Read “Inflamed”

Everything is on fire. Last month was the hottest month in recorded history. Wildfires are raging in Greece, Oregon, and California, dwarfed by a conflagration in Siberia bigger than all of them combined. The 2021 IPCC report documents that we are well past the worst case scenarios for climate change but is not specific enough in how it assigns responsibility. And the Covid-19 pandemic continues to rampage, the virus thriving in bodies inflamed by chronic illness. Our industrial food system contributes over one third of greenhouse gases and 40% of methane, and many of our most widespread, heavily subsidized crops and consumables are also major causes of inflammation. This all makes Inflamed, a new book by Raj Patel and Dr. Rupa Marya, a potent analysis of these compounding crises, and how we can repair and recover both our bodies and our planet.

Your body is part of a society inflamed... Covid has exposed the combustible injustices of systemic racism and global capitalism… Inflammation accompanies almost every disease in the modern world: heart disease, cancer, inflammatory bowel disease, Alzheimer’s, depression, obesity, diabetes, and more. The difference between a mild course and a fatal case of Covid-19 is the presence or absence of systemic inflammation. (page 4)

The authors of Inflamed are a formidable team-up. Raj Patel is a professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at UT Austin and is the renowned author of Stuffed and Starved, The Value of Nothing and other cross-disciplinary deconstructions of our food system, as well as a filmmaker, public radio show host and scholar activist. Dr. Rupa Marya is a physician and Professor of Medicine at UC San Francisco who helped run a community clinic at Standing Rock, and is also a respected food sovereignty activist and public health advocate for her community. Together they have written a searing and detailed critique of healthcare and economics, and how so much of our ecological and medical malpractice is rooted in inherited and ongoing colonial systems of knowledge and power.

To be clear, colonialism isn’t simply the physical occupation of land. It is a process, an operation of power in which one cosmology is extinguished and replaced with another. In that replacement, one set of interpretations about humans’ place in the universe is supplanted. (page 14)

Popular discussions of colonialism tend to be framed by numbers of victim and power dynamics involved, from the disastrous U.S. occupation of Afghanistan, to the millions of victims of the Middle Passage and Manifest Destiny, or the tens of thousands of Herera and Nama who were killed by Hitler’s mentors in Southwest Africa. But it is the subtle ubiquity and global prevalence of colonialism that the authors are after, how it manifests in daily life, and how it’s victims tend to be the underclass, disproportionately Black, Indigenous, and people of color in the Global North, and the poor and dispossessed across the Global South.

In this book, we carry this theory of diagnosis a step further, locating the causal origin of disease in the multidimensional spaces around and beyond the individual body—in histories, ecologies, narratives, and dynamics of power. The inflammatory diseases we are seeing today are not the cause of the body’s dysfunctional reactions. They are the body’s correct response to a pathological world. (page 13)

Inflamed is structured a bit like the biology and Pre-med textbooks I studied during my undergraduate years. Each chapter utilizes cutting edge research to dissect and reanimate particular bodily systems and the many ways that social injustice and ecological imbalances are directly linked to chronic inflammation and its results. From immunity, digestion and circulation, to stress, eating disorders and insomnia from overdue bills, police violence and low wages, to inherited traumas such as slavery and genocide that influence our epigenetics, the book also represents a praxis. While it unfailingly ties together political economy with epidemiology, anatomy and ecology, it also outlines a “how-to” framework for what a grounded, holistic healthcare analysis and care work could look like, replete with compelling interviews and examples. This is a far cry from Big Pharma profiteering off of our ailments with prescriptions that may never exceed our sky high insurance deductibles. And Inflamed is also a corrective for  tendencies in the wellness sector that revolve around marketing expensive supplements, ketogenic diets and infrared saunas while cozying up with Covid-19 denialism and anti-masking. 

And while both authors identify as and discuss their South Asian immigrant/diasporic identities, the solutions and conversation they present are rooted in the Indigenous cultures, worldviews and knowledge systems that continue to survive the onslaught, but also build on the critical scholarship of abolitionist Black women such as Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Angela Davis and Mariame Kaba.

Most doctors—most humans, really—have unwittingly inherited a colonial worldview

that emphasizes individual health, disconnecting illness from its social and historical contexts and obscuring our place in the web of life that makes us who we are. (page 12)

The authors of Inflamed are relentless and visionary in their approach to the subject matter. In much of his scholarly and popular writing, Raj Patel is very narrative focused, peppering his chapters with a biting sense of humor and spry anecdotes. Inflamed, on the other hand, amplifies both authors’ storytelling talents. It is a torrential, almost dizzying cascade of research across medical disciplines, history and economics. Once a chapter starts, the authors just let it rip. The density and detail with which they illustrate their central theme is astounding, their interview subjects are fascinating, and the variety and number of sources is meticulous in documenting and backing up every assertion and claim. 

