Welcome to Florida podcast: “The CIW was instrumental to enacting one of the most effective programs to improve working conditions for agriculture workers in U.S. history, the Fair Food Program.”

Nely Rodriguez, CIW: “During the fast, I found myself reflecting on the things I’ve seen, like the mothers here who have to get up extremely early to drop their kids off at daycare or school, but under the Fair Food Program, that is no longer the case. If we can make this Program expand, those things will change.”

Although the Fair Food Program now operates in 23 states domestically, covering dozens of crops from blueberries to fresh corn, and in fields and greenhouses overseas, the transformative human rights program was first launched in Florida’s tomato industry, in the fields in and around the farmworker community of Immokalee. 

Shane Mitchell, a renowned food journalist, visited Immokalee back in 2018, when the CIW was first beginning to scale the Fair Food Program’s groundbreaking protections beyond the state in which it was born and into tomato fields along the length of the east coast, from Georgia to New Jersey. And for her remarkable feature story in The Bitter Southerner — which went on to win a coveted James Beard Foundation Journalism Award — Mitchell spoke with farmworker staff members of the CIW on their firsthand experiences working in the fields and forging the unique new mix of monitoring and enforcement mechanisms that make up the first-ever Worker-driven Social Responsibility program. Her insightful piece, which remains relevant today, is now a key chapter of her newly released book, The Crop Cycle, which compiles several of her essays on crops in the south to form a comprehensive look into the people who put food on our tables.

We are excited to share an excerpt of her original feature on tomatoes and the CIW below. You can also grab a copy of the book here, 

And in case you missed it, CIW co-founder Greg Asbed appeared on the Welcome to Florida podcast hosted by acclaimed author of all things Florida, Craig Pittman. In the wide-ranging conversation, Asbed discusses the 30-year history of the CIW, from the early community organizing days in Immokalee, to the CIW’s pioneering anti-slavery work uncovering brutal forced labor operations in the fields, to the national Campaign for Fair Food that set the stage for the launch of the CIW’s Fair Food Program and made possible the “moving” partnership, in Asbed’s words, with the very growers who had for so very long been bitter adversaries but today are instrumental thought partners in the oversight and development of the new gold standard for human rights in the US agricultural industry.

Asbed and Pittman delve into that unique partnership between workers and growers within the FFP and its role in enabling the program to remain dynamic and responsive to the ever-evolving needs of farmworkers and the industry as a whole. When the number of heat stress-related complaints among farmworkers began to rise, Asbed explains, the FFP’s Working Group — an informal body comprised of workers and growers that meets monthly to discuss the latest developments in the daily operation of the program as well as issues forming on the more distant horizon — came together to address the growing challenges posed by accelerating climate change.  Together they forged a set of new requirements to protect workers from the deadly heat, including the mandatory provision of shade, water, rest breaks and training. When research came out that electrolyte-infused water greatly reduce the risk of long-term organ damage when compared to water alone, that working group met again to amend the code to mandate the provision of electrolytes.  Today, the Fair Food Program heat standards set the bar for protecting outdoor workers, and were recently called “America’s strongest workplace heat rules,” on the front page of the The Washington Post. 

The Crop Cycle excerpt and the Welcome to Florida episode complement each other well, as they each explore the tireless efforts of farmworkers and their allies to realize the once-distant dream of dignity and respect in the fields. First up is The Crop Cycle excerpt, enjoy! 

A Hunger for Tomatoes 

Southerners profess great love for homegrown tomatoes. Only a few of us will do the sweating and digging ourselves. So while tomatoes have been part of Southern culture from the beginning, our hunger for them means too many people in the fields don’t get treated fairly.

By Shane Mitchell

“Que es el trabajo?” asked Julia Perkins. “What’s the job?”

A group of women facing her at the bulletin board repeated the English lesson in unison. On a Sunday afternoon in late April at the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) headquarters, female members gathered for their weekly coffee klatch to learn a few handy phrases, trade daycare schedules, and discuss the cost of groceries. Boxes of Polvorones and Canelitas cookies laid scattered on the folding table. A banda tune by Los Jefes de la Sierra Grande leaked from the sound booth of Radio Conciencia La Tuya next door. Murals depicting tomato workers in the field covered butter yellow walls. Hand-painted slogans “No Mas Abusos,” “Comida Justa” and “Justice for Farmworkers” hung above a cluster of desks.

“What kind of work is it?” said Perkins. “What do I need to apply?”

Perkins, a CIW education coordinator born in North Carolina, ended her lesson, and the women rose to rearrange the folding chairs and put away the snacks. All dressed neatly in jeans, cotton tops, clean sneakers. Gold necklaces, pierced ears. Long hair pulled back in sensible ponytails or braids. Cell phones tucked back into purses. Many still worked in the fields; others were field agents for the Coalition. Nice ladies, all.  

Bet you’d never guess they’re expert hunger strikers.

