Department of Labor Award "to assess and expand the successful Fair Food Program model with a pilot project to promote human and labor rights focused on cut flower farms in Chile, Mexico and South Africa."
US DOL: "Administered by the department’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs, the project will promote grassroots worker-driven social responsibility in agricultural supply chains."
Declaring, "Agricultural supply chains around the world are rife with labor violations, including child labor and forced labor," the U.S. Department of Labor (USDOL) announced yesterday that it has awarded a grant of $2.5 million to help protect farmworkers' fundamental human rights in fields beyond the borders of the United States through the international expansion of the Presidential medal-winning Fair Food Program. From the USDOL press release:
Agricultural supply chains around the world are rife with labor violations, including child labor and forced labor. The International Labor Organization currently estimates 13 percent of all adult forced labor and 70 percent of all child labor globally occurs among agriculture workers.
The award to the Fair Food Standards Council, which oversees the Fair Food Program’s implementation, seeks to expand the program internationally. The program has helped eradicate modern slavery on participating farms and extended its protections to workers in 10 states and nine crops domestically. Several current participating buyers in the Fair Food Program have pledged their support for expanding the enforceable protections for workers in the three countries with pilot farms.
With the help of the Department of Labor’s Bureau of International Affairs (ILAB), the Fair Food Program will begin scaling internationally, starting with the incorporation of existing FFP participating flower growers' international operations in Chile, Mexico, and South Africa. That "onboarding" process has already begun, with the initial worker-to-worker education and entry audit at FFP partner Bloomia's operation in Valdivia, Chile, Araucania Flowers, late last year. This grant will enable all of Bloomia's cut flower farms -- in the US, Chile, and South Africa -- to be monitored by the Fair Food Standards Council and certified under the Fair Food Program. From that initial platform, the FFP will explore further expansion in the three target countries 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.
The USDOL memorialized yesterday's announcement with a timely tweet:
