Dean of Pardee/RAND Graduate School, Susan Marquis: “The Coalition’s Fair Food Program essentially created a new model for agricultural labor and corporate social responsibility – and transformed the tomato fields from Florida to New Jersey…
… As Florida’s tomato farms show, it’s possible to transform European agriculture from a situation rife with exploitation to one that benefits every partner.”
Over the past several years, the trickle of bleak headlines emerging from farm fields in Italy and Spain has turned into a torrent, laying bare the growing human rights crisis faced by the women and men, largely migrant, who labor to harvest Europe’s strawberries, tomatoes, and other crops in all-too-often horrific conditions.
Despite Europe’s reputation for relatively higher, more evolved labor and human rights standards – and public commitment to enforcement of those standards – the crisis on the continent has experts around the world searching for answers. And yesterday, yet again, one of those experts has turned to Immokalee, identifying the Fair Food Program as a proven model with the potential to transform life in the fields for Europe’s millions of migrant workers (adding one more voice to the very long line of organizations and human rights leaders – from the United Nations, the OSCE, the British Academy, and the European Union Horizon 2020 Project – who have called for the FFP’s implementation in Europe).
Just yesterday, the Dean of the Pardee RAND Public Policy School (and author of the definitive history of the CIW and the FFP, I am not a Tractor), Susan Marquis, published a compelling case in United Press International (UPI) for exporting the FFP to Europe. Her Op/Ed, titled “Europe should follow Florida’s example for how to treat farmworkers”, is a powerful reminder of the unique, proven power of the Fair Food Program to remedy – and ultimately prevent – longstanding human rights violations in agriculture. At the same time, it underscores the fact that no matter the context – be it European fields in the 21st century or greenhouses in the United States – it is never advisable to assume that conditions are somehow modern, safe, or fair in the produce industry. Agriculture is agriculture, and agriculture is historically rife with labor exploitation, whatever the setting.
Here, below, is Susan’s piece in full. And stay tuned in the months ahead, as we continue to monitor developments in European agriculture and conversations around expansion of the Fair Food Program continue to evolve:
