance with the human rights-based Code of Conduct, including zero tolerance for forced labor, child labor and sexual assault;
• Worker-to-worker education sessions conducted by the CIW on the farms and on company time to insure workers understand their new rights and responsibilities;
• A worker-triggered complaint resolution mechanism leading to complaint investigation, corrective action plans, and, if necessary, suspension of a farm’s Participating Grower status, and thereby its ability to sell to Participating Buyers;
• Health and safety committees on every farm to give workers a structured voice in the shape of their work environment;
• Specific and concrete changes in harvesting operations to improve workers’ wages and working conditions, including an end to the age-old practice of forced overfilling of picking buckets (a practice which effectively denied workers pay for up to 10% of the tomatoes harvested), the provision of shade in the fields, and the use of time clocks to record and count all compensable hours accurately; and
• Ongoing auditing of the farms by the Fair Food Standards Council to insure compliance with each element of the program.^[15]

Success

From November 2011 through September 2015, farmworkers have brought forth over 1100 complaints. The FFSC has conducted more than 120 audits, interviewed 12,000 workers and completed 45 site visits. The CIW has conducted 400 education sessions, which has educated 35,000 workers about their rights. Buyers have paid nearly $20 million in the Fair Food Premium, which goes directly to workers as a line-item bonus on their paychecks.^[16] According to the CIW, “today, virtually all Florida tomato growers have joined the Fair Food Program.^[17]” "'When I first visited Immokalee, I heard appalling stories of abuse and modern slavery,' said Susan L. Marquis, dean of the Pardee RAND Graduate School, a public policy institution in Santa Monica, Calif. 'But now the tomato fields in Immokalee are probably the best working environment in American agriculture. In the past three years, they’ve gone from being the worst to the best.'" ^[18] ”

Fair Food label

The CIW is developing a consumer-facing "Fair Food Label" to help promote the program in supermarkets.^[19]

Response

• The Roosevelt Institute awarded the CIW its 2013 Freedom from Want Medal in 2013.^[20]
• After an investigation from PBS’s Frontline for all of 2013, they declared the FFP to be the “single most effective prevention program in the U.S. agricultural industry.^[21]”
• The President’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships reported that the FFP was one of the “most successful and innovative programs” to prevent modern slavery.^[22]
• In May 2013, a delegation from the UN visited the Fair Food Program stakeholders and announced that the program had successfully created, “ market incentives for participating growers.^[23]”
• A Washington Post article stated that the “CIW model is one of the great human rights success stories of our day.^[24] ”

References