Op-ed in Modern Farmer: “Farmworkers cannot wait years for the right to safe working conditions. Action must be taken by civil society and the private sector.”

Western Producer: “[Farmworkers] set up the Fair Food Program to strike deals directly with large companies. The companies pledge to pay fair wages, eliminate sexual harassment and uphold other issues — including increasingly stringent heat protections — in return for Fair Food Program certification for their products.”

No matter what your political persuasion, or your position on science for that matter, one thing is true — the thermometer doesn’t lie.  And our thermometers confirm what our bodies all know: The summer months are getting hotter with every passing year.  And that means that work under the sun is growing more dangerous by the day for the men and women who earn their living outdoors.

And while the federal government is slowly rolling out a proposed rule aimed at providing common-sense heat stress protections for outdoor workers, workers are increasingly suffering from the fallout of both acute and long-term heat exposure, which can include organ failure and even death. 

To meet the urgency of the moment, the Fair Food Program formally codified a set of mandatory heat stress protections that include shade, rest, water, electrolytes, and training,  protections called “America’s strongest workplace heat rules” on the front page of the Washington Post. 

The FFP’s unique power to enforce its human rights standards, including its best-in-class heat projections, is the subject of a new op/ed by  CIW co-founder Greg Asbed and assistant professor of rural sociology at the Penn State College Kathleen Sexmith published in Modern Farmer, a leading trade publication for agriculture. 

You can read key excerpts from their op/ed below, or click here to read the op-ed in full. And be sure to check out further coverage of the FFP’s heat protections in Farm Journal and Western Producer later in this post! 

Farmworkers Cannot Wait for OSHA to Adequately Protect Them From Heat. The Fair Food Program Provides a Solution

Extreme heat is one of the most dangerous factors for farmworkers during the hot summer months. We need to act now to protect these workers and our food supply.

by Kathleen Sexsmith, Greg Asbed

In the wake of the Northern hemisphere’s hottest summer on record, Cruz Salucio, a longtime farmworker and current educator with the Fair Food Program, recalled the painful effects of heat stress:

“I remember the heat of the sun and the intense exhaustion during my first years in the tomato and watermelon fields,” he recalls. Over more than a decade, Salucio harvested watermelon and tomatoes across Florida, Georgia, Missouri and Maryland, working up to 12 hours each day. “Struggling with dehydration, I would get hit with terrible cramps in my feet, my legs, my fingers. They would get hard as rocks, and I could not walk, carry my bucket or lift a watermelon well. But I had to just endure and keep working. I remember, in my first weeks as a young farmworker in the tomato fields, one supervisor saw me struggling with a foot cramp and just said, “Well, you’ll just have to drag it.” 

Salucio is one of many farmworkers who struggled with the wide-reaching effects of heat stress. And now, farmworkers are bracing for an even hotter future. 

Heat is the most deadly extreme weather condition in the US. Six hundred people die from heat each year. US.m farmworkers are a shocking 35 times more likely to die from heat than other workers. Since 1992, more than 1,000 farmworkers have died and at least 100,000 have been injured from heat. Between 40 percent and 84 percent of agricultural workers experience heat-related illness at work. 

Extreme heat and humidity impede the body’s ability to cool down, setting off catastrophic and irreversible organ failure, heart attack or kidney failure. Those who work outdoors without adequate hydration can develop chronic kidney disease, among other health issues.

Farmworkers’ growing vulnerability to heat stress cannot be blamed on climate alone. There are social and political causes, stemming from the way agricultural work is performed, organized and regulated. These include: the intensity and length of the working day; piece-rate payment systems; lack of consistent access to clean drinking water, shade and bathrooms; a poor work safety climate; and excessive clothing. 

As such, immediate actions must be taken to protect workers from needless suffering and death. 

The federal government has begun to address the crisis, but the OSHA rule-making process is slow. President Biden ordered OSHA to develop a heat standard in 2021. In April 2024, a draft was discussed, but stakeholder and public feedback still must be sought before the rule can be finalized. This could very well drag on, since even mitigating preventable heat-related illnesses and deaths has become politicized.

In the meantime, heat stress protections fall under OSHA’s general duty clause, which ensures the workplace is “free from hazards that are causing or likely to cause death or serious physical harm,” including extreme heat. Additionally, OSHA implemented a spot inspection program for workplaces with significant heat hazards, and it has increased efforts to inspect farms hiring H2A guest workers. 

However, these small protections aren’t enough. 

Concerningly, OSHA cannot enforce its standards on farms with 10 or fewer employees, due to a 1976 appropriations rider exempting them from red tape. Only a small handful of states, which can run their own OSHA plans, have standards for heat exposure. 

Farmworkers cannot wait years for the right to safe working conditions. Action must be taken by civil society and the private sector. The Fair Food Program (FFP), a farmworker-led, market-based solution to agricultural workplace injustices—recently cited as an emerging “gold standard” in social responsibility in a 10-year, longitudinal study of the leading certification programs—provides a solution. 

The FFP has developed comprehensive standards and protocols for heat stress prevention and response, protections the Washington Post called “America’s strongest workplace heat rules”earlier this year. Under the plan, workers receive mandatory cool-down rest breaks every two hours; are provided unrestricted access to clean water with electrolytes and shade; are monitored more frequently for heat stress, especially during the acclimatization period to heat; are trained on the signs of heat illness; and if showing signs of heat stress, they can stop working—without fear of repercussions—if they feel unwell.

