The Food Label We Really Need

Farmers, farmworkers, and an alliance for the future of American agriculture.

Sometime in the next few weeks, a bill on whether states can require GMO labeling will reach the US Senate. Should American’s have a right to know what’s in their food? Absolutely. Is labeling the most effective path to this information? It’s hard to say. Agribusiness people, advocates, and policymakers are up in arms on both sides of the labeling debate, but in all the talk about what’s at the most fundamental end of our food system, we’ve ignored the most complex organism within it; people. Namely, farmers and farm workers.

There are countless resources for finding stories about farm workers in the US. I was lucky enough to visit the Coalition of Immokalee Workers hunger strike against Publix supermarkets in 2012 (as featured in Food Chains) and the community of Immokalee, FL, to spend a fascinating afternoon at a farmworker center in El Paso (at El Centro De Los Trabajadores Agrícolas Fronterizos), and to interact with a number of United Farm Worker members. I’ve had the chance to meet hundreds of farm workers, and I was shocked by the conditions that endure.

One day while we were in Immokalee, we crawled out of bed at 4am to head down to the pickup lot. After a quick drive through the deserted town, we found the parking lot filled with yellow school buses and buzzing with activity; men and women arriving on bicycles and by foot from nearby mobile homes (commonly rented at $2,000 a month in the 2nd poorest city in FL). In this lot, farm workers hope to get hired on for the day by a work crew. They’ll get on the buses and be driven out to some farm where they will start harvesting after the dew has evaporated around 9 or 10am (that’s 5–6 hours en route/waiting on the bus without pay). After hours of picking, shouldering, throwing, and running with 35–50 pound buckets, and eventually harvesting on average 4,000 pounds of produce a day, farm workers will pick up their $40–$50 check (it’s a payroll check, so tax is deducted regardless of legal status), get back on the bus, and be home between 5 and 8pm.

We visited a daycare center that had showers beside the doors because many parents have so much chemical residue on their cloths and skin after a day in the field that kids were getting chemical burns from hugging them.

This is just a snapshot of the complex farmworker experience in the US. And despite all the hardship these people face, their determination and hopefulness was as humbling as it was inspiring.

But in my experience, these stories lead the average eater to one conclusion- What can I do about it?

Here’s a proposition. Why don’t we ask for farm workers to be treated better?

Seems impossible, right?

Five years ago, we would have said that GMO labeling was impossible too.

What’s in a Label?

The general success of the organic label as a tool for suppliers and growers should give us hope for the impact of a Fair Food label, and give us pause when considering the non-GMO label. It’s easy to vilify farmers in conversations around farmworker justice. But in reality, farmers and farmworkers are best positioned to be allies who can together fight against the dictatorial control big food and ag companies have over the food system and reclaim the value (and the profits) that they add. Farmers and farmworkers have too often been pitted against each other while being mutually victimized, and a fair food label is a banner around which they could rally.

There are labels out there already. The most popular is the Fair Food label championed by the CIW. This label currently only identifies tomatoes, but it guarantees that the produce is “cruelty-free” and that farmworkers were paid a “premium”, which requires the retailer to pay about $0.1 extra per pound. There are a few other regional labels, like the label by the Agriculture Justice Program. The best way to support a food label? Ask for it. Ask about it. If you’ve thought about contacting your representative about GMO labels, consider mentioning one of these labels too/instead. Realize that from the ketchup on your fries to the heirloom organics you just bought at Whole Foods, there’s more than just DNA, water, and sunshine behind your food. There’s also a lot of people, people whose health and safety is at risk everyday.

Take a moment to think about why we want genetically modified foods to be labeled. To make an informed choice, right? Because we should have the right to know if the DNA in our food has been altered for one reason or another, to make it more resistant to disease, maybe, or to give it larger seeds or more endurance to survive harsh temperatures. We want to know because we feel (or fear) that no one can really guarantee that the changes made to our food will not negatively impact us.

Is a 1% (or 0.1% or 0.001%) chance of some future negative effect more important than the 100% guaranteed negative effect that occurs when farmer workers come into contact with harmful chemicals in the field? Even if I value my health 10x more than I value these strangers, the math doesn’t add up. And the reality is, non-GMO crops can require significantly higher rates of chemical use than GMO varieties (a lot of genetic modification is to build the pest-resistance right into the DNA, so no need to apply chemicals).

America has overwhelming demanded GMO labeling for this simple reason.

If this tomato might, at some future time and for some unknown reason, shorten my life, I have the right to know that. But if that tomato was treated with chemicals (conventional, organic, or others), it has probably already shortened someones life, a farmer’s or a farmworker’s. We have the right and the responsibility to know about that too.

Support farmers and farmworkers. Shop Fair Food.