Coalition of Immokalee Workers

  Cruz Salucio (right), CIW senior staff member and farmworker, discusses the transformative success and expansion of the Fair Food Program in a class with students from the University of Michigan 2019 University of Michigan Advisory Committee report: “The Fair Food Program is the most comprehensive social responsibility program in the U.S.,” and the best thing that the University of Michigan could do in order to improve labor standards would be to “become a signatory to the Fair Food Program.”
Nola De Graaf, a current student at the University of Michigan: “The best part of this program is that it is an organization that amplifies the voices of workers, not attempting to speak over them but rather making them the forefront of the organization, something that is unfortunately not often done. I also love that there is a very set goal; joining the Fair Food Program. With this alliance between workers and students, it’s attainable and real, something that can make lasting, permanent change.”

A new initiative calling on universities to join the Fair Food Program is rapidly gaining momentum across the country.

Just last week, we shared an update from Yale University, where students are leading a movement urging the storied Ivy League university to become the first to join the Fair Food Program as a Participating Buyer. Now, following a multi-day campus visit from the CIW, that momentum is carrying over to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, where hundreds of students are joining the growing campus-based campaign, leveraging their demand for fresh fruits and vegetables to expand the FFP to new fields where workers remain in desperate need of the program’s life-saving human rights protections.

For decades, the CIW has confronted the egregious human rights abuses that have plagued the agricultural industry, demanding modern, humane business practices that ensure the farmworkers who put food on our tables are treated with dignity and respect. To achieve that goal, the CIW partnered with consumers, growers, and buyers to forge the Presidential Medal-winning Fair Food Program — a groundbreaking model that has not only remedied abuses in participating fields, but actually prevented modern-day slavery, sexual violence, wage theft, retaliation, and more. Yet since the program’s launch in 2010, there has been a troubling rise in human rights violations on fields beyond the reach of the FFP’s industry-leading protections, including documented cases of modern-day slavery.

The need to dramatically expand the FFP’s reach is therefore more urgent than ever, and the new Fair Food University initiative aims to do just that. Over the course of the visit to Ann Arbor, more than 200 students took part in classroom presentations, luncheons, film screenings, panel discussions, and organizing meetings — trekking through growing mounds of snow and icy sidewalks to hear from the CIW and student allies.

Students with the University of Michigan met with staff members of the CIW to jumpstart an effort for the university to join the Fair Food Program

During the UM campus visit, Michigan students learned how farmworkers with the CIW developed a cutting-edge analysis of the food supply chain, identifying where the power to guarantee farmworkers’ dignity truly lies: at the top of the massive food industry, with major produce buyers like Taco Bell and smaller institutional buyers such as the University of Michigan. In packed, often standing-room-only presentations, students, faculty, and staff heard from CIW staff member and farmworker leader Cruz Salucio, who described overcoming immense odds to forge — and ultimately scale — the Fair Food Program by building lasting partnerships with consumers, growers, and buyers alike.

The CIW visited about a dozen classes across a wide range of disciplines, including public health, education, drama, and food studies. In Spanish classes, students practiced their language skills while learning directly from CIW staff about the realities of agricultural labor and the strategic vision behind the Fair Food Program. In an introductory acting class at the School of Drama, students performed a popular education exercise often performed at farmworker community meetings in Immokalee, depicting the life of a farmworker whose rights are routinely violated by an abusive crewleader, discovering how theater has long served as a powerful tool for farmworkers to raise consciousness among workers and allies alike within the Campaign for Fair Food.

At the Ford School of Public Policy, a packed luncheon drew such a large crowd that the catered food quickly ran out. There, Michigan Dining representatives joined students and faculty to learn about the Fair Food Program’s unique model of worker-driven enforcement — and the pivotal role their university can play in becoming a national leader on human rights within higher education.

Nola De Graaf, a  current UM student, shared a moving reflection on meeting the CIW and hearing about the FFP: 

“I was first introduced to CIW through my Spanish language class. The representatives gave a presentation that made me realize that I, as a student but also as a general consumer of the products of agricultural labor, had a responsibility to make sure that I wasn’t endorsing the abuse and exploitation of workers. I also knew that as someone who has the privilege to attend a university, I needed to use my position as a student to be an active participant in change. The best part of this program is that it is an organization that amplifies the voices of workers, not attempting to speak over them but rather making them the forefront of the organization, something that is unfortunately not often done. I also love that there is a very set goal; joining the Fair Food Program. With this alliance between workers and students, it’s attainable and real, something that can make lasting, permanent change.”