Immokalee (pronounced Im-MOCK-a-lee) is ground zero for Florida’s commercial tomato crop. Broad, flat fields line the main road into town from the Gulf Coast, and on certain stretches, high chain-link fences prevent panthers from crossing the asphalt that cuts across their swampy Western Everglades habitat. Loaded tractor-trailers rumble out of packinghouses. A pinhooker market in an open lot sells produce too ripe for long-distance shipping. A party store advertises piñatas, and bottles of Mexican Coca-Cola fill the cold drink case at Mr. Taco. Waitresses in bustiers and fishnet stockings circle gamblers hunched over slots at the Seminole casino. Street roosters wage turf wars in grassy ditches. Blue tarps still patch damaged roofs long after Hurricane Irma pummeled Florida last year. In an improvised courtyard between ramshackle mobile homes with boarded-up windows, little girls build sand castles in the dirt pretending it’s the beach. One of their parents, who pays $60 a week to share the single-wide with up to 11 other occupants, mentioned that after the 2016 election, a few babies were named Melania.

Across the street from CIW headquarters, the parking lot at La Fiesta #3 grocery store serves as a depot for the battered school buses that transport agricultural workers. The workers buy warm tortillas inside at crack of dawn each morning. When the buses return at end of day, water coolers are dumped on the asphalt to evaporate in the still torrid heat. Many town residents commute on bicycles, not due to a quaint civic ordinance but because they can’t obtain a legal driver’s license or afford car payments on a harvester’s wage. In 1960, Edward R. Murrow reported from Immokalee on the harsh lives of African-American migrant workers in the CBS documentary Harvest of Shame; now, the town’s population has largely shifted to Latino and Haitian. Whatever change has taken place in the fields since — as basic as access to shade and water, as critical as exposing wage theft and sexual harassment — is in great part due to Coalition activists.

Members of the CIW are fantastic at nonviolent resistance. One of their cornerstone initiatives is the Fair Food Program, a humane workplace monitoring collaboration with big ag companies including Gargiulo, Pacific Tomato, and Lipman Family Farms, and fast food giants McDonald’s, Subway, Chipotle, and Taco Bell. Walk through the produce aisle at Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s and inspect the tiny green Fair Food seal on those packets of glossy grape tomatoes and genetically engineered slicers. It represents decades of toil and deprivation.

But the Fair Food seal can’t be found at Publix or Wendy’s.

Not yet.

The next day, Nely Rodriguez, a robust woman in her mid-50s, walked into the CIW offices and shook my hand. She wore a caramel-colored knit sweater over a tank top and capris. Rodriguez, originally from Tamaulipas, Mexico, spoke in a low alto.

“When I first came here, I picked apples and asparagus in Michigan,” she said. “Then in Florida, tomatoes, squash, and eggplant; and since 2007, my work at the Coalition is organizing in the community, with the Sunday women’s group, the radio, and labor-abuse investigations outside the Fair Food Program.”

She also takes part in hunger strikes. Her first fast was in 2012 — a weeklong protest at Publix headquarters in Lakeland, Florida. Founded in 1930 by George R. Jenkins, Publix is the largest closely held regional supermarket chain in the South, with 1,191 stores and gross revenues of $34 billion, so if you shop for groceries anywhere between Alabama and Virginia, chances are good you’ve bought tomatoes at a Publix, or Publix Sabor, themed stores catering to Hispanic Americans. The company’s official position for not taking part in the Fair Food Program maintains the CIW campaign is a labor dispute between workers and suppliers, rather than a human-rights issue. More recently, Rodriguez traveled up to New York in late winter for a chilly “Freedom Fast” strike outside the Park Avenue offices of Wendy’s billionaire board chairman Nelson Peltz.

We sat at a picnic table under a pergola behind the cinder-block building. Doves cooed on a tin rooftop. Breezes rustled the sabal palms.

“I’ve never fasted. How did you feel at the end?” I asked.

“To be honest, I thought it would be more difficult than it was,” she said. “For the first or second day, I had headaches, was tired, but by the third day, I felt more full of energy, lighter, and wasn’t hungry anymore. Taking on a fast like this, you know you’re doing it for a just cause, and you’ve seen abuses in the community and you want them to stop.”

“Was there a time in your past when you were hungry?” I asked.

“Sometimes, working in the fields back in Mexico, because you had to finish a job and you can’t stop, you get hungry. But for days and days because food wasn’t available, like the Freedom Fast? No. There were days when food was just tortillas and beans, but there always was something to eat.”

“So the strike was a different kind of hunger?”

“During the fast, I found myself reflecting on the things I’ve seen, like the mothers here who have to get up extremely early to drop their kids off at daycare or school, but under the Fair Food Program, that is no longer the case. If we can make this Program expand, those things will change. Those things come into your mind and you can power through. After five or six days you want to continue. The feedback you get, the support from the community, that encouragement helps you get through the more difficult parts, urges you on.”

“What was the first thing you ate after?”

“To break the fast, we ate bread all together. Then, we celebrated at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine. The bishop was there, they had mariachis, and an enormous spread. I served myself salad, rice with vegetables, butternut squash soup. And at the end tres leches cake with whipped cream on top. That tasted so good.”

Rodriguez smiled.

“That tasted so good.”

And here below is the Welcome to Florida episode in its entirety, featuring CIW co-founder Greg Asbed.  Enjoy!

Stay tuned for more FFP updates!