Fair Food Nation! We’re kicking off our June Sustainer Drive!
All month long, we’ll be spotlighting what makes the Fair Food Program (FFP) so uniquely effective, taking a look back at our achievements, and acknowledging the hard work ahead as we aim to expand the FFP’s best-in-class human rights protections to workers not yet covered by the Program.
And most importantly, over the next four weeks we’ll be highlighting the vital role played by our Fair Food Program Sustainers, thousands of consumers like you without whom the Fair Food Program would never have been possible.
Together, farmworkers and consumers have forged a movement that is fundamentally transforming agriculture in this country, and beyond.
Whether by joining us in the streets with our Campaign for Fair Food in the early 2000s, or donating to help scale the FFP nationwide today, the impact of your support is undeniable: Our national network of consumer allies has helped author one of the most compelling human rights stories of our generation, and our work together has just begun. As CIW’s own Lupe Gonzalo — farmworker and human rights leader— recently reflected:
They make me feel like we can build the future together, and a better world is possible. We’ve already proved that it is: We’ve brought 14 of the world’s largest companies to the table, built and implemented the FFP with the power we won alongside consumers, and changed tens of thousands of farmworkers’ lives.
Now, we have a voice in the fields — and that’s only possible thanks to the solidarity of consumers and the struggle of countless workers.But although we have won so many important victories and made such remarkable progress, there is so much more to be done. Now is the moment to come together stronger than ever to expand this awesome program to more farms, more products, and more workers!
The FFP’s unprecedented success since its inception in 2010 has proven that a worker-driven, market-enforced model can truly transform an entire industry. That history has already been written: In just a few seasons, Florida’s tomato fields went from “ground zero for modern-day slavery” (in the words of a federal prosecutor speaking with The New Yorker in 2008) to “the best working environment in American agriculture” (in the words of a labor expert speaking with the New York Times in 2014).
Now, it’s time to write the next chapter of this extraordinary story and bring that same transformation to tens of thousands of more workers — because, in the words of Jon Esformes, the first major grower to join the FFP back in 2010, speaking with Axios in 2024:
If all retailers joined the Fair Food Program the most egregious criminal behavior would end, and the lesser crimes would be quickly uncovered.
