Politics of the Plate: The Price of Tomatoes
Gourmet.com, By Barry Estabrook
Photograph by Scott Robinson
If you have eaten a tomato this winter, chances are very good that it was picked by a person who lives in virtual slavery.
AUSTIN, TX (September 9, 2008) – Whole Foods Market, the world’s leading natural and organic foods supermarket and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), the Florida-based farm worker organization spearheading the growing Campaign for Fair Food, announced today that the two will work in partnership to help improve wages and working conditions for Florida tomato pickers.
According to an agreement signed this week, Whole Foods Market will support the CIW’s “penny-per-pound” approach for tomatoes purchased from Florida, with the goal of passing these additional funds on to the harvesters.
“With this agreement, the Campaign for Fair Food has again broken new ground,” said Gerardo Reyes of the CIW. “This is not only our first agreement in the supermarket industry but, in working with Whole Foods Market, we have the opportunity to really raise the bar to establish and ensure modern day labor standards and conditions in Florida.”
“We commend the CIW for their advocacy on behalf of these workers,” said Karen Christensen, Global Produce Coordinator for Whole Foods Market. “After carefully evaluating the situation in Florida, we felt that an agreement of this nature was in line with our core values and was in the best interest of the workers.”
Additionally, Whole Foods Market is exploring the creation of a domestic purchasing program to help guarantee transparent, ethical and responsible sourcing and production, using the company’s existing Whole Trade Guarantee program as a model. Whole Trade Guarantee, a third-party verified program, ensures that producers and laborers in developing countries get an equitable price for their goods in a safe and healthy working environment. The goal is to purchase Florida tomatoes from growers that will implement a similar program. “We are especially excited about working with the CIW to develop this domestic ‘Whole Trade-type’ program,” said Christensen.
About the Coalition of Immokalee Workers
The CIW (www.ciw-online.org) is a community-based farmworker organization headquartered in Immokalee, Florida, with over 4,000 members. The CIW seeks modern working conditions for farmworkers and promotes their fair treatment in accordance with national and international labor standards. Among its accomplishments, the CIW has aided in the prosecution by the Department of Justice of six slavery operations and the liberation of well over 1,000 workers. The CIW uses creative methods to educate consumers about human rights abuses in the U.S. agriculture industry, the need for corporate social responsibility, and how consumers can help workers realize their social change goals. The CIW’s Campaign for Fair Food has won unprecedented support for fundamental farm labor reforms from retail food industry leaders, with the goal of enlisting the market power of those companies to demand more humane labor standards from their Florida tomato suppliers.
About Whole Foods Market®
Founded in 1980 in Austin, Texas, Whole Foods Market (www.wholefoodsmarket.com) is the world’s leading natural and organic foods supermarket and America’s first national certified organic grocer. In fiscal year 2007, the company had sales of $6.6 billion and currently has more than 270 stores in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. The Whole Foods Market motto, “Whole Foods, Whole People, Whole Planet”™ captures the company’s mission to find success in customer satisfaction and wellness, employee excellence and happiness, enhanced shareholder value, community support and environmental improvement. Whole Foods Market, Fresh & WildTM, and Harry’s Farmers Market® are trademarks owned by Whole Foods Market IP, LP. Wild Oats® and Capers Community MarketTM are trademarks owned by Wild Marks, Inc. Whole Foods Market employs more than 53,000 Team Members and has been ranked for 11 consecutive years as one of the “100 Best Companies to Work For” in America by FORTUNE magazine.
In this newly released documentary "American Harvest - The Real Truth About Immigrant America," Angelo Mancuso, director of the film asks what happened to America's old fashioned work ethic. The answer: it's the immigrants, stupid:
Angelo writes:
Let's face it, there are certain jobs that some Americans won't do. And some of them involve hard work.
Whatever happened to a good old-fashioned work ethic?
This is why many Americans complain about the immigration issue, some of them don’t find physical labor or hot and dirty conditions appealing.
Some jobs like agriculture and farming have gone the way of the migrant worker. If you were an employer whom would you rather have working for you? A hard working immigrant or a soft lazy school kid that is being taught to go to college and get an education instead of learning a trade.
The problem is so complex that no single black and white solution will due.
Somewhere we need to find a balance between immigrant labor and encouraging our young people to learn skills and trades with a purpose as if their entire existence depended on it. This is where immigrant outperforms their American born counterparts.
If you have skills and a work ethic then an employer will find you desirable and want to pay you more money than your less-skilled less-industrious counterpart.
In the mean time we need to fix our broken immigration system.
If you understood the backlog for the ineffectual legal immigration process you would understand why moderate voices are calling for immigration reform.
People and businesses want a legal system that works. We need to compromise on immigration reform.
We need to encourage reasonable and rational debate.
As March goes in Kansas City, it was an unusual weather day. It felt more like New York City. The air was damp and cold, the sky was gray. Hopping on the Crops in the City tour bus at 7am, I never had time to check the weather forecast or maybe I would have taken the Local Chefs tour. We arrived at a farmhouse in Kansas City, Kansas, on a deserted road which was Huns Garden, a transitional organic farm that is operated by Hmong farmers, Pov and Chaxamone Huns. I reluctantly got off the warm and cozy tour bus and traipsed across Pov’s fields with the rest of the group, over the remains of last year’s crops, over the charred fragments of what looked like tall grass. The wind pushed us all from behind and my hands and ears became numb. But Pov was smiling. “I’m the laziest farmer you will ever meet,” he claimed and stretched his arm out to show off his weedy fields like Vanna White showing off a new car on The Wheel of Fortune. “That’s right, I don’t weed my fields. Never. I just burn the crap out of them.” Working with SARE, Pov has been able to grow his specialty asian vegetables like bitter melon in high tunnels. He is now experimenting with ginger. But out in the field this morning, Pov bent over to pick up a neglected dried bitter eggplant. “This plant here, it helps with post-partum depression and mens-troo cramps.” He seems very proud that he is growing produce that has medicinal value – like Flower Pac Choi (a remedy for allergies), Lemon Grass (a remedy for the common cold), Melokhiya (a remedy for chronic fatigue.) He and his wife also grow up to 20 varieties of Asian greens. Their 3.95 acre plot is jam-packed thanks to double cropping, growing cilantro on the same plot of land with snow peas for instance. And Pov says that he never ever uses pesticides. “It’s all natural here. Burning is natural. You know why they say Asians live longer? It’s because we don’t use fertilizers!”
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