Braving blizzard-like conditions outside, students packed an informational session on the Fair Food University initiative. Michigan students also met virtually with current Yale students to exchange ideas and strategies. Yale students shared how their campaign to bring the Fair Food Program to their campus has included investigative research revealing that Yale Hospitality sources from a massive grower with a documented record of egregious human rights violations.

This kind of student-to-student exchange has long been central to the movement’s success. From 2001 to 2005, it helped students across the country successfully “Boot” Taco Bell from dozens of campuses until the corporation ultimately joined the Fair Food Program. One panel discussion between the CIW and leading human rights scholars also featured University of Michigan alumni who, in 2019, successfully pushed Wendy’s off campus. They shared hard-won lessons from their campaign with current students eager to carry forward the fight for farmworker justice.

History comes alive

That legacy of student-led organizing and university-backed calls for farmworker human rights still looms large at Michigan.

In 2019, the University of Michigan Student Government overwhelmingly passed a resolution removing Wendy’s from campus until the fast-food giant joined the Fair Food Program. The vote followed the release of a report — commissioned by UM’s own Advisory Committee on Labor Standards and Human Rights — outlining a clear path forward: to identify labor and human rights concerns in the university’s supply chain, partner with external experts, collaborate with peer institutions, and present feasible pathways for improving labor standards and human rights protections.

The report’s conclusion was unequivocal: “The Fair Food Program is the most comprehensive social responsibility program in the U.S.,” and the most effective step the University of Michigan could take to improve labor standards would be to “become a signatory to the Fair Food Program.”

More recently, the university awarded CIW co-founder and national human rights leader Lucas Benitez the prestigious Wallenberg Medal for his role in freeing thousands of workers from modern-day slavery rings and for his leadership in creating the Fair Food Program.

Today, seven years after students first locked arms with farmworkers from Immokalee in the Wendy’s Boycott, the University of Michigan finally has a clear opportunity with the Fair Food University campaign to realize the goal outlined in its own 2019 Advisory Committee report. The CIW’s recent visit has already sparked an enthusiastic effort by current students to ensure their administration follows through and joins the FFP. We look forward to more news from the snowy north as the UM campaign continues to grow in the months ahead!

If you are a student, professor, or university staff member interested in learning how your campus can become part of the Fair Food Program, reach out to the Student/Farmworker Alliance at organize@sfalliance.org to get connected to the growing Fair Food University movement.

A pallet of produce, including Mastronardi cucumbers (located on the top right with Mastronardi’s Sunset Grown label), sits on Yale’s campus late last year. Mastronardi has been linked to a long history of farm labor abuse. [Photograph by members of Yale’s Student/Farmworker Alliance chapter pushing for the university to join the Fair Food Program as a participating buyer.]

For more than 15 years, the industry-leading protections of the Fair Food Program have stood fast against farm labor abuses ranging from wage theft and sexual violence to dangerous working conditions, physical abuse, and forced labor. Thanks to the FFP’s unique mix of worker-driven, market-backed monitoring and enforcement mechanisms, tens of thousands of workers live and work free of fear and exploitation on dozens of participating farms. Sadly, however, those abuses — and the pervasive climate of fear that protects and enables the abusers — remain all too common today on farms beyond the FFP’s reach.

One such grower — the produce giant Mastronardi — is a massive, national and international company with a particularly long track record of documented human rights violations across its operations. The publicly available record of labor and human rights abuses linked to Mastronardi ranges from a class-action lawsuit alleging dangerous pesticide exposure, to US Department of Labor findings of systematic wage theft, and even the revelation that Mastronardi was purchasing from farms in Mexico whose tomatoes were later seized by US Customs and Border Protection due to indicators of forced labor.

Given that context, it is easy to imagine the frustration of student leaders with the Yale Student/Farmworker Alliance when — in the middle of talks with Yale Hospitality on the students’ campaign calling on Yale to become a Fair Food University and join the FFP as a participating buyer — they discovered Mastronardi produce being delivered to a campus dining hall. Yale’s SFA chapter issued a press release about their discovery, and last week the Yale Daily News followed up with an article on the surprising development in the students’ campaign. 

