Leo Perez, CIW: “We see the Fair Food Program as… both a method of education… to share information with workers about these risks, and at the same time as a tool for workers to protect themselves against the worst effects of climate change on a day-to-day basis.”

Oscar Londoño, executive director of WeCount: “We look to [the Fair Food Program] for best practices in terms of how can agricultural employers already begin to implement these kinds of protections.”

Each passing harvest season seems to be hotter than the last, and to bring with it more dangers for the farmworkers who toil every day under the boiling sun. Whether it is an acute threat like heat stroke from exposure, or a long-term ailment like kidney failure from chronic dehydration, the heat-related dangers facing farmworkers are real and getting worse. Indeed, it has become abundantly clear over the past several years of accelerating climate change that farmworkers in this country are in urgent need of heat-illness protections — and of the power to enforce those protections — to defend themselves from harm.

Workers on Fair Food Program farms today are, in fact, protected from the dangers of extreme heat by a set of essential rights built directly into the FFP’s ever-evolving, worker-driven Code of Conduct.  They include mandatory rest breaks, water, shade, training to respond to symptoms of heat stress, and, perhaps most importantly, protection from retaliation for exercising those essential rights – all backed by the purchasing power of some of the world’s largest corporations, including Walmart, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, McDonald’s, and more.

Outside the Fair Food Program, however, a simple request for a quick break from the heat, or even just a drink of cool water, could get a farmworker fired, or worse.

As a worker-centered solution to the labor abuses that have plagued agriculture for generations, the Fair Food Program represents a critical resource for tens of thousands farmworkers throughout the US, and now, thanks to its growing international expansion, in countries like Chile and South Africa. A recent article published in Grist (a popular, online media organization “dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future”) provides a detailed account of how the FFP’s unique protections work — and of the urgent need to scale those protections as far and as wide as possible. Its authors lay out the worsening impacts of climate change on workers in agriculture, and meticulously detail how the Fair Food Program protects the lives of farmworkers toiling on the frontline of our climate crisis. This piece joins other recently released articles illustrating how the Fair Food Program responds effectively to emerging challenges in agriculture — from COVID-19 to heat illness — by providing workers with enforceable tools to safeguard their basic dignity in the fields.

You can find an excerpt of the article below:

How Florida farmworkers are protecting themselves from extreme heat

Protecting the people who pick your food is as easy as giving them shade and water.

Katie Myers &  Siri Chilukuri Published Oct 27, 2023

On any given summer day, most of the nation’s farmworkers, paid according to their productivity, grind through searing heat to harvest as much as possible before day’s end. Taking a break to cool down, or even a moment to chug water, isn’t an option. The law doesn’t require it, so few farms offer it.

The problem is most acute in the Deep South, where the weather and politics can be equally brutal toward the men and women who pick this country’s food. Yet things are improving as organizers like Leonel Perez take to the fields to tell farmworkers, and those who employ them, about the risks of heat exposure and the need to take breaks, drink water, and recognize the signs of heat exhaustion. 

“The workers themselves are never in a position where they’ve been expecting something like this,” Perez told Grist through a translator. “If we say, ‘Hey, you have the right to go and take a break when you need one,’ it’s not something that they’re accustomed to hearing or that they necessarily trust right away.”

Perez is an educator with the Fair Food Program, a worker-led human rights campaign that’s been steadily expanding from its base in southern Florida to farms in 10 states, Mexico, Chile, and South Africa. Although founded in 2011 to protect workers from forced labor, sexual harassment, and other abuses, it has of late taken on the urgent role of helping them cope with ever-hotter conditions. 

It is increasingly vital work. Among those who labor outdoors, agricultural workers enjoy the least protection. Despite this summer’s record heat, the United States still lacks a federal standard governing workplace exposure to extreme temperatures. According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, the agency has opened more than 4,500 heat-related inspections since March 2022, but it does not have data on worker deaths from heat-related illnesses.  

Most states, particularly those led by Republicans, are loath to institute their own heat standards even as conditions grow steadily worse. In lieu of such regulation, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, through its Fair Food Program, has adopted stringent heat protocols that, among other things, require regular breaks and access to water and shade. Such things are essential. Extreme heat killed at least 436 workers of all kinds, and sickened 34,000 more, between 2011 to 2021, according to NPR. Some believe that toll is much higher, and efforts like those Perez leads are providing a model for others working toward broader and more strictly enforced safeguards. 

“We look to [the Fair Food Program] for best practices in terms of how can agricultural employers already begin to implement these kinds of protections,” said Oscar Londoño, the executive director of WeCount, which has been pushing for a heat standard in Miami-Dade County. “But we also believe that it’s important to have regulations and forcible regulation that covers entire industries.”

The Fair Food Program works with 29 farms, which raise more than a dozen different crops, and the buyers who rely upon them. In exchange for guaranteeing workers basic rights, participating growers and buyers, including Walmart, Trader Joe’s, and McDonald’s, receive a seal of approval that signals to customers that the produce they are buying was grown and harvested in fair, humane conditions.

Coalition of Immokalee Workers
110 S 2nd St
Immokalee, FL 34142
United States

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