On this International Human Rights Day, let’s take a moment to remember the millions of farmworkers across the planet for whom the idea of universal human rights remains, even today, a distant dream. 

According to Laura Elise Vasquez, Director of Complaint Resolution with the Fair Food Standards Council, “Some of the most challenging calls we get on the Fair Food Program hotline come from farmworkers on non-FFP farms.” Your gift this holiday season to the FFP will help ensure that we continue to expand the FFP to new farms and new states in the year ahead, and as a result, expand the reach of its Presidential Medal-winning protections to countless more farmworkers where they are desperately needed today.

But this year, thanks to a special donation from the NoVo Foundation, your holiday gift will have twice the impact! Last week, we informed you about the NoVo Foundation’s matching challenge, whereby all gifts will be matched up to $2 million. We have now through December 31 to meet this challenge and we need your help. And, there is no better day to show your solidarity with the Fair Food Program than International Human Rights Day.   

Sadly, extreme abuse is still all too common in agriculture, and has been for generations. Consumers are once again left to wonder whether the food on their holiday plates was harvested by farmworkers trapped in forced labor. As harsh as conditions are for workers in this country, they are exponentially worse for farmworkers overseas in countries like Mexico, for example, where over half of our produce is grown today, and where workers are trapped in a toxic mix of violence, official corruption, and powerful drug cartels whose influence reaches all the way into the fields.  

On Fair Food Program farms across the U.S., however, we have been able to write a new chapter in farm labor history. Workers are free from wage theft, violence, sexual harassment and assault, deadly heat caused by climate change, and, yes, forced labor. Since 2010, the FFP has proven that it is possible not only to create a code of conduct that ensures workers’ basic rights are protected, but to actually enforce that code, too. The Fair Food Program leverages legally-binding agreements with Participating Buyers to cure human rights abuses. It’s the brands’ buying power harnessed in those agreements that provides the teeth behind the FFP’s standards — and protects workers who register complaints from retaliation in the process. And once that power of enforcement takes root and those who would violate their workers’ rights realize that there are real consequences for their actions, the next step is prevention, the gold standard of human rights where violations are not just remedied after the fact, but prevented altogether — a world without victims.

Without that power, the road to change is far longer, and a lot less certain. But with your support, we can imagine a future where every day is International Human Rights Day for farmworkers across the country, and around the globe.  Please consider donating to the Fair Food Program today, or anytime between now and December 31st, when your donation will have double the impact and together we can speed the day when all food is Fair Food!