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| Beware of Food Slavery by Laetitia Mailhes
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FREE! Natural Weight Loss
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Organic food is becoming mainstream in America, and that's a fact. According to USDA data, 28% of U.S. shoppers buy organic food (fresh and processed) every week; more than 50% of what they buy comes from big retailers and supermarket chains like Walmart, Costco, and other behemoths. Buying and consuming organic food makes us feel good. We've been told it's good for our health and good for the health of the planet. More and more of us are even taking the extra step to ensure that we procure as much of our organic food as possible from local producers, whom we meet at our weekly farmers' market or whose delivery truck comes to our door with our CSA (Consumer Supported Agriculture) box of goodies. However, most of us also have a huge blind spot regarding the origin of the food we eat: the people in the fields who plant, grow and harvest it. Who are they? How much are they getting paid? What working conditions do they experience day in, day out? There are 1.4 million farm workers in the United States, according to the most common estimates. A third of them work on Californian farms. The rest can be found mostly in Florida, Washington State, Texas, Oregon and North Carolina. Two out of three work on large farms. Historically, farm workers in this country have been immigrant and transient populations. Ever since the unlucky Chinese gold-diggers from the Pearl River Delta tried their luck at practicing their native horticulture in the valleys of California in the 19th-century, farm workers have been marginalized and left to live precarious lives in the biggest agricultural state and elsewhere (the practice of slavery in the South obviously brought its own set of issues to agriculture there). Their poor language skills have kept them isolated, so have the Federal and state legislations on labor protection. Born of the New Deal era, the National Labor Relations Act or Wagner Act signed by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1935 excluded farm workers at the request of Democratic senators from the South--they refused to extend those privileges to the African-Americans who made up most of the farm workers' ranks in the region. The situation has not been remedied ever since. To this day, minimum wage laws don't apply federally to farm workers, and they are not entitled to overtime pay. Children as young as 12 years old can be legally hired on farms. It is roughly estimated that between 300,000 and 800,000 of them work in the fields of America at least at some point during the year. No one knows for sure because there's no system in place to track and count them, Vera Chang, a fellow at Bon Appetit Management Company Foundation explained recently at the Eco-Farm Conference. The country has 22 full-time inspectors in charge of controlling 1.4 million farm workers, she added. Clearly, the 21st century has not brought much systemic progress to the farm-workers' situation. A few encouraging events are worth mentioning, however. Since 1997, several farm owners in Florida were charged for violations of human rights and eight cases of slavery involving over 1,000 foreign farm workers where prosecuted. In the midst of the bleak situation that is endemic to U.S. agriculture, here's a special mention also to the astounding work and achievements of the Florida-based Coalition of Immokalee Workers. Its most recent large victory was the deal sealed last August with Sodexo. The multinational food-service and facilities management giant that serves 9.3 million meals a day signed the Coalition's Fair Food agreement, a Code of Conduct that includes fair treatment of farm workers and third-party investigation of farm-worker complaints. The agreement also commits Sodexo to paying a small premium (1.5 cents a pound) for their tomatoes in order to ensure fair wages for farm-workers, and to being transparent in their tomato purchasing. Remarkably, organic agriculture, born in America of the lofty ideals of social justice, cooperation and participative democracy in the 1970s, has not made a dent in those practices. "Organic agriculture has a very long way to go. It only represents 1% of the cultivated land in America and we have still to show an exemplary record when it comes to labor practices," said Amigo Bob Cantisano, an organic farmer in California since 1974, an activist (he co-founded the Ecological Farming Association in 1981) and a consultant who's helped transition 600,000 acres to organic farming around the world. It's no mystery that farming, be it organic or conventional, yields very little pay. Young idealistic farmers who embrace a healthy lifestyle toiling over the soil to feed their community learn it the hard way. My friend Meghan recently worked for a couple of years as an organic farm manager in Washington State, making $800 a month. Her food was provided; her [free] accommodation was a large tent. She is no exception. Since the "get big or get out" motto of U.S. Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz in the 1970s, farmers have become the most vulnerable link in the food chain dominated by huge corporations driven by a sole focus on high volumes/low costs. Consequently, consumers' demand and expectations for low food prices have become a huge component of the sad state of affairs of our farmers' income. Dire financial straights lead to desperate strategies to lower labor costs. Thankfully, a few shining examples show us that alternatives exist, especially among organic farms. In California, for instance, Full Belly Farm is a debt-free operation that provides a decent living for the families of its four partners and of their 70 employees. In fact, Full Belly Farm prides itself on its sustainable labor practices, including a stable payroll and health benefits for two-thirds of the employees and their families. "We're blessed with a climate that keeps us busy year round," partner and co-founder Paul Mueller says. Naturally, sustainability comes at a cost to the consumer, which Paul Mueller is unapologetic about. "You need to understand what you're paying for, what kind of social structure you're buying with your dollars," he argues. "If you believe in being compensated fairly for your work, and in compensating others similarly, then it is not cheap," he says. Lundberg Family Farms, a leader in sustainable rice production, is another famous case of well-rounded sustainability. Its payroll represents 65% of its overhead, and 70% of that are year-round employees who receive full benefits: health coverage, 401K, profit sharing, life insurance and education reimbursement. "Many are long-term employees who've been with us for over 15 years," VP of Administration Timothy Schultz said at the Eco-Farm Conference recently. "We believe that if you treat people well, they will treat you well. Our rice is not the cheapest, but this is part of our narrative," he added. Revisiting our understanding of the value and of the price of sustainably-grown food starts with us, the consumers. Now, that's "beyond organic." ©2011 Reprinted with permission from The Green Plate Blog. Laetitia Mailhes is a French journalist. After many years as the technology and innovation correspondent of the French "Financial Times" in San Francisco, she recently decided to focus on what truly matters to her: sustainable food and farming. Her blog, The Green Plate Blog, launched last summer. Learn more at blog.thegreenplate.org Related Info: Learning Universal Responsibility The Bells of Mindfulness A Vision for 2012 and Beyond Anita Roddick on a holistic model for business Saving Our Oceans American Land Conservancy Keeping Our State Parks Open Preserving San Francisco Bay Natural Weight Loss Program recommended by The Share Guide: learn more MORE
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