Yale Student Farmworker Alliance in Yale Daily News: "It is unacceptable that Yale backs away from fair and humane conditions in its supply chain when a program exists which can guarantee them."

"Twenty years ago, students helped bring the groundbreaking Fair Food Program into existence. Now, it’s our turn to help expand the reach of the FFP’s life-saving protections to as many workers as possible."

Last week, with midterms behind them and the autumn weather giving way to the colder months ahead, students across Yale University woke up to an op-ed in their paper of record, Yale Daily News, about a groundbreaking effort underway on their campus.

Inspired by the transformative success of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ Fair Food Program, Yale students have banded together to call on the university to join the FFP as a Participating Buyer!

In the face of a growing human rights crisis in the fields outside the FFP, this student-led effort holds the promise of significantly expanding the reach of the Presidential Medal-winning Program -- not only by securing a commitment from Yale University to preferentially purchase from participating farms, but also by creating a blueprint for students across the nation to use in calling on their own universities to join the Program. Indeed, what's happening today on Yale University's campus might just be the dawn of the second national student movement in support of the Fair Food Program since the launch of the Campaign for Fair Food almost 25 year ago.

Since the CIW’s declaration of a national boycott against Taco Bell in 2001, students have played a pivotal role as a force multiplier in the worker-led movement for a more modern, more humane food system. From booting fast food restaurants from 28 campuses across the country for refusing to join the FFP in the historic "Boot the Bell" campaign, to mobilizing thousands of farmworker allies in countless local actions, students have fought shoulder-to-shoulder with farmworkers for over two decades.

Now, having helped win the battle to launch the Fair Food Program in 2010, students are once again joining farmworkers on the frontlines, this time at Yale University helping expand the program's best-in-class human rights protections to the farmworkers who put food on the tables of Yale's famous dining halls.

We’re excited to share excerpts from their op-ed below. If you are a current student interested in bringing the FFP to your campus, reach out to us at organize@sfalliance.org.

Click here to read the op-ed in full. And of course, stay tuned for more updates on this new and exiting development in the Campaign for Fair Food! 

Yale Hospitality, will you support farmworkers’ rights?

By SEUNG MIN BAIK KANG & ANDREW STORINO NOV 04, 2025

...Amid an ongoing  human rights crisis in U.S. agriculture, Yale can make no guarantee that the people who harvest the food served in our dining halls are treated with dignity. 

Yale Hospitality can solve this problem by joining the Fair Food Program. 

The Fair Food Program, or FFP, provides the strongest human rights protections in agriculture through a partnership between growers, buyers and farmworkers backed by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. The FFP has been praised by the United Nations... and received a presidential medal for its “extraordinary efforts to combat trafficking in persons.” 

By joining the FFP, Yale can ensure that the people who grow our produce are treated with the highest standards of human dignity and fairness. McDonald’s, Trader Joe’s, Walmart and many other food providers have seen the program’s power and become FFP partners. Yale Hospitality must follow their example.

FFP counts over a dozen of the world’s largest food companies among its partners, including campus dining service companies like Aramark and Sodexo. But Baldor, Yale’s primary supplier of fresh produce, doesn’t make the list. And while Yale Hospitality describes four priorities when sourcing food — “Environmentally Sensitive, Humane, Fair, and Regional/Local” — its own website states that only 40 percent of Yale’s food meets just one of these criteria and only 18 percent meet multiple. 

Upholding human rights cannot be optional, and fairness and worker safety cannot remain just one consideration among many. 

The FFP leverages the purchasing power of  buyers at the top of the food supply chain to enforce compliance with a comprehensive, worker-backed code of conduct. Growers are certified and monitored by an independent Fair Food Standards Council, and farmworkers are guaranteed reasonable hours, fair pay, humane treatment and protection from retaliation. Buyers sign a contract with the Coalition agreeing to preferentially purchase food from farms which uphold the code of conduct. They also pay a small price premium for produce, which goes straight to farmworkers’ paychecks. While nothing more than a rounding error for buyers, this bonus has added over $50 million to farmworkers’ collective wages. 

As a result of the FFP’s work, fields once described by federal prosecutors as “ground zero for modern-day slavery” in the U.S. now earn recognitionfrom human-rights observers as “the best working environment in American agriculture.” A 2023 report from Harvard Law School concluded that only the Fair Food Program, as opposed to less robust human rights initiatives like Fair Trade, can actually prevent abuses in the fields.

In July, members of the Yale Student/Farmworker Alliance contacted Yale Hospitality to discuss a Yale-FFP partnership. Hospitality leadership agreed to meet in mid-November, over four months after the request was made. In addition, although representatives from the FFP offered to join the meeting to answer technical questions about becoming an FFP partner, Yale Hospitality has refused to include them in discussions. 

It is unacceptable that Yale backs away from fair and humane conditions in its supply chain when a program exists which can guarantee them. Hospitality leadership has recommended we ask the large distributors which supply Yale’s produce to join the FFP instead. This response fails to understand how demands for agricultural justice succeed: distributors will only even consider joining the FFP if their clients — like Yale — begin to demand ethically-sourced produce. Demand flows downward along supply chains, and change follows in its wake. 

As students and the consumers of the produce Yale purchases, we have the responsibility — and the power — to demand Yale fulfill its most basic obligations to the people who grow our food. Students have been essential to the success of the FFP since its inception: In 2001, students launched a campaign against Taco Bell, boycotting the chain and forcing Taco Bell franchises off college campuses until the corporation addressed unethical practices in its supply chain. In 2005, the work paid off, when Taco Bell became the first-ever major brand to sign an agreement with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. 

Twenty years ago, students helped bring the groundbreaking Fair Food Program into existence. Now, it’s our turn to help expand the reach of the FFP’s life-saving protections to as many workers as possible.