Coalition of Immokalee Workers California Truth Tour aimed at getting Trader Joe’s to sign for one penny more per pound of tomatoes.
By Amelia Moore
On Thursday 14th July, Lucas Benitez from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) stopped by the Food First office to talk to the interns and staff about their campaign for better working conditions and labor rights for the tomato pickers of Immokalee, Florida. The visit formed part of the CIW’s week-long California Truth Tour that targeted Trader Joe’s with protests and community get-togethers.
Immokalee Workers Tour wraps up with powerful Bay Area finale! Days Six and Seven of the Trader Joe's CA Truth Tour July 16-17, 2011
Sunday's action -- and indeed the Truth Tour -- wrapped up with a brief exchange between Lucas Benitez and a Trader Joe's store manager. At first, the manager made clear that he felt the protest was inconvenient. Lucas said he understood, but assured him there were greater inconveniences at stake, like doing one of the hardest, most dangerous, most vital jobs in the country and never making enough to provide a decent life for your family.
The True Cost of Food
New York Times - June 14, 2011, 8:30 pm
By MARK BITTMAN
Mass-produced tomatoes have become redder, more tender and slightly more flavorful than the crunchy orange “cello-wrapped” specimens of a couple of decades ago, but the lives of the workers who grow and pick them haven’t improved much since Edward R. Murrow’s revealing and deservedly famous Harvest of Shame report of 1960, which contained the infamous quote, “We used to own our slaves; now we just rent them.”
The Color of Food report by Applied Research Center
| Download | Size | |
|---|---|---|
 | food_justice_2-11.pdf | 2.86 MB |
February 17, 2011
The Color of Food report is a broad survey of the food system, to map out the race, gender and class of workers along the supply chain.
Professor Robert Gottlieb discusses his book, "Food Justice" co-authored with Anupama Joshi
February 8, 2011 at UC-Berkeley, Berkeley, CA USA
Learn more about this book.
Food Justice: Robert Gottlieb from Food First on Vimeo.
See the response by Food First's executive director, Eric Holt-Giménez here.
A decade of organizing wins Immokalee Workers one cent more/lb of tomatoes picked
The Coalition of Immokalee Workers has been campaigning for the first pay increase in more than 30 years for a decade.
January 18, 2011
By KRISTOFER RÍOS
IMMOKALEE, Fla. — After fighting for more than a decade for better wages, a group of Florida farmworkers has hashed out the final piece of an extraordinary agreement with local tomato growers and several big-name buyers, including the fast-food giants McDonald’s and Burger King, that will pay the pickers roughly a penny more for every pound of fruit they harvest.
Read the entire New York Times story here.
Department of Justice and USDA Workshop on Issues of Concern to Farmers (and Consumers)
JUSTICE DEPARTMENT AND USDA WORKSHOP TO EXPLORE COMPETITION AND REGULATORY ISSUES IN THE AGRICULTURE INDUSTRY
The December 8, 2010 margins workshop will look at the discrepancies between the prices received by farmers and the prices paid by consumers. As a concluding event, discussions from previous workshops will be incorporated into the analysis of agriculture markets nationally.
This is the fifth and final workshop in a series of workshops convened by the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
New research on Indigenous Mexicans in California Agriculture
Indigenous Mexicans in California Agriculture website:
http://www.indigenousfarmworkers.org/index.shtml
The Indigenous Farmworker Study is a partnership between a group of farm labor researchers and the Indigenous Program of California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA). The California Endowment provided funding for the study. This website shares information and insights we learned about the history, languages, demography and culture of indigenous farmworkers, and outlines the economic and social challenges they face.
