agricultural workers and peasants

By staff - Land Workers Alliance, October 9, 2023

In the face of multiple but intersecting crises – from global warming and biodiversity loss, to public health and inequality – the urgency to build a more equitable and resilient food, farming and land-use system that works for both people and planet has never been greater. 

The manifesto, launched today to coincide with the 2024 Labour Party Conference, urges political parties to adopt policies and legislation which will help the UK build a food and land-use system rooted in food sovereignty and agroecology.

We believe that there is a golden opportunity, and a responsibility, for a new UK government to reboot the UK’s food, farming and land-use system, and implement policies that will support farmers and landworkers, regenerate nature, and provide affordable, nutritious food for all.

Throughout 2024 we will be working to build relationships with MPs to promote the manifesto and gather support for our key policy asks for a new government:

1. Dynamic Public Procurement 
2. Horticulture Strategy for England
3. A Comprehensive New Entrants to Farming Support Scheme 
4. Local Food Infrastructure Fund
5. Continued Development of ELMS in England
6. Trade Rules That Protect Farmer Livelihoods
7. Investing in the Ecological Forestry Sector 
8. Climate Finance for Agroecology 
9. Land-use Strategy
10. A Legally Enshrined Right to Food

Download a copy of this publication here (PDF).

By Cody Lonning, Anthony Flaccavento, Alan Minsky, and Marilyn Wrenn - Rural Urban Bridge Initiative, October 5, 2023

By Mamadou Goïta, et. al. - La Via Campesina, October 2023

African agriculture and food systems are evolving in an increasingly volatile context, impacted by climate change, conflicts, fragile and iniquitous globalised food systems, successive food crises, and unaddressed structural causes. Africa is one of the first victims of existing global inequalities, with a generally subordinate economic position, a limited voice in political decisions affecting the continent and its nations, and an extremely unequal distribution of the costs and benefits stemming from the exploitation of natural resources. In this context, the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS), widely denounced by people’s movements around the world as undemocratic and illegitimate, sought to kickstart a global process towards “food system transformation” and urged countries to develop their own “national pathways” for achieving this goal. The Dakar 2 – ‘Feed Africa Summit’ in January 2023, sponsored by the African Development Bank, also enjoined countries to present “national compacts” emphasising private sector investment.

African governments are calling for an end to dependence on food imports. However, instead of supporting peasant agroecology and territorial markets, they often favour a “modernisation” approach, focusing on investment in specialised crops and zones, privileging privatised seeds and so-called modern technologies, relying heavily on foreign private investment and promoting export-oriented value chains. The national pathways designed by African governments within the framework of the UNFSS, like the national compacts presented at the Dakar 2 Summit, could further reinforce this trend. This is why African peasant’s organisations (POs) and civil society organisations (CSOs) have decided to conduct their own autonomous assessment of these developments.

Download a copy of this publication here (PDF).

By Amy Mayer - Civil Eats,September 27, 2023

In the summer months, Flor Sanchez and the members of her harvest crew rise before dawn and arrive at a cherry orchard in Washington state’s Yakima Valley when there is only the slightest hint of daylight.

“We use headlamps,” she says, to carry ladders to the trees. Climbing up into the branches to harvest the ripe fruit in near-darkness, she says, “seems a little dangerous.” Headlamps cast shadows that can make it difficult to see the fruit. Setting up ladders in the dark also poses a danger.

Elizabeth Strater, director of strategic campaigns with United Farm Workers, says for field crops like onions and garlic, harvesting at night by headlamp or flood lights poses less risk than picking tree fruit because ladders aren’t needed, the short plants don’t create shadows, and workers know exactly what to pick even if they can’t completely see what they’re doing. The produce itself is also more durable. Winegrape harvest also often takes place at night.

Across super-hot regions, nocturnal harvest, as Strater calls the practice, has become increasingly common. As climate change pushes summer temperatures higher on more consecutive days, and scientists are forecasting even warmer years ahead, more workers may find themselves in the field at night and in the early morning hours. And while some safety measures have been put in place, more data is needed to assess the challenges workers face.

By Jessica Corbett - Common Dreams, September 13, 2023

"A Rural New Deal is urgently needed to build and rebuild local economies across rural America, reverse 40 years of wealth and corporate concentration, restore degraded lands, reclaim land and ownership opportunities for those whose land was taken by force or deceit, and ensure that communities and the nation can and do meet the basic needs of its people."

That's the opening line of a report released Tuesday by Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) and the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative (RUBI), which recognizes that "for too long, we've neglected, dismissed and underinvested" in rural U.S. communities, and offers "a broad policy blueprint to help steer progressive priorities" in such regions.