Inflamed is a must-read, and not just for food system workers, medical practitioners or policy makers. It is rare that a book can bind such a variety of information into a cohesive, readable and highly relevant narrative. Inflamed is a wonderful jumping-off point for those who want to quench the flames of injustice and imbalance. And it is a field manual to guide us in avoiding the thought processes and practices that got us into this mess in the first place.

Why Did Bakery Workers Who Make Oreos, Ritz and Chips Ahoy Go On Strike?

Since August 10th, unionized bakery plant workers in five states who make Oreos, Ritz and Chips Ahoy, have been on strike. Here is what two striking bakery workers have to say.

Carl Miller has worked for Nabisco for 34 years and is a member of BCTGM Local 358 in Richmond, Virginia.

Mike Burlingham has worked for Nabisco for 14 years and is BCTGM Local 364 Vice President in Portland, Oregon

Tell us a bit about your job.

Mike: I have been a worker at the Portland biscuit factory for 14 years now. And I've done a variety of roles. I think when people hear the word baker, you're picturing the white coats and the tall hat, and they're rolling out dough. And for a lot of the smaller bakeries, that's exactly what it is. But we do things on a very large scale. It is a large bakery that takes up several city blocks. The process starts with giant silos, filled with our raw ingredients and tanks with oil, and goes through the process with automation. So we have our mixing department, which trickles down into a big shop where things go through very large ovens on a very large conveyor, which then heads down into our packing department where everything is mostly done by machines operated by us. And then it's sent out to our warehousing and distribution centers.

What has the job been like during Covid-19?

Carl: When we were first mandated to be open for production, we weren't sure of COVID. We didn't know where it came from. We didn't know how it was transmitted. But then as time progressed, a few individuals in the bakery had tested positive. Now, we wouldn't get this information until one or two days later, and then find out where this particular individual actually worked. You begin to backtrack in your mind as to where was that? What was I doing? And have I been around them, they've been around me? As far as working in a bakery, it is very unrealistic to work in a six foot separate capacity, a lot of jobs are overlapping, you have to give directions, you have to talk, you have to share, you have to assist. It left stress levels to be rather high. And volume was just incredible. Because we make all the products that people eat for comfort, you know, everybody was sitting on their couches during the pandemic eating Oreos, Chips Ahoy, Ritz crackers, you know? And the expectation was to be here. My wife herself contracted COVID-19. And that, for me was very stressful, very scary. And to still have the pressure to come to work.

What inspired the wave of strikes?

Carl: The backstory is that Mondelez acquired us in a split with Kraft Foods back in 2012. So earlier in 2012, we had just re-negotiated a new contract with Kraft Foods at that time. When Mondelez acquired us in 2012 we could almost feel the atmosphere change right away, you could tell that the this was a whole different animal that we were going to be working with. Mondelez is a global company. So, we're no longer competing with markets in North America, we're now competing against Europe and China. And so when it came time for renegotiation in 2016, they put out a letter to us, and that basically summarized that was it going to be our way or the highway, these are the concessions we want you to take. And it was written in a way as if they were trying to tell us that us making less money and paying more out of pocket for our benefits is good for us. Basically, what that means is, you can either take these, or we can take our business elsewhere. They have two very large factories down in Mexico. And 2016 was also the same year that they told Chicago to accept concessions. And Chicago didn't agree to their terms. And so true to their word, Mondelez closed half of Chicago. So the 1200 person workforce went down to 600, just like that. And they invested that down in Mexico, which we have to believe was their intent all along. Just in those last seven years, we've seen over 2000 people now out of work, because they have shut the bakeries down.

Mike: So in 2016 was our first time meeting at the table with Mondelez. And it was very clear they had certain things in mind, and they were unwilling to budge from those. One of those things at the time was to back out of our pension plan. That's a big reason why people have come to work at these Nabisco bakeries, is that we had a pension plan and between the money you can make with the benefits along with the pension, it's a good job. It was a place that you can plan to work for a long time. And retire from. And that's exactly what people do. There's folks who put my 14 years to shame, they've been there for 40-50 years. So it's incredible. It is. It really is. We have one lady in our bakery here that she's been there for 55 years. And she's still going.

