Farmworker on an FFP participating farm: “More important than the money, which I need, was the feeling of dignity when my labor – the buckets I harvested – was recognized.”
The CEO of Bloomia, a FFP Participating Grower, Werner Jansen: “If a company as large and successful as Bloomia can partner with a worker-driven social responsibility program like the Fair Food Program, there is no reason why the rest of the industry shouldn’t be able to meet that same gold standard for human rights protections in their supply chains as well.”
For part 3 of our series highlighting key sections of the Fair Food Program's recently released 2024 "State of the Program" report, we want to hone in on one of the features of the FFP model that sets it apart as the "new gold standard" in human rights enforcement today.
The FFP's market-based enforcement mechanisms have, over the course of 15 years since the program's inception in 2010, proven themselves to be both rigorous and dynamic, transforming farm labor practices on participating farms across the country and earning the trust of workers, growers, and buyers alike in the process. But what exactly does 'market-based enforcement' mean, and how does it generate the documented win-win-win results among the partners participating in the Program?
To answer these questions, we are sharing the excerpt below from the SOTP's description of the Program's market-based enforcement model, followed by a second excerpt from the report's conclusion, which describes how the same market-based enforcement helps fuel the Program's evolution, expansion, and growing influence as the new paradigm for enforcing human rights in global supply chains.
To read the SOTP in full, you can download it by clicking here!
Market-based Enforcement
The FFP is an enforcement-focused approach to social accountability. Market-based consequences, built into the Program by CIW’s Fair Food Agreements with Participating Buyers, provide the enforcement power necessary to create real change. In the event that a grower is suspended, Participating Buyers are required to suspend purchases from the Participating Grower until that grower is returned to good standing.
For buyers, benefits of FFP participation include transparency and elimination of supply chain risks at a time when consumers – with access to instant information – are increasingly aware of the conditions under which their products are produced and expecting corporations to do their part in addressing the pressing social problems of the day, from climate change to sexual harassment.
For growers, FFP benefits include (but are not limited to): becoming employers of choice; reducing turnover and increasing productivity; preventing risks, including lawsuits and administrative fines and penalties; improving management systems; reducing workers’ compensation costs; and obtaining verification of ethical labor practices, thereby giving them a competitive edge with buyers and consumers.
Lucas Benitez with John Esformes, CEO of Pacific Tomato Growers DBA Sunripe Certified Brands
With the exception of zero tolerance offenses, Participating Growers are given multiple opportunities to address Code violations through the Program’s collaborative complaint resolution and corrective action procedures. Failure to address Code violations through agreed-upon corrective actions may result in probationary status, and continued failure to address those violations results in suspension from the Program. Together, the promise of preferred purchasing and the legitimate threat of diminished market access have worked as powerful drivers of compliance. Over the life of the Program, most growers have reacted to market consequences by substantially and continuously improving their compliance with the Code of Conduct.
As seen in the “Probation and Suspension History” chart, nearly all suspensions to date took place in the FFP’s first three seasons, the same timeframe in which compliance also saw its most drastic improvement. Throughout the history of the Program, no Participating Grower has been suspended twice. At the same time, the number of annual probations remained steady between the 2012-13 and 2017-18 seasons, showing that, although suspensions became increasingly rare over time, market consequences remained essential to building the stronger systems necessary to reach the highest levels of compliance. Since the 2018-19 season, when the FFP reached its highest levels of compliance Program-wide, it became clear that the potential of market consequences – even short of a notice of probation – is now sufficient to drive increasing levels of compliance and to prevent abuse. There have been zero suspensions since 2019, and zero probations since 2018.
“More important than the money, which I need, was the feeling of dignity when my labor – the buckets I harvested – was recognized.” ~ Farmworker on a FFP farm
The Fair Food Program has grown in three key ways over the course of the 2021-2024 period.
First, the FFP has undergone dramatic expansion. In the U.S the Program rapidly expanded to new farms, states, and crops over the past three years, and as of the publishing date of this report, covers over 50 farms across 23 states. At the same time, the FFP launched its first-ever expansion pilots overseas, in Chile and South Africa. This means that the rights of tens of thousands of farmworkers who are harvesting dozens of different crops, including cut flowers, in many different environments, are protected under the FFP. Indeed, 2023-2024 saw the highest number of farms enter the Program since over 90% of all growers within the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange (FTGE) initially agreed en masse to participate in 2010.
Second, the FFP’s Code of Conduct has evolved and grown to meet the urgent needs of farmworkers as they arise. From establishing mandatory safety measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19, to creating the “America’s strongest heat safety protections,” in the words of the Washington Post, the FFP has continued to expand its protections and serve as a vital lifeline for farmworkers.
Third, the FFP has emerged as a dynamic change agent on the international human rights stage through its growing role in aiding workers and their organizations across the globe seeking to adapt its Worker-driven Social Responsibility model to their own industries. From construction workers in Minnesota and dairy workers in Vermont, to garment workers in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Lesotho, fishers in the UK, and agricultural workers India, Europe and South America, the FFP has become both an inspiration and an adaptable blueprint for workers in globalized supply chains to guarantee their essential human rights...
Click here to read the 2024 State of the Program Report in full!
Fair Food Program reaches major landmark: Over $50 million in Fair Food Premium — aka the “Penny per Pound” — has been paid by Participating Buyers to improve farmworkers’ income on participating farms. 2024 SOTP: “The [compliance] data demonstrates that Participating Growers across the Program have developed a deep commitment to the FFP’s joint complaint resolution process, driven by the recognition that workers frequently have valuable insight into workplace practices and related risks.” In part 2 of our series on the release of the 2024 Fair Food Program State of the Program report, we’re going to focus on what truly sets the […]
State of the Program report: “Now, fourteen years since its inception, the FFP has entered into a phase of truly dramatic expansion: During 2024 and 2025, the Program’s protections will reach thousands more farmworkers, at over 30 additional farms in 13 new states.” “…the FFP’s domestic expansion in the U.S. is increasingly urgent in light of heightened risks to farmworkers from both rising temperatures associated with climate change and serious abuses associated with the growth of the H-2A program, including the growing risk of forced labor and human trafficking.” As the Fair Food Program continues to ramp up its national […]
Grey Moran, in acceptance speech for James Beard Award: “I encourage everyone here who procures food to check out the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ Fair Food Program. As a journalist, I try not to really promote anything, but they’ve created a truly remarkable human rights framework for rooting out some of the most seemingly pernicious labor abuses routinely endured by farmworkers.” At a gala ceremony last month in Chicago, the James Beard Foundation announced the winners of its annual James Beard Awards, which highlight the work of journalists, chefs, activists, and others, who are making a positive impact in the food […]
India Sugar Industry Workers Association: “This is a historic moment, a historic opportunity where the court has pushed to make substantial changes…” The New York Times: “… [L]abor leaders are also pressuring multinational companies to join a labor-standards program modeled after the Fair Food Program, which has improved conditions for American agricultural workers.” Over the past several months, The New York Times released a shocking, five-part investigative series into labor conditions in the sugar industry in India, the second largest sugar industry in the world after Brazil. The bombshell report revealed the horrific abuses facing hundreds of thousands of sugarcane workers […]
Here’s an extraordinary fact: There is a 21st century human rights revolution underway across the world today, and it all started right here in the tomato fields of Immokalee. And here’s a fact that’s even more extraordinary: Everyday people — people like you and all of us here in Immokalee — made that human rights revolution happen! Facing abusive crewleaders and a pervasive climate of fear in the early 1990s, farmworkers in the dusty crossroads town of Immokalee decided they had had enough. They stood up for their rights, organizing strikes and marches and even a month-long hunger strike to press […]
Inside the world of the Fair Food Program, farmworkers have the power and the tools to act as the frontline monitors of their own rights — without fear of retaliation — collectively forging what human rights experts have called the “best workplace environment in U.S. agriculture” since the FFP was launched in 2010; Outside the Program, farmworkers are regularly subjected to a litany of human rights abuses, including sexual harassment and assault, wage theft, and even modern-day slavery, virtually without recourse to redress. “You’re not in Florida anymore… When we’re up here, what I say goes, not the CIW!” […]
Fair Food Program Sustainer Drive, Week 2: We take a look under the hood of the FFP to see how all the moving parts — including the CIW’s consumer allies and Sustainers like you — work together to set the “new gold standard” for enforcing fundamental human rights in global supply chains. On FFP farms across the country, tens of thousands of workers are protected from modern-day slavery and other longstanding farm labor abuses through several interlocking mechanisms designed to monitor and enforce the Program’s standards in real time, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. These mechanisms include: […]
Fair Food Nation! We’re kicking off our June Sustainer Drive! All month long, we’ll be spotlighting what makes the Fair Food Program (FFP) so uniquely effective, taking a look back at our achievements, and acknowledging the hard work ahead as we aim to expand the FFP’s best-in-class human rights protections to workers not yet covered by the Program. And most importantly, over the next four weeks we’ll be highlighting the vital role played by our Fair Food Program Sustainers, thousands of consumers like you without whom the Fair Food Program would never have been possible. Together, farmworkers […]
Yale University’s School of Architecture holds powerful conference on forced labor in the “built environment” and invited the Fair Food Program to share its insights from the Worker-driven Social Responsibility (WSR) experience; Wide range of participants discuss importance of worker participation, concrete methods to ensure workers’ rights are protected Last month, one of the CIW’s co-founders, Greg Asbed, was invited to speak at Yale University’s School of Architecture to share the CIW’s two decades of experience stopping forced labor in food, textile, and other industry supply chains around the global through the Fair Food Program and the Worker-driven Social Responsibility model. […]
Fair Food Nation, today is the day to demand Wendy’s finally do the right thing to protect farmworkers and join the Presidential Medal-winning Fair Food Program! In tomorrow’s annual general meeting, Wendy’s shareholders and executives will hear from longtime CIW ally Kerry Kennedy, President of RFK Human Rights, whose pre-recorded speech in favor of Worker-driven Social Responsibility lays out a compelling case for the urgent need to sure up the fast-food giant’s supply chain from human rights risks. We are excited to share that speech with you below, as well as 5 ways you can pressure Wendy’s today. Ready to go? […]