"Addressing the problems and concerns of rural America, isn't just the right thing to do, it is essential for the health of our nation. Progressives have ignored rural for too long," said PDA executive director Alan Minsky in a statement. "The Rural New Deal will change that."

By Anthony Flaccavento, Alan Minsky, and Dave Alba - Progressive Democrats of AMerica and Rural Urban Bridge Institute, September 12, 2023

A Rural New Deal is urgently needed to build and rebuild local economies across rural America, reverse forty years of wealth and corporate concentration, restore degraded lands, reclaim land and ownership opportunities for those whose land was taken by force or deceit, and ensure that communities and the nation can and do meet the basic needs of its people. This document proposes ten pillars essential to a Rural New Deal, each with a modest amount of detail about specific policies in order to understand what implementation of the pillar might look like.

At the heart of a RND is the recognition that rural places are fundamentally different from urban and suburban areas, not only culturally and politically, but physically. They are “rural” because they are expansive and land-based. This does not mean that all efforts to rebuild rural economies and communities should revolve around farming or other land-based sectors. However, it does mean that land-based (also including rivers, lakes and oceans) enterprises must still play a central role in rural development, even as internet access, virtual work and the tech sector grow in importance.

While rural and urban places are fundamentally different, they are also deeply intertwined. Many farmers, fishers, foresters and other rural businesses have come to rely on urban markets and in some cases, capital to sustain them. On the other hand, towns and cities need healthy, functioning rural communities for their food, fiber, energy and clean water, indeed for their very survival. Yet for too long, we’ve neglected, dismissed and underinvested in the people that provide these essential goods along with critical ecological services. This has caused great harm to rural communities and it has undermined our collective health and resilience as a nation. Rebuilding and renewing supportive social and economic connections across rural and urban lines, empowering rural people and communities, moving away from extractive relationships of the past, is the course we must chart together.

Download a copy of this publication here (PDF).

By Ty Joplin - Coalition of Immokalee Workers, August 23, 2023

Fair Food Program’s heat illness standards are saving farmworkers’ lives amidst record-shattering summer temperatures

Professor Susan Marquis, Princeton University, op/ed in Miami Herald on FFP heat illness standards: “The Fair Food Program’s heat illness prevention standards already are proven. Crews are staying hydrated and safe. As one farmworker reported, “We can do more than improve day-to-day health and safety conditions. We can prevent a father or mother, a daughter or son, from losing their lives.’”

IMMOKALEE, FL – As scorching summer temperatures endanger the lives of farmworkers across the nation, and at least two farmworkers in South Florida alone have succumbed to the record heat this year, advocates are urgently sounding the alarm for rigorous and enforceable heat stress protections. While these advocacy efforts are desperately needed to protect hundreds of thousands of the country’s hardest and most vulnerable workers, there is a program that has been in operation since 2011 in farm fields from Florida to Colorado that deploys the very same protections – water, shade, and mandatory rest breaks – that advocates are calling for today around the country, and more, including on-the-clock education on their rights for farmworkers and training in life-saving interventions to prevent heat stress illness and death for supervisors. Indeed, the Fair Food Program’s Heat Illness Standards not only provide the essential elements for effective heat stress protection, they also, as part of a broader, Presidential-medal winning program to safeguard farmworkers’ basic human rights, have the power to actually enforce those standards in the fields.

To protect workers under its standards, the FFP is backed by the market power of 14 major retailers including Walmart, McDonald’s, Whole Foods, and Trader Joes, all pledged to suspend purchases from growers who are suspended from the program for violating its standards, giving the program real teeth. The FFP is monitored by a team of independent, trained human rights investigators with the Fair Food Standards Council. As a recent op-ed by the Miami Herald lays out, “the program is credited with eliminating unsafe working conditions, wage theft, beatings, rape and forced labor for tens of thousands of farmworkers each year on participating U.S. farms.”

Thousands of farmworkers are covered by the FFP, which is operative today in 12 crops in 10 states, and 3 countries. To extend these life-saving heat stress protections to workers currently toiling in fields beyond their reach, farmworkers with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers are pushing for the rapid expansion of the FFP, calling on major food brands – companies including Kroger, Wendy’s and Florida’s own Publix – to join the program and help bring these best-in-class protections to tens of thousands of more farmworkers across the county. 

By Alexander Nieves - Politico, August 16, 2023

Scorching summer temperatures have pushed extreme heat to the front of the nation’s collective consciousness. There’s just one problem: It’s hard to get politicians to care about it.

