Farmworker on an FFP participating farm: “More important than the money, which I need, was the feeling of dignity when my labor – the buckets I harvested – was recognized.”

The CEO of Bloomia, a FFP Participating Grower, Werner Jansen: “If a company as large and successful as Bloomia can partner with a worker-driven social responsibility program like the Fair Food Program, there is no reason why the rest of the industry shouldn’t be able to meet that same gold standard for human rights protections in their supply chains as well.”

For part 3 of our series highlighting key sections of the Fair Food Program’s recently released 2024 “State of the Program” report, we want to hone in on one of the features of the FFP model that sets it apart as the “new gold standard” in human rights enforcement today.

The FFP’s market-based enforcement mechanisms have, over the course of 15 years since the program’s inception in 2010, proven themselves to be both rigorous and dynamic, transforming farm labor practices on participating farms across the country and earning the trust of workers, growers, and buyers alike in the process. But what exactly does ‘market-based enforcement’ mean, and how does it generate the documented win-win-win results among the partners participating in the Program?

To answer these questions, we are sharing the excerpt below from the SOTP’s description of the Program’s market-based enforcement model, followed by a second excerpt from the report’s conclusion, which describes how the same market-based enforcement helps fuel the Program’s evolution, expansion, and growing influence as the new paradigm for enforcing human rights in global supply chains. 

To read the SOTP in full, you can download it by clicking here! 

 

Market-based Enforcement

The FFP is an enforcement-focused approach to social accountability. Market-based consequences, built into the Program by CIW’s Fair Food Agreements with Participating Buyers, provide the enforcement power necessary to create real change. In the event that a grower is suspended, Participating Buyers are required to suspend purchases from the Participating Grower until that grower is returned to good standing.

For buyers, benefits of FFP participation include transparency and elimination of supply chain risks at a time when consumers – with access to instant information – are increasingly aware of the conditions under which their products are produced and expecting corporations to do their part in addressing the pressing social problems of the day, from climate change to sexual harassment.

For growers, FFP benefits include (but are not limited to): becoming employers of choice; reducing turnover and increasing productivity; preventing risks, including lawsuits and administrative fines and penalties; improving management systems; reducing workers’ compensation costs; and obtaining verification of ethical labor practices, thereby giving them a competitive edge with buyers and consumers.

With the exception of zero tolerance offenses, Participating Growers are given multiple opportunities to address Code violations through the Program’s collaborative complaint resolution and corrective action procedures. Failure to address Code violations through agreed-upon corrective actions may result in probationary status, and continued failure to address those violations results in suspension from the Program. Together, the promise of preferred purchasing and the legitimate threat of diminished market access have worked as powerful drivers of compliance. Over the life of the Program, most growers have reacted to market consequences by substantially and continuously improving their compliance with the Code of Conduct.

As seen in the “Probation and Suspension History” chart, nearly all suspensions to date took place in the FFP’s first three seasons, the same timeframe in which compliance also saw its most drastic improvement. Throughout the history of the Program, no Participating Grower has been suspended twice. At the same time, the number of annual probations remained steady between the 2012-13 and 2017-18 seasons, showing that, although suspensions became increasingly rare over time, market consequences remained essential to building the stronger systems necessary to reach the highest levels of compliance. Since the 2018-19 season, when the FFP reached its highest levels of compliance Program-wide, it became clear that the potential of market consequences – even short of a notice of probation – is now sufficient to drive increasing levels of compliance and to prevent abuse. There have been zero suspensions since 2019, and zero probations since 2018.

“More important than the money, which I need, was the feeling of dignity when my labor – the buckets I harvested – was recognized.”
~ Farmworker on a FFP farm

The Fair Food Program has grown in three key ways over the course of the 2021-2024 period.

First, the FFP has undergone dramatic expansion. In the U.S the Program rapidly expanded to new farms, states, and crops over the past three years, and as of the publishing date of this report, covers over 50 farms across 23 states. At the same time, the FFP launched its first-ever expansion pilots overseas, in Chile and South Africa. This means that the rights of tens of thousands of farmworkers who are harvesting dozens of different crops, including cut flowers, in many different environments, are protected under the FFP. Indeed, 2023-2024 saw the highest number of farms enter the Program since over 90% of all growers within the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange (FTGE) initially agreed en masse to participate in 2010.

Second, the FFP’s Code of Conduct has evolved and grown to meet the urgent needs of farmworkers as they arise. From establishing mandatory safety measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19, to creating the “America’s strongest heat safety protections,” in the words of the Washington Post, the FFP has continued to expand its protections and serve as a vital lifeline for farmworkers.

Third, the FFP has emerged as a dynamic change agent on the international human rights stage through its growing role in aiding workers and their organizations across the globe seeking to adapt its Worker-driven Social Responsibility model to their own industries. From construction workers in Minnesota and dairy workers in Vermont, to garment workers in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Lesotho, fishers in the UK, and agricultural workers India, Europe and South America, the FFP has become both an inspiration and an adaptable blueprint for workers in globalized supply chains to guarantee their essential human rights…

 Click here to read the 2024 State of the Program Report in full!