What is at stake for workers at your facilities? 

Mike: We're not coming into these negotiations with a bunch of wants. We're coming in saying, we've already fought for what we have today. We've already given up things in the past. We are asking to maintain those benefits and Mondelez, their stance on it is, “Well, we weren't there for that, we know nothing about it, this is what we want.” So things went stagnant. In spring 2018, without negotiation, the company sent out a statement that they were withdrawing from our pension. 

We've paid for those long before my time there, the people before me, who fought to have that benefit. They already gave things up. And you know, it's unfortunate to see something like that happen, especially because, this is manufacturing. And as automated as some things are, it's still a labor intensive job, you are putting in a lot of hours, you have mental and physical fatigue, and you put your body at risk. And I can speak personally, that I've been injured on the job. So, that’s the trade off, you're putting your body at risk when you go there. And, you know, the payoff is at the end, do you have something that you can retire with? And now that's gone? That's horrible.

Mondelez in particular, had a very profitable year. In 2020, Mondelez, netted $26 billion in revenue. Their net income for the quarter ending June 30, of this year was $1.08 billion. That's a 98% increase, or double the second quarter earnings from 2020. So they're doing very well this year, going into these negotiations. Mondelez net income for the 12 months ending June 30, was $4.3 billion. And that's a mere 24% increase.

This isn't a company that's hurting. We're not coming into these negotiations with a bunch of wants, just keep what we have. 

How can the public support your efforts?

Mike: This is a nationwide strike with Nabisco. If you're near any one of the locations, showing up and getting the word out. If you're nowhere near these areas, while we're out on strike, avoid buying Nabisco products. 

I just read a quote from the striking coal miners in Alabama, that this this isn't just about us, that this is a fight for America's working class. So keep yourself educated and fight for what you know your worth.

Carl: It's just my opinion that the unions across the country, I think we're all inspired by each other right now. Because everybody's having the same experience. We all worked harder than we ever did during the pandemic. We were exposed. We were put in harm's way. And we worked. We showed up. We made them all that money. And then they come to the table and they ask for everything. 

This is our line in the sand. We're standing up for ourselves finally. Everybody stand up together standing with their humanity. We are united.

Everyone should really pay attention to what this means, it's the middle class fighting to stay alive. And we're all banded together right now. The union movement is strong. If you're not union, you should join one. 

The Supply Chain Is In Crisis: How Do We Move Forward?

In part 1 of this series, we took a deep dive into the current supply chain crisis and what is behind the hesitancy of workers to fill the many job openings in the retail and wholesale food sector. This time we look at structural issues with logistics, commodity prices and what is wrong with the current set of practices that led us to this mess of higher prices and backed up supply lanes. 

In terms of logistics, ocean-going freight rates have skyrocketed over 460% in the last 12 months. These shipping costs have been impacted by soaring pandemic demand, particularly the promised rapidity and convenience of online shopping, especially with increased automation, rapid delivery firms and micro-fulfillment expansion. With many working class consumers temporarily flush with spending cash from stimulus checks and child tax credits, demand has stayed relatively high for consumables. This has compounded pressure on backed up ports with several weeks’ worth of container ship traffic in port, too few ships, too few dockworkers, a shortage of semiconductors slowing down new truck production, and too few truckers to handle the existing freight. The millions of consumer products manufactured in China can’t magically appear in warehouses without efficient shipping infrastructure. And with a handful of firms controlling 80% of global shipping, the Biden administration is looking to take anti-monopoly actions to bring prices down, but that will not have immediate impacts.

Even less visible to consumers are the pallets that carry almost all shipped freight. Nearly 2 billion pallets circulate in the U.S. economy, mostly made of wood. Nearly every packaged product, piece of meat or fruit or durable consumer good we buy has been stacked and shrink wrapped onto a pallet. Pallet costs are up over 400% due to demand spikes and higher lumber costs, which have since come down. And trucking capacity also impacts this sector, with not enough trucks or drivers available to deliver, reposition pallets and/or move them around to where they are needed most.