Even in California, home of the nation’s first outdoor heat standard for workers and a new law to create a ranking system for heat waves, the issue has yet to gain political traction. Advocates have struggled to secure funding to help residents adapt, and state officials have been slow to enforce worker safety rules.

California’s handling of extreme heat doesn’t bode well for the nation’s ability to address the effects of rising temperatures, which are most likely to harm people who can’t access air conditioning and who are already in poor health.

“Our focus has been on priorities where you can get people to buy in and, frankly, where it’s sexy. It’s new technology, it’s talking about electric vehicles and rooftop solar,” said state Sen. Anna Caballero, a Central Valley Democrat who represents rural communities that are among the poorest in the state. “We haven’t focused on the impacts of climate change on lower-income families.”

While President Joe Biden announced a federal effort last week to track heat-related illnesses, California officials began paying closer attention to heat deaths in 2021, after the Los Angeles Times estimated that high temperatures had killed nearly 4,000 people between 2010 and 2019 — more than six times higher than official state figures.

The data dwarfs fatalities from more dramatic extreme weather events like wildfires, floods and windstorms. Fewer than 300 Californians died from those events over the same period of time, according to data from the National Weather Service.

By Harrison Watson - In These Times, August 15, 2023

Farm workers are being sickened by agrochemicals—and, due to extreme heat, by the PPE they wear to protect themselves.

It’s summer and time to take in the sunshine. But beware: because of climate change, the planet is rapidly warming. Outdoor temperatures are climbing above 100^oF. Raging heat waves are causing debilitating illness and death. In some places, floods sweep through the streets. In others, precipitation is declining and water sources are evaporating. The Union of Concerned Scientists has dubbed this time of year, from May to October, the ​“danger season.”

Humans have not evolved to withstand such levels of heat stress. Still, over 2 million farm workers find themselves out in the fields. Some are suited up in heavy layers of clothing, including flannel shirts, pants, boots, gloves and coveralls. The purpose of this personal protective equipment (PPE) is to shield farm workers from the chemical threats they face from working with and around toxic pesticides and herbicides.

Each year, farmers and farm workers use billions of pounds of pesticides to suppress pests across 250 million acres of crop fields in the United States. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) does work to educate farm workers and help them navigate pesticide-treated fields safely. Still, according to the National Agricultural Worker Survey nearly one-third of all farm workers do not receive the annual, mandatory training.

“So some farm workers just don’t know how harmful pesticides are,” says Mayra Reiter, director of the Occupational Safety and Health division at the organization Farmworker Justice. ​“The EPA approves chemicals because they assume that farmworkers will wear PPE, but those farm workers aren’t wearing it.”

Every year, pesticides sicken 300,000 farm workers, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. No one has an accurate count of how many of them die.

And the PPE farmworkers need to protect them from these chemicals can’t protect them from the danger sealed therein: Wrapped tight in their PPE, the heat they generate working at a feverish pace has nowhere to dissipate. In some places, a third of farm workers out in the fields suffer from heat-related illnesses every year. 

This is because many farm workers are constrained by the current wage system to ignore workplace hazards or skip water, bathroom and cooling breaks. In several states, farm workers receive ​“piece-rate” wages — that is, instead of an hourly wage, they’re paid by the bucket, bushel or piece of crop they pick. 

By Julie Snorek and Julie Davenson, et. al. - Food Solutions, August 14, 2023

From community work to state and federal level advocacy a Just Transition “focuses on the values, agency, relations and processes that underlie both structures and systems” and “create the capacities that empower individuals and communities to take action on their own behalf.”¹ A Just Transition puts governance, power, and democracy at the center and acknowledges that sustainability transitions, especially in agriculture, will only be addressed by shifts in political-economic power.

Domains of a Just Transition include access to natural ecosystems, knowledge, networks, systems of exchange, gender and equity.² When analyzing work toward a Just Transition, the question must be asked: Whose knowledge is considered valid, and is therefore enabled and valued, through contemporary modes of knowledge production and mobilization? The social dynamics of marginalization and inequality pose a major barrier to the development of sustainable food systems in this regard. When all types of knowledge are valued, including community, indigenous, and practitioner, then community voices are lifted up to create solutions for their own needs and overturn inequities across the food system.

Thus, the starting point is to expand networks through participatory governance to identify and respond to community needs and flex the “democracy muscle.” In other words, true change towards climate resilience through agriculture is only going to come when community leadership and decision-making at all levels of governance are understood and centered – a task that will require a wholesale mindset shift.

Download a copy of this publication here (PDF).