This stunning news comes as students with Yale’s SFA chapter have repeatedly called on the university to join the Fair Food Program, a step that would require Yale to preferentially purchase from FFP participating farms, to cease purchasing from farms suspended from the program, and to pay a small premium on FFP produce to help improve farmworkers’ long sub-standard wages. Despite the students’ efforts, however — including a standing room only showing of the documentary “Food Chains”,  a campus-wide tabling campaign on the Fair Food Program, and a petition that quickly garnered hundreds of signatures — Yale’s administration has refused to join the FFP. Instead, officials with Yale Hospitality have announced, via large posters at campus dining halls, that they will voluntarily “prioritize purchasing” from farms affiliated with the program, refusing to commit to the very enforcement mechanism — binding purchasing commitments — that have made the FFP so uniquely successful at preventing abuses from sexual assault to modern-day slavery, and that would prevent precisely the kinds of abuses linked to Mastronardi from entering the university’s supply chain.

Below you can read excerpts from Yale Daily News’ latest coverage of the developing story. For the full article, click here. 

But first, we’ll close today’s post with the words of Yale students themselves, from their opinion piece, titled “Yale Hospitality, Will You Support Farmworkers’ Rights?”, published on  November 4th of last year: 

… As students and the consumers of the produce Yale purchases, we have the responsibility — and the power — to demand Yale fulfill its most basic obligations to the people who grow our food. Students have been essential to the success of the FFP since its inception: In 2001, students launched a campaign against Taco Bell, boycotting the chain and forcing Taco Bell franchises off college campuses until the corporation addressed unethical practices in its supply chain. In 2005, the work paid off, when Taco Bell became the first-ever major brand to sign an agreement with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers.

Twenty years ago, students helped bring the groundbreaking Fair Food Program into existence. Now, it’s our turn to help expand the reach of the FFP’s life-saving protections to as many workers as possible.

Check back soon for more breaking news from the Fair Food University front, and here below are the excerpts from last week’s story:

Students call out cucumbers as Hospitality sets fair-food tomato target

The Yale Student/Farmworker Alliance photographed a box of cucumbers from a producer linked to poor sanitary and working conditions. Yale Hospitality has not acceded to joining the Fair Food Program but committed to sourcing nearly all tomatoes from participating producers.

Published January 21, 2026

Yale Hospitality is facing renewed pressure from the Yale Student/Farmworker Alliance, a student activist group, over its sourcing practices after the group alleged that a dining hall received a shipment of produce from a farm which has been sued for poor working conditions.

In a press release and a subsequent email to the News, the alliance wrote that it identified “Sunset Grown/Mastronardi Mini Cucumbers” delivered to Trumbull College in November, attaching a photograph showing a palette of produce with at least one box which matches photographs of the brand’s mini cucumbers posted on social media.

The finding was the latest step in Yale Student/Farmworker Alliance’s campaign for Yale Hospitality to join the Fair Food Program — an initiative, adopted by companies such as McDonald’s and Walmart, that connects buyers to producers who abide by a code of conduct regarding farmworker working conditions.

Yale Hospitality does not participate in the program but has told the News that more than 64 percent of its tomatoes are sourced from farms partnered with the Fair Food Program, and that it hopes to exceed 90 percent by the end of the fiscal year.

Mastronardi, owner of the Sunset brand, was sued in 2022 by a group of migrant farmworkers who accused the company of exposing them to pesticides and bleach without personal protective equipment.

“When Defendants directed Plaintiffs Lopez and Lopez Ramirez and the greenhouse workers to disinfect tools, trays and gloves in tubs of bleach, they were forced to reach into the bleach up to their elbows, wearing only latex gloves covering their hands,” the complaint states…

In an email to the News, a Yale Hospitality spokesperson wrote that “Sunset Grown/Mastronardi Farms is not part of our current purchasing program, though their products may occasionally be substituted.”

A map showing the stark difference between the abuses on Mastronardi farms and the protections guaranteed in the FFP

The spokesperson did not directly address each allegation in the student alliance’s press release but said Yale Hospitality is “transitioning to new suppliers” and will “support and prioritize purchasing from FFP-affiliated farms to the greatest extent feasible.”

