Market forces and the power of concerned consumers are one fulcrum being leveraged these days to address farmworker injustices. The Agricultural Justice Project formed in 1999 by groups disappointed by the omission of labor standards from the U.S. Organic Program, has created social justice standards for agriculture. The new certification system is being piloted by farms in the Midwest, and will soon expand to other regions in the country as part of a larger effort to enact domestic fair trade standards in the U.S.
Similarly, here at home PCUN is working to help market union label products from the farms it contracts with in Oregon.
Not that paying a dollar more for a pound of broccoli will solve the immigration crisis, an issue that even presidential candidates are stumbling over on the campaign trail this year. Higher prices also won’t resolve the tension inherent in trying to achieve a food system that is both fair and affordable. If food costs more, what do you do about the 28 million near-poverty Americans who are reliant on food stamps, the highest number since the aid program began in the 1960s? And in the bitterest of ironies, how do you ensure that farmworkers themselves can afford food, given that illegal immigrants, the poorest in America, can’t access the food stamp progam?
The complexity of it all is no doubt part of the reason that we haven’t yet met the challenge of building a food system that is fair, affordable, and legal. It might also be because our concept of affordable doesn’t extend far beyond our individual pocketbooks.
For instance, can Oregon afford to provide social services to the thousands of farmworkers and farmworker families who are living below the poverty line, 10% of whom are homeless and 55% of whom have no health insurance? Can it afford not to? Can farmers afford to be short-handed at critical points in the season? Can we afford to have our food supply precariously balanced on the backs of workers whose tenure in the U.S. is unpredictable? Can consumers and policymakers afford to remain morally, economically, and politically complicit in a racist system that externalizes the social cost of food?
This past spring, Governor Ted Kulongoski issued a proclamation declaring the first week of April to be “Farmworker Awareness Week” in acknowledgment of the contribution farmworkers make to Oregon’s agricultural economy. Whether or not his proclamation manifests into political will is yet to be seen, but one thing is certain: It’s going to take the governor — and the president, and the farmers, and the unions, and the nonprofits, and the people pushing carts through grocery stores — to find our way through this to fair food.
Zoë Bradbury is a Kellogg Food & Society Policy Fellow. She lives, writes, and farms on Oregon’s southern coast.
