“I applaud these retailers who are concerned about the human condition…”


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Respected food industry analyst lauds Fair Food Program

This month’s edition of Food, Nutrition & Science — a monthly newsletter for food industry insiders with a readership upwards of 26,000 — prominently features a concise but far-reaching article on the Fair Food Program and the role of the supermarket industry in perpetuating — and potentially alleviating — farmworker poverty and abuse.

The article starts,

“Farm labor remains among the worst paid, least protected jobs in the country. With few or no benefits, hard, back breaking work, and no job security, farm workers barely make $12,000 a year, and are excluded from overtime pay and collective bargaining. And this is something that the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) is working unrelentingly to change…

They are calling their movement the ‘Campaign for Fair Food,’ and it begins with a simple premise: diagnose what makes farmworkers poor, and redirect those forces in ways that reduce farmworker poverty.

At the heart of the matter is the volume purchasing practices of today’s retail food giants, which create downward pressure on produce prices at the farm level. Grocers are able to provide produce at cheaper amounts for their customers, but this means that farmworkers earn lower wages. Big grocers compete to raise their profits by keeping prices low and bringing customers in. As a result, the CIW says that the nation’s two to three million farmworkers ultimately pay the price…” read more

Food, Nutrition & Science was founded by “Supermarket Guru” Phil Lempert, longtime Food Trends Editor for NBC’s Today show, contributing editor of Supermarket News magazine, and widely read and respected retail food industry analyst.

The press release touting the June edition of the newsletter also highlights the work of the CIW:

“Ten retail food giants including McDonalds, Subway, Burger King, Sodexo, Aramark, Compass Group, Whole Foods, and Trader Joe’s have signed agreements to participate in ‘The Campaign for Fair Food’ to help increase wages and working conditions for farm workers…

‘Large retailers buy millions of pounds of tomatoes annually and are able to leverage their buying power which puts suppliers with increasing costs, in a financial squeeze,’ says Phil Lempert, founder of Food Nutrition & Science and CEO of The Lempert Report and SupermarketGuru.com. ‘I applaud these retailers who are concerned about the human condition and are willing to help’…” read more

The article speaks to the win-win-win nature of the Fair Food Program: workers, growers, and retailers alike benefit from their participation. As we have learned through countless conversations with consumers over the past decade, so too are many within the food industry itself coming around to the realization that the changes demanded by workers in Immokalee and their allies throughout the country are reasonable, feasible, long overdue and good for business.

And when the rest of the supermarket industry — companies like Publix, Kroger, Stop & Shop and Giant — understand and act on this as well, yes, farmworkers will have finally achieved lasting respect for their backbreaking labor, but also the entire industry will be better off and more sustainable going forward.

In fact, the article closes with a reflection from the CIW’s own Gerardo Reyes on the choices ahead for the 21st-century supermarket:

“‘We have demonstrated to the food industry that targeting its purchases toward good suppliers, and paying a small premium at the top of the food supply chain, can have a huge impact on wages and working conditions at the bottom of the chain. That is good for the overall industry, and any impact on the business of those companies that have joined the Fair Food Program has clearly been positive, not negative. This experience ought to inspire other retailers to take similar action’…

‘This century’s shoppers – the shoppers of the Information Age – are buying food plus the information behind the food: its nutritional value, its safety record, and, increasingly, the story of how the workers who produced the food are treated. More and more people are becoming aware of conditions that exist where our food comes from. The inevitable collision between the modern technology informing consumers’ decisions and the antiquated labor conditions in this country’s farm fields is already starting to produce energy for progressive change in the agricultural industry, and those retailers that understand this new reality and get ahead of it first will thrive’…”