For the first time, rank-and-file laborers in the food and farming sectors had a chance to jointly speak directly with congressional staffers about their needs for the next farm bill.
The farm bill is key legislation that is presented to Congress every five years. While multifaceted, the legislation is intended to protect the 21.5 million people who plant, harvest, process, transport, sell, and serve our food. Their labor underpins a U.S. food and agriculture industry valued at $1.264 trillion in 2021.
Today’s congressional briefing was hosted by Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), the Farmworkers Association of Florida, Food Chain Workers Alliance, HEAL (Health, Environment, Agriculture, Labor) Food Alliance, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. It follows a letter that food and farmworker groups and about 100 other organizations sent to Senate and House Agriculture Committee leadership.
Workers asked for Congress to:
- Expand disaster prevention, alert and relief programs for workers impacted by increasingly extreme weather conditions
- Hold food corporations accountable for worker safety and welfare
- Bolster food security and emergency aid for food workers facing hardship
They also sought to address pesticide exposure, to ensure line speeds in poultry processing plants don’t operate at unsafe speeds, and for equitable access to safe housing. Workers also discussed the impact of emergency grants to food workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, the need to replenish the U.S. Department of Agriculture fund that provided these grants for the next potential emergency, and the challenges facing farmworkers who aspire to farming their own land.
“We need to reframe the conversation around the food and farm bill to one that puts worker interests on par with those of farmers and recognizes the rights of all laborers to dignified wages and occupational conditions,” said Dr. Ricardo Salvador, director of the Food and Environment Program at UCS. “Anyone willing to do the essential work of keeping us fed and propping up the trillion-dollar food industry should have safe and dignified working conditions. We have heard directly from farmworkers about the need to better protect them while on the job, and for investment in research and innovation to keep food and farmworkers safe. We need to mandate better occupational and health standards, and to increase funding for research on farmworker health, alternatives to pesticides, and how to better protect workers from life- and health-threatening weather events like extreme heat, wildfires, and floods.”
The COVID-19 pandemic and extreme weather have exposed how food and farmworkers are the frontlines of a resilient, reliable food system, and voters have taken note. Recent polling found that 80 percent of registered voters support more and better workplace protections for essential workers in the farming and food industries.
Extreme heat, wildfire smoke, and flash flooding have touched every region of the country this summer, so food and farmworkers are at particular risk. Agriculture has one of the highest fatal occupational injury rates in the nation, and farmworkers die of heat-related causes at roughly 20 times the rate of workers in other civilian jobs. Risks facing farmworkers are growing under climate change, as hotter and more extreme weather increases the likelihood of heat stress, dangerous air quality due to wildfire smoke, exposure to pesticides, and economic disruption and insecurity, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, an organization that has been critical of genetic engineering and other farming innovations that others feel can help alleviate climate and farmworker concerns.
“Despite the critical role that working people play to ensure that our food is grown, produced, processed, made and delivered, since its inception the Farm Bill has purposefully excluded food and farm workers’ issues, leaving them vulnerable to the whims of their profit-hungry employers and corporate-dominated food and agriculture system,” said Navina Khanna, executive director of the HEAL Food Alliance. “The 2023 farm bill is an opportunity for Congress to ensure that protections for these and other food workers — who comprise the foundation of our food and agriculture system — are at the core of our most far-reaching federal food policy.”