The Fair Food Program, or FFP, is operated by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a farmworkers’ rights organization. Buyers that participate in the Fair Food Program buy produce — originally only tomatoes — from farms in the program that guarantee certain worker protections and abide by a code of conduct. Buyers also agree to pay a premium of 1 cent per pound picked, which goes to farmworker wages.

The Student/Farmworker Alliance, which as of Tuesday had just over 350 followers on Instagram, started its campaign for Yale Hospitality to join the Fair Food Program with a film screening and interview with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers last September.

A petition started by the alliance, according to the press release, now has more than 250 signatures. It garnered 150 signatures within 24 hours, organizer Arjun Warrior ’26 told the News in November.

“Despite knowledge of Yale’s direct connection to a grower known for human rights violations and a growing petition campaign, Yale Hospitality told students it had no intention of joining the Fair Food Program,” the alliance’s press release stated, adding that Yale has refused to meet with representatives from the FFP directly…

The 64 percent statistic — tomatoes that Yale Hospitality sources from partnered with the Fair Food Program — is now displayed on screens in dining halls, alongside the message “Yale Hospitality is committed to ethical sourcing practices that reflect our values and strengthen the integrity of our supply chain,” citing the University’s supplier code of conduct.

Organizers of the Student/Farmworker Alliance have criticized Yale for counting on suppliers due to their volatility in terms of abiding to ethical sourcing rules.

The Fair Food Program also covers produce other than tomatoes. However, according to reporting done by ProPublica, non-tomato farms that participate in the program are less common, partly due to many buyers limiting their participation to a small variety of crops.

“By bragging about their FFP produce, Hospitality is proving our point: they understand that the FFP protects human rights, and that Yale is capable of buying from FFP-certified growers. But actions speak louder than words, and Hospitality must join the FFP to truly protect the human rights of farmworkers in Yale’s supply chain,” Seung Min Baik Kang ’26, a Yale SFA organizer, wrote in the SFA press release.

The Yale Student/Farmworker Alliance was founded in April 2025.

Will Work for Food:
“With a combination of education, monitoring, and enforcement, the Fair Food Program and the CIW have provided fertile ground for both preventing and addressing sexual violence in the workplace.” “The CIW successfully looks up the food chain to the highest-profiting companies in retail and service and puts pressure on them to absorb the cost of higher worker wages at the farm level. Because of their successes, thousands of farmworkers like Lupe have benefited from better pay and working conditions.”

As the CIW’s Fair Food Program—and the broader Worker-driven Social Responsibility model to which it gave rise—continue to scale and be replicated in workplaces across the country and around the globe, a new book goes under the hood of the FFP to tell a remarkable story of transformation and hope.

The book traces how farmworkers from the forgotten agricultural town of Immokalee, Florida, achieved what once seemed unthinkable: bringing about a new day of dignity and respect for farmworkers across the United States, and in the process helping to forge a new paradigm for enforcing human rights in global supply chains through the Fair Food Program. What makes the achievements of the FFP so extraordinary is not just the program’s current reach, but its most unlikely origins. In an industry long defined by impunity, entrenched power imbalances, and a chilling climate of fear, farmworkers—among the most economically and politically marginalized workers in the global economy today—stood up, made common cause with consumers, and demanded they be treated as human beings. 

Will Work for Food: Labor across the Food Chain places the groundbreaking success of the Fair Food Program against the stark backdrop of a global food system that all too often exploits and abuses those at the very bottom—stripping workers of their time, their dignity, and, in some cases, their freedom. For readers seeking to understand both the depth of abuse that persists in food and agriculture and the proven solutions capable of ending it, this book is essential reading.

The book is co-written by two leading scholars of food systems: Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern and Teresa Mares. Minkoff-Zern is an Associate Professor of Geography and the Environment at Syracuse University. Mares is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Vermont and serves as Director of the university’s Graduate Program in Food Systems.

We are excited to share a few excerpts below, but you’ll want to read the whole thing, which you can find here!

Will Work for Food: Labor across the Food Chain

“‘For women, to be able to work with dignity and respect is huge, because before the [Fair Food] Program the women were sexually harassed, but now that the program exists there is zero tolerance for sexual harassment and woman can report sexual harassment anonymously, because that did not happen before. Therefore, now women are working and our human rights are being respected, which is very important, especially because as women there are many things that we face and this alleviates one of our worries to be able to work as a woman free and with respect.’

