‘False solutions’#
“The way that we have discussed astroturfing in the environmental justice movement is ‘false solutions.’ And what we mean by that concept is that there are policies and procedures and activities that are touted as social justice that actually benefit capitalism and oppression and harm because it perpetuates a system that’s based on that without ever challenging it. If you don’t understand that any kind of evaluation or label is a market solution and one of these false solutions, then you might think that there can be justice through that. The strategic thinking of many of the board members and especially the farmworker folks that I believe we’re trying to articulate is that this is a tool in the tool belt to move things closer to where we need them to be. … Labels are false solutions in the sense that they’re capitalist solutions, but they’re not useless. And the value of that is demonstrated by the amount of resources that these entities spend to try to control what happens with the labels.”
Tomás Madrigal, former organizer, Community to Community Development
Farmer discontent with certification#
“It might be farmers are annoyed with certification in general at this point. And also feeling like when we got into organic agriculture, we wanted to be different, but we don’t feel like we’ve moved the needle all that much. Farmers and farmworkers still don’t have retirement. We mostly have crappy healthcare. A lot of us, we all struggle with housing ourselves, and we haven’t made the changes we wanted to make.”
Jody Bolluyt, Roxbury Farm
Benefits of AJP for farmers#
“When AJP invited us to be part of an inaugural group of farms and offered no cost certification initially as a way of building support for the program, testing out some of the processes and procedures, we were excited to do that…and the Food Justice Certification seemed to be an answer to our moral and values commitment to be accountable to something outside of ourselves, in terms of saying that we care about workers and we care about justice. We didn’t expect it to be everything about justice for us, but we were down to try….
“The standards overall are excellent. They pushed important conversations with our team and our board as we updated and clarified our staff manual, our internal policies and procedures. We’ve always had rules and norms but recognized over time that even more specificity is important. Hopefully a lot of it stays on the shelf, but when you need it, having that clarity and having everyone be clear when they come on board, is super important.…
“We want to demonstrate our commitment and care around these principles, but no one’s demanding [certification] of us. Not our funders, not our CSA customers.”
Food Justice Certified farmer
Understanding the immigrant experience, becoming a better employer#
“I wasn’t born into a farming family. I didn’t really understand the entire immigration process for people that come from Mexico and Central America. But once I did, and once I met some guys and just talked to them, some guys that had helped me out on the farm, from that I was just blown away. Once you actually realize what people go through to get here to work and how hard it is… It’s hard for farmers to get workers and then it’s hard for workers to find a decent place to work. And I thought that it’s a shame. Anything I can do to try to improve that would be good. Initially I thought if there was a pool of workers that wanted to work on farms [that were more fair], that would be very beneficial to me. But it also aligns with my beliefs, with my faith.
“I don’t think I was really expecting a whole lot [from participating in AJP]. I just wanted to see where it went. I do want to say, though, going through the certification process—because I hadn’t been farming that long—but going through that process made me get all my junk in order. I had to become an actual legal employer and get a LLC so I could have a federal tax ID number, and so I could actually pay taxes and pay unemployment tax.”
Jordan Brown, The Family Garden, FL
The right to collective bargaining#
“The north star for Food Chain Workers Alliance is protecting that right to organize, in order to expand the organized density of workers in the supply chain.”
Christina Spach, Food Chain Workers Alliance
Connecting with farmworkers#
“My sense is that we could have actually gotten more people excited about the AJP and their procurement work [with the Good Food Purchasing Program]. Speaking strictly from a Florida perspective, where most of the work that we ended up doing was in reaction to anti-immigration policies that the state legislature was putting in, it came to points where just and fair working conditions were secondary to, Actually, just don’t round us up and deport us, or don’t treat us like we’re not even human. In a different political climate, it might’ve been easier to help the farmworker base make that connection.”
Nezahualcoyotl Xiuhtecutli, former General Coordinator, Farmworker Association of Florida
Positive vision & defensive fights#
“It’s amazing to me how many people have social justice movement-building concepts, and how we’re always thinking of the fight and we’re all really fighting, and then we don’t spend enough time looking at what do we do when we win because we’re so busy defending and protecting ourselves in our communities. And what happens when we win? I think that’s a time we are not ready for sometimes, and to me, organizations like AJP and the Domestic Fair Trade Association are the tools that you use when you win the concept of a solidarity economy. And how do you form a solidarity economy? Well, you have these social justice labeling schemes, the standards are the tool for when we win…
“When I tell people that we as farmworkers have participated in developing the [AJP] standards, that always puts a different dynamic on the standards, and the fact is when everybody says, ‘But they’re so complicated and they’re so complex and it takes so much money…’ And I go, that’s what’s needed. As farmworkers, we’re willing to help you make it happen. It’s not just a simple little thing because it’s that important.”
Rosalinda Guillen, Community to Community Development
“We’ve had a couple of facilitated dialogues with members around, what would a just workplace look like? And it is a really hard question for folks. I will say most people will define what they don’t want in their workplace: that they don’t want discrimination, they don’t want crappy wages, they don’t want their bosses yelling at them, but being able to actually go beyond the absence of injustice is real hard for a lot of folks.
“That conversation, the Kaolin Workers Union was going through it like, what do we want in this contract? You can define what you want by just what you don’t want, but it doesn’t give you a very good place to start from for negotiating. And so a bunch of those workers, some of the leaders of KWU, formed the core of the ‘organic committee.’ That’s what it was called. I don’t know why they called it the organic committee since it really wasn’t about organic…. It was mostly workers in Pennsylvania who were working in the mushroom industry, but who spent some time really trying to think about not just the absence of something bad, but what is it that would make their workplaces feel good for them.
“And so I think that process was really awesome. I’ll say there was a whole bunch of international forums that were happening around that point in time where they were also having this discussion around the standards. Some of our members got to go to one or two of them. There was a whole group that went to Thailand…. And for most of them, it was the first time they had traveled anywhere outside of Mexico, the US… Anyways, it was a really cool thing on lots of levels…. And so at that point in time, I would say late 1990s, early two thousands, it was pretty good engagement. They met pretty regularly to talk through stuff that was either coming back from some of these forums or other conversations that were happening around the standards. After the standards were developed, I would say that our actual engagement with workers [with regard to AJP] went down pretty drastically.”
Jessica Culley, General Coordinator, CATA
On the need for a living wage#
“I think that all farmers, if they thought about it, would realize that some sort of a basic price floor that guaranteed them at least the cost of living, at least the cost of production for what they produce, [makes sense]. I don’t see that any different than the idea of a fair and living wage for workers in whatever industry. That the cost of living increases need to reflect how much it costs to live, how much that’s gone up each year…. Parity is that same idea. If we had it, if we could go back a little bit and reset, people would have a lot more security and could feel confident that next year it may not be that much better than this year, but at least it’s not going to be worse. At least I kind of know where I’m going to be going. And there’s a lot to be said for having some security.”
Jim Goodman, Family Farm Defenders
Limits of fair trade certification#
“There is a race to the bottom for labor standards [to reduce the] cost of goods. There is also just a race to the bottom for certification. And so what you see is companies adopting the certification that requires them to make the fewest costly changes to their purchasing practices for the most possible marketing benefit. That incentivizes the easiest-to-meet standards. I could do trainings until I am blue in the face saying, ‘Agricultural Justice Project is the highest standard for small farms and Small Producer Symbol is the highest standard for a small farmer-produced organic coffee out of Latin America.’ And then people say, ‘Great, where do I find that?’ And then I have to say, ‘Well, there are three products that you can find on the shelf at two different locations in the vast continent of the United States. Good luck.’”
Anna Canning, Partners for Dignity and Rights