In terms of food itself, the higher price tags discussed by my friend in Part 1 of this series are all too real. IRI has reported that 56% of customers are somewhat concerned about the price of food and nearly a third feel that prices are much higher than before the pandemic. The all-items price index is up over 5.4% for the last 12 months, the largest spike since the previous financial crisis in 2008, and producer costs have jumped over 7%, the biggest spike since 2010. The USDA is predicting the prices of food consumed at home to jump 2.5%-3.5% this year, on top of the 3.5% from 2019-2020. Grain prices are up 94% over the last year and oilseeds are up 68% in the same period. These commodities, along with spiking demand for stay-at home eating, have sent meat and poultry prices up 13% over 2019. The producer price index for meat is currently in the high teens to low twenties, in particular beef and chicken, with chicken breasts up 61%. The deadly meat plant speeds ups ordered by the Trump Administration that sickened and killed scores of workers were mostly able to meet the 2020-21 consumer demand spikes, with the help of $38 Billion in annual federal subsidies. But investment bank analysts predict consumption patterns will soon level off due to these higher prices and reductions in government stimulus and unemployment benefits. That is, consumers will eat less meat because they won’t be to afford it, especially if they don’t have a place to live.

These industry wide cost pressures mean that retailers cannot forward buy or bridge buy inventory to hold prices, and they are constantly watching prices at competition to see who will move and how much. The algorithms and machine learning that retailers typically use to hold pricing by balancing margins with price and demand elasticity, are not able to make up for such force majeure increases. Retailers eventually have to pass on retail price increases, decrease promotional markdowns to preserve their gross margins, and not cannibalize their typically thin rates of profit. And these retail price increases may erode much of the recent social safety net income which has alleviated some food insecurity, including stimulus checks, higher SNAP benefits and child tax credits, and which has also benefitted retailers. And more frightening for retailers and wholesalers, consumer demand looks to be even more erratic, with an inconsistent array of public safety and commercial Covid-19 policies being implemented from state to state and even county to county.

At the heart of these concerns is the modern operating practice of Just In Time capitalism. Similar to lean production methods, the intention of Just In Time is to optimize productivity, cash flow management, and ultimately, profitability for the supply chain. All actors in the supply chain keep inventories low, while pace and frequency of shipments are high and depend on predictable, seasonal trends of demand and production to stay in sync. The theory is that all inefficiencies are driven out of the distribution system, so that raw materials are brought to the production process, labor is scheduled on demand, and packaged products sent to retail stores, exactly when the algorithms and forecasts say they are needed. Such calculations typically account for customer behavior, item level or category-specific price elasticities, seasonality fluctuations, as well as planned promotions and marketing events. Sure, there is slight wiggle room for growth or contraction depending on the category, industry or sector. But all is geared towards achieving that slim bottom line under the most stable of circumstances. Just In Time is a fragile, inflexible system built for the best case scenarios and a nearly extinct sense of normalcy, that financialization and the free market can solve everything. It’s safe to say that global capitalism, in all its vastness and complexity, is built on a digital house of cards.

But systemic shocks have obliterated this paradigm. Under the best of current circumstances, it may take months or years for the supply chain to find some equilibrium. Where I live in Austin, despite the best efforts of retail staff, it took some food retailers over two months to recover from the compound shock of Winter Storm Uri and Covid-19 in February 2021. The pandemic, plus more frequent shocks such as hurricanes, wildfires, floods, poorly planned trade deal exits, or the social unrest that is inevitable based on the climate data that released IPCC has recently, are all deafening signals that mean we must reprioritize the functions and operations of supply chains. 

In the meantime, we should take the impetus to reprioritize what matters in the food system. We’ve already discussed what the retail sector can do to attract and retain workers. Next, we should classify food as a human right, particularly after a year when up to 1 in 4 households experienced food insecurity. We should continue to expand SNAP and Child Tax Credits that are saving lives and combatting food insecurity more effectively than private sector efforts. Food and raw material prices should shift to true-cost accounting models so that all externalities and subsidies are taken into consideration of pricing. And as Raj Patel notes in an upcoming NatureFood article, large scale institutions should adopt Good Food Purchasing Program frameworks and prioritize sustainability, social justice and compassion  in supply chains, as well as greater transparency and participation with community members. 

Trade policies must prevent offshoring and capital flight, such as the Mondelez plant closures and cutbacks that instigated the Nabisco strike wave by bakery workers. Policy makers should expand the public sector, including public food utilities and food commons, and create more domestic and regional manufacturing and processing capacity so that supply chains are less fragile and more diverse. They should also pursue aggressive anti-trustagendas to regulate and break up “power buyers” and industry monopsonies whose concentration of economic power has given them extraordinary leverage over the food system. And supply chain workers should organize and design systems to move past Just In Time. We need inventory management and procurement systems that prioritize anti-fragility, sustainability, access and equity instead of narrowly defined productivity and profit goals. This may be our last, best chance to course correct.

Why Is The Supply Chain All Jacked Up?