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Flower Power Daily: “All it takes is one person in power to change the status quo and make it fairer.”
Werner Jansen, Bloomia CEO: “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.”
Cut flower industry journal Flower Power Daily has published a wonderful feature piece detailing the U.S. Department of Labor’s $2.5 million grant [[link removed]] to the Fair Food Standards Council (FFSC) to support the FFP’s international expansion, and the FFP’s growing partnership with flower sector leader, Bloomia!
With the support of the DOL grant, the FFP will explore expansion in three target countries — Chile, Mexico, and South Africa — to more growers and different crops through collaboration with local worker and human rights organizations, existing FFP Participating Buyers, including Whole Foods and Compass Group, and local retail food buyers that are not yet part of the Fair Food Program.
Flower Power Daily’s article features quotations from the CIW’s own Lucas Benitez, the FFSC’s Executive Director Judge Laura Safer Espinoza, and Bloomia CEO Werner Jansen, whose operation in Chile has already undergone its entry audit and joined the FFP, to be followed in the months ahead by Bloomia’s farm in South Africa, thanks to this grant.
Below is an excerpt from the article, which is well worth reading in its entirety. Enjoy!
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Bloomia Gets Big Honor – Good Guys Do Win [[link removed]]
Published March 29, 2023 – by Jill Brooke
Always nice when a flower farmer we know makes a shift that helps the world even more.
We are happy to report that Bloomia’s CEO Werner Jansen, one of the nation’s sultans of tulips, a guy who brought innovative hydration techniques from his native Amsterdam to his new home in Virginia, is getting recognized for his impactful work.
Bloomia’s entire cut flower supply chain across all of Bloomia’s International growing operations – which encompasses farms in the US, Chile, and South Africa — will be certified by the Fair Food Program.
Not only that but the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of International Affairs is also applauding these efforts. They have given a $2.5 million grant to the Fair Food Standards Council to expand protections that will go to Werner’s farms as well as other worthy farms.
What great news. I first met Werner Jansen at the Certified American Grown event in Washington D.C. since he is also an advocate of having locally grown flowers at certain federal events like Memorial Day and July 4th. He is someone who is a thoughtful listener, an innovator and cares about the growth of flowers and ideas that help mankind.
Here are the deets of the program and why it’s important.
What is the Fair Food Program: The Fair Food Program (FFP) is a partnership among growers, workers, and retailers that are transforming agriculture in America through the power of prevention. The Fair Food Program was created by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a human rights organization founded by farmworkers in southwest Florida. Buyers agree to purchase covered produce only from farms that meet the standards required by the Fair Food Code of Conduct, as verified by the Fair Food Standards Council (FFSC).
They also pay their suppliers a small Fair Food Premium This money is then passed on to farmworkers in their regular paychecks in the form of a bonus.
Participating growers agree to implement the Fair Food Code of Conduct on their farms, to cooperate with monitoring by the FFSC, and to pass along the Fair Food Premium. Farms that fail to comply are suspended from the Program, and can no longer sell their products to Participating Buyers until they meet the FFP’s standards. Current buyers include Walmart, Whole Foods, McDonald’s, Taco Bell, and Aramark, among others.
Why this matters: The FFP’s expansion to cover all of Bloomia’s international flower supply chain is a watershed moment in the flower industry, and in the world of business and human rights writ large. Implementing and enforcing human rights protections across all farms in a global supply chain is a giant leap forward in ensuring that workers in an increasingly globalized industry have guarantees of workplace safety and dignity, with meaningful consequences for farms where human rights violations are found. The pilot programs that will begin soon will serve as a marker for the entire flower industry.
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Coalition of Immokalee Workers
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Immokalee, FL 34142
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