The tomato in your cart has a backstory

The produce aisle looks clean and frictionless. But the people who harvest America’s fruits and vegetables are still among the country’s lowest-paid workers, with poverty rates more than double those of other wage and salary employees, according to USDA research cited by the Fair Food Program.

That gap is not abstract. It shows up in crowded trailers, long commutes to care, language barriers, and the daily calculation of whether speaking up costs you your job. In Immokalee, Florida, a farmworker community that helps produce the vast majority of domestic tomatoes in winter, those pressures have been a defining feature of life.

A human rights movement that started at the bottom of the supply chain

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) began organizing in the 1990s in a labor market where farmworkers were excluded from many collective bargaining protections. Over time, the CIW and federal prosecutors exposed something Americans prefer to believe doesn’t happen here: forced labor cases in Florida agriculture. A federal court summary notes that since 1997 the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division prosecuted multiple labor servitude cases in Florida, prompting a federal official to call the state “ground zero for modern slavery.”

The Campaign for Fair Food (CFF) made a strategic leap: if growers were squeezed by price pressure, then the companies at the top of the market had to be part of the enforcement. The first target was Taco Bell. After a four-year national boycott and campus “Boot the Bell” victories, Yum! Brands signed in 2005, followed by McDonald’s (2007) and Burger King (2008).

By 2010, the pressure had scaled. The Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, representing 90% of Florida’s tomato industry, signed an agreement that helped launch what became the Fair Food Program (FFP), a collaboration among farmworkers, growers, and major buyers.

What the Fair Food Program actually is

At the core is a simple bargain with teeth:

1. Binding agreements with big buyers who commit to purchase from participating growers in good standing.
   
2. A buyer-paid premium (famously “a penny per pound”) that growers pass on to workers in paychecks.
   

Independent monitoring and a real complaint mechanism overseen by the Fair Food Standards Council (FFSC), with investigations, corrective actions, and market consequences for violations.

This matters because audit theater is a known failure mode in human rights compliance. The UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights specifically points to worker-driven social responsibility initiatives like the CIW’s Fair Food Program as evidence that site-level grievance mechanisms can work when workers lead the design and monitoring.

The truth that data can’t fully carry

Food supply chains depend on migrant labor, including Indigenous workers navigating multiple layers of vulnerability: distance from home, limited English, and sometimes limited Spanish, plus cultural isolation. The CIW has been described as a grassroots organization of Latino, Mayan Indigenous, and Haitian immigrants working low-wage jobs in Florida. And Indigenous Oaxacan migrants have been present enough in the farm labor stream that, in reporting on Indigenous migration, meetings of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers are noted as places where people can be heard speaking their Indigenous languages.

Business, government, and consumers win

For workers: premiums are not symbolic. From January 2011 through October 2015, farmworkers earned more than $20 million through the Fair Food Premium, per the American Public Health Association policy brief. And the broader wage gap remains stark: EPI estimates nonsupervisory farmworkers averaged $16.62/hour in 2022 versus $32.00/hour for all U.S. workers.

For growers: the model reduces chaos. A RAND analysis argues the FFP helped deliver more stable, trained workforces and more efficient operations, while improving integrity across the chain.

For buyers and brands: this is supply-chain risk management that actually functions. The FFSC annual report explicitly frames buyer benefits as transparency and elimination of supply-chain risks in an era of instant consumer scrutiny.

For government: worker-driven enforcement complements limited inspection capacity. The alternative is expensive: investigations, prosecutions, and the downstream public costs of poverty wages and unsafe labor conditions.

Who’s in, who’s not

The Fair Food Program’s official participating buyer list includes major names like Walmart, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, McDonald’s, Burger King, Subway, and Yum Brands, among others. The Campaign for Fair Food continues because participation is not universal and some major retailers remain outside the agreements.

Recent coverage of CIW-led marches highlights ongoing pressure on Publix and Wendy’s, and reports Wendy’s argument that the program has no nexus to its supply chain due to greenhouse sourcing, a claim the coalition calls a dodge. The Campaign also explicitly targets Kroger, arguing the company should sign a Fair Food Agreement because…

…If a human-rights supply chain is optional, it will always be optional right up until the next scandal.