A group that works with workers in southern states sets up the Fair Food Program, which includes heat-related measures
WASHINGTON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) — Heat records have repeatedly been toppled in recent weeks, just when farms in some of the hottest parts of the United States are at their busiest.
That worries Lupe Gonzalo.
“A lot of places in the field, you don’t have access to shade, to clean and fresh drinking water,” said Gonzalo, a senior staff member with the non-profit Coalition of Immokalee Workers, who works with farm workers across several southern states.
Read Also
Manitoba beekeepers battle for survival
Honeybee colony losses have hit 43 per cent, making 2025 the latest in a string of poor bee survival years for Manitoba’s honey producers
For years Gonzalo picked tomatoes, berries, sweet potatoes and other produce, and the heat was always an issue. But her concerns are mounting.
“It’s getting hotter and hotter as climate change continues, and it will continue to be an issue for workers,” said Gonzalo.
“We’ve already seen far too many people become ill and even lose their lives. So this is truly an urgent issue.”
While regulations to protect agricultural workers from heat have been held up by political wrangling, Gonzalo and her colleagues have spearheaded an alternative strategy.
They seek to sidestep the slow and increasingly politicized government machinery and appeal directly to consumers and large brands.
Gonzalo and others set up the Fair Food Program to strike deals directly with large companies.
The companies pledge to pay fair wages, eliminate sexual harassment and uphold other issues — including increasingly stringent heat protections — in return for Fair Food Program certification for their products.
The heat-related measures include providing shade, having required breaks, training for workers and supervisors, electrolyte-infused water, and the ability to seek care without fear of retaliation.
The program covers tens of thousands of workers in 10 states, through agreements with companies such as Walmart, McDonald’s, Subway and others.
The group also works with farm workers in Chile and South Africa, and is seeking to expand to other countries.
At national grocery store Whole Foods, for instance, consumers can purchase Fair Food Program-certified sweet potatoes and cut flowers labelled as “Sourced for Good.”
The program’s reach is about to expand, after the U.S. Department of Agriculture highlighted its approach for special acknowledgement under a new program aimed at addressing human rights and worker retention on farms.
Last month, the first-ever pilot awards were made under the program, which the Fair Food Program said would see it expand to 13 new states, nearly doubling the number of farms covered.
Tomato grower Jon Esformes, whose company received one of the awards, has implemented the Fair Food Program guidelines on his operations across the United States and Mexico. He said he took the steps after sitting down for the first time to simply talk with his workers about their concerns.
“I found very quickly a group of people that were interested in the same things I was interested in,” he said. “We want to provide a safe and fair workplace, we want to have transparency, we need our workers to feel like it is their farm.”
The U.S. government has dragged its feet on worker heat protections for decades, said Juanita Constible, a senior advocate with the heat solutions program at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
About 51 million U.S. workers are at high risk to heat, with less than a fifth covered by standards, the think tank has found.
The federal government is only now updating 1970s rules, recently releasing a proposal that would offer heat protections for indoor and outdoor workers, including requiring employers to provide workers with water and shaded or air-conditioned areas above certain temperatures.
Still, a final rule could take years, and recent moves by the Supreme Court may further threaten such efforts.
While business associations said they were reviewing the new proposal, farming and construction lobby groups criticized early steps, warning of burdens to businesses.
Yet, Constible said, “the research has kept piling up that heat is not only potentially deadly to workers, but also drastically affects their productivity — billions of work hours lost in the U.S. and around the world because it’s too darn hot.”
The probability of work-related accidents rises by nearly six per cent when temperatures pass 32 C, according to research from the Workers Compensation Research Institute published in May.
In the absence of federal action, five states have passed their own laws, with a sixth on the horizon, though these vary significantly in scope.
Cities have also taken proactive steps, but efforts have run into political resistance. New local rules in Florida and Texas were halted by state officials.
Constible worries such politicization could continue, which she says underscores the importance of the Fair Food Program’s strategy of appealing to brands and consumers.
“I’m a huge fan. I think it’s been amazingly significant for those workers,” she said.
Farms that can ensure workers feel safe and have access to the tools to keep them healthy have found it easier to entice prospective workers, a UDSA spokesperson said.
That is what Esformes, the CEO of Pacific Tomato Growers, has found amid recent worker shortages.
“When the rest of North America was reeling with lack of workers, we did not have enough jobs for the people who wanted to work for us. And the reason is we’ve created a workplace-of-choice environment,” said Esformes.
He said May saw the hottest temperatures ever recorded in parts of Florida, just as farms were in full harvest, but Fair Food Program heat guidelines were in operation for the nearly 3,500 workers on the company’s 15,000 acres.
“There’s definitely a cost associated with it. Electrolyte powder is not cheap; breaks aren’t cheap,” Esformes said.
“But you know what also is not cheap? People getting sick and people feeling like they’re not safe.”