 – Lupe, tomato picker and Coalition of Immokalee Workers organizer

Farmworkers like Lupe are central to food production in the United States, from New England’s dairy farms to vineyards on the West Coast to tomato fields in the Southeast. Yet across these regions workers labor under grueling physical conditions and in one of the lowest paid and least regulated industries in the country. In the small agricultural town of Immokalee, Florida, farmworkers have organized a powerful campaign, affecting how their labor is valued from the grassroots level to the very top of the corporate food chain. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers is a worker-based organization focused on protecting the human rights of farmworkers.

CIW staff member Lupe Gonzalo provides an on-the-clock, worker-to-worker education session at Tuxedo Corn, CO.

They have coordinated one of the most forward thinking and strategic programs to address labor abuses and sexual violence against farmworkers in the United States today, called the Fair Food Program. In developing this program, the CIW has articulated a strong analysis of the power dynamics within the industrialized food system and has found creative ways for their demands to fit within its confines. Moreover, they recognize farm labor as part of a food system, where power and profits remain at the top, in the service and retail sectors, and outside of the direct relations between agricultural workers and their farm-level employers. Their role in creating the broader framework and network of the Worker-Driven Social Responsibility (WSR) model is profound and engages a different set of organizing principles from that of more traditional forms of worker activism. The WSR model is a worker-led approach to monitor labor standards and fight labor abuses, which can include mechanisms for handling complaints and worker trainings. Organizations engaging in WSR models, such as the CIW, exemplify a food chain perspective. The CIW successfully looks up the food chain to the highest-profiting companies in retail and service and puts pressure on them to absorb the cost of higher worker wages at the farm level. Because of their successes, thousands of farmworkers like Lupe have benefited from better pay and working conditions. The organizing work of the CIW and others challenges the structural inequalities embedded in the industrial mode of producing food today.

…We opened this chapter with a discussion of the success of the CIW Campaign for Fair Food, whose worker-organizers have catalyzed a growing network of labor organizations committed to the WSR model. The CIW was formed in 1993, when a small group of workers began weekly meetings in response to rampant labor abuses and violations in Florida’s tomato fields. Using organizing tactics of widespread work stoppage, a well-publicized hunger strike, and a 234-mile march across Florida, these workers followed in the footsteps of many farmworkers before them, attempting to structurally address low wages and abusive conditions… Rather than follow the dollar only to the farm level, farmworkers and organizers in the CIW recognized that large-scale retailers and restaurants are making much more of the food dollar than the farmers who directly employ them…

Walmart executives sign onto the Fair Food Program, joined by Coalition of Immokalee Workers co-founder Lucas Benitez, in 2014.

Despite the often-grim realities confronting farmworkers, there are reasons for optimism thanks to this activism and the effective organizing within the farmworker justice movement. In a Civil Eats piece examining the influence of the #MeToo movement on farmworker organizing, Vera Chang shows how one of the most important accomplishments of the CIW has been to tackle sexual violence in the field head-on. With a combination of education, monitoring, and enforcement, the Fair Food Program and the CIW have provided fertile ground for both preventing and addressing sexual violence in the workplace. In addition, according to the CIW, as of 2024, the program has provided more than 1,200 worker-to-worker educational sessions, has fielded more than 3,900 complaints to the Fair Food Hotline, and has distributed more than $44 million of premiums paid by participating buyers…

As the CIW has expanded its influence, the development of the WSR network is an inspiring example of worker solidarity across sectors as the network includes both food and farmworkers and those in other industries, such as garment production. One member of the WSR network, Migrant Justice, has benefited from a close collaborative relationship with the CIW as it has drawn heavily on the Fair Food Program and its principles to develop the Milk with Dignity (MD) program with dairy farms in the northeastern United States. In October 2017, Ben and Jerry’s signed on to the MD program after years of worker organizing. As of 2024, sixty-five farms in Vermont and New York supplying Ben and Jerry’s with milk are abiding by a farmworker-authored code of conduct. More recently, Migrant Justice has expanded its organizing to the retail sector, calling for the supermarket chain Hannaford to join the MD program as well. In designing the MD program with farmworkers at the center, Migrant Justice has regularly visited Immokalee and hosted worker organizers from the CIW in Vermont, and there is little doubt that the successful campaign bringing Ben and Jerry’s (which is owned by Unilever) into the MD program was due in part to the solidarity between the two organizations…