Gerardo Reyes Chavez, CIW: “We have been able to get rid of situations of modern-day slavery. The [Fair Food] Program has elevated conditions to the point of prevention.”
“If you can do something to help some of the most vulnerable workers in this country, do it… Help us expand [the Fair Food Program].”
As the Fair Food Program continues to expand both domestically and overseas, the CIW’s Gerardo Reyes Chavez sat down with Danielle Nierenberg, the founder of Food Tank, to reflect on the history of the CIW, the birth of the FFP, and the crucial role consumer allies continue to play today in advancing farmworkers’ human rights. Food Tank is a national nonprofit that convenes farmers and farmworkers, policy makers and government leaders, researchers and scientists, academics and journalists, and the funding and donor communities to collaborate on providing sustainable solutions for the most pressing problems in agriculture. The conversation was recorded for Food Tank’s popular podcast Food Talk, whose prior guest include José Andrés, Michael Pollan, and Questlove.
Drawing on his own vast experience as a farmworker — including more than a decade harvesting watermelons from Florida to Missouri — Mr. Reyes takes the listeners through the CIW’s early days of organizing farmworkers in Immokalee in the 1990s, through the birth of the Campaign for Fair Food and the national mobilization of consumers in the 2000s, to the present day where tens of thousands of farmworkers in multiple states and crops harness the purchasing power of 14 of the county’s largest retail food companies to monitor and enforce their own rights under the Fair Food Program. In the process, he shares how his own experiences with extreme abuse brought him to the CIW’s doorstep over twenty five years ago, and how the Fair Food Program — the program that he helped build, through more than two decades of tireless hard work — is transforming US agriculture today, including the Florida tomato industry, which went from “ground zero for modern-day slavery,” in the words of federal prosecutors before the launch of the FFP in 2010, to what one human rights expert called the “best workplace environment in US agriculture” on the front page of the New York Times just three years later.
If you’re looking to learn more about the past, present, and future of the Fair Food Program and its unprecedented success in tackling modern-day slavery, sexual assault, and other longstanding abuses in our country’s fields, this podcast is an excellent place to start.
Below you can find a link to listen to the full conversation, as well as an excerpt of a write-up on the podcast episode, courtesy of Food Tank. You can also listen to the podcast episode on every major podcast platform or app.
Enjoy!