Now implemented in 10 states, the FFP has begun expanding to communities in South Africa and Chile. The number of US states participating is also set to double this summer, with the USDA’s recognition of the program. 

The Fair Food Program works with the Fair Food Standards Council, an independent third party that audits participating farms for compliance with a suite of labor justice standards developed by farmworkers themselves and runs a 24/7 worker complaint hotline. In the 12 years since its launch, the FFP has successfully addressed some of the most intractable labor justice problems in agriculture, such as gender-based violence and forced labor, which have been all but eradicatedfrom FFP farms. 

Although more than a dozen major food companies—including such well-known brands as Walmart, McDonald’s and Whole Foods—currently participate in the program, more must join to expand the program’s benefits. The workers behind the program remain undaunted in their determination to expand its life-saving protections. In the words of one anonymous worker, speaking to a Fair Food Standards Council auditor in 2018: 

“Before, I would be working under the sun, working hard, and I would want to stop for water. The boss would stop me, and I would say, I need water. He would say, there’s the ditch over there, it’s got some water. There were no water bottles. We were exhausted, we needed water. There were no toilets. Before, if you spoke out, you would be fired…  But now that we are united, we have strength. We are taking steps forward, and we cannot go back. We are building a road forward, and we will never go back.”  

Next up, Farm Journal, another prominent agricultural news outlet, highlighted the Fair Food Program as an innovative, scalable solution to protecting farmworkers from the worst effects of climate change. Click here to read the piece in full.

The Impact of Climate Change on Farm Workers

…Earlier this year, the UN’s International Labor Organization (ILO) released a report which found that over 70 percent of the world’s workforce is exposed to extreme temperatures at least once per year, resulting in nearly 19,000 work-related deaths and nearly 23 million work-related injuries or illnesses from this cause alone. It also predicted that the incidence of these deaths and injuries would likely rise over time due to the effects of climate change. The people in occupations most at risk from this problem include agricultural, construction, natural resource management and refuse collection workers….

Agriculture workers are particularly vulnerable to the health effects of heat and smoke. Outside activities such as digging irrigation ditches and picking crops can raise body temperatures and increase respiratory rates, making workers more susceptible to heat stroke…

In 2011, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a nonprofit that represents Florida farm workers, established the Fair Food Program (FFP), which provides certification to farms which follow strict worker safety rules, including allowing workers to take 10 minute breaks during every two hours of work during the hottest part of the year. According to a February 2024 article in the Washington Post, that certification allowed those farms to sell to a select group of companies such as Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and Walmart. The buyers would agree to pay a small premium for produce from farms where workers are protected and blacklist farms that get kicked out of the program. In exchange, they have been able to tout their ethical practices, a selling point with a growing number of U.S. consumers worried about the working conditions for those who produce their food.

The Coalition has convinced a number of farms in states other than Florida to follow their FFP guidelines, a number that grew earlier this year after the U.S. Department of Agriculture offered up to $2 million in subsidies to farms that abide by guidelines such as FFP’s. Similar standards have also been adopted by worker groups in other countries, such as in Chile and South Africa. Part of the enforcement process has been the practice of the FFP sending auditors to participating farms, to learn by interviewing workers if those operations are abiding by the rules. If farms are found out of compliance, their certification can be suspended, which loses them access to the FFP’s buyer network.

And finally, the Western Producer, a leading publication for the Canadian agricultural industry, republished the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s profile of the Fair Food Program. Below you can find an excerpt, or click here to read the profile in its entirety: 

 

U.S. farm workers cultivate heat safety standards

WASHINGTON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) — Heat records have repeatedly been toppled in recent weeks, just when farms in some of the hottest parts of the United States are at their busiest.

That worries Lupe Gonzalo.

“A lot of places in the field, you don’t have access to shade, to clean and fresh drinking water,” said Gonzalo, a senior staff member with the non-profit Coalition of Immokalee Workers, who works with farm workers across several southern states.

For years Gonzalo picked tomatoes, berries, sweet potatoes and other produce, and the heat was always an issue. But her concerns are mounting.

“It’s getting hotter and hotter as climate change continues, and it will continue to be an issue for workers,” said Gonzalo.

“We’ve already seen far too many people become ill and even lose their lives. So this is truly an urgent issue.”

While regulations to protect agricultural workers from heat have been held up by political wrangling, Gonzalo and her colleagues have spearheaded an alternative strategy.

They seek to sidestep the slow and increasingly politicized government machinery and appeal directly to consumers and large brands.

Gonzalo and others set up the Fair Food Program to strike deals directly with large companies.

The companies pledge to pay fair wages, eliminate sexual harassment and uphold other issues — including increasingly stringent heat protections — in return for Fair Food Program certification for their products.

The heat-related measures include providing shade, having required breaks, training for workers and supervisors, electrolyte-infused water, and the ability to seek care without fear of retaliation.

The program covers tens of thousands of workers in 10 states, through agreements with companies such as Walmart, McDonald’s, Subway and others.

The group also works with farm workers in Chile and South Africa, and is seeking to expand to other countries.

At national grocery store Whole Foods, for instance, consumers can purchase Fair Food Program-certified sweet potatoes and cut flowers labelled as “Sourced for Good.”

The program’s reach is about to expand, after the U.S. Department of Agriculture highlighted its approach for special acknowledgement under a new program aimed at addressing human rights and worker retention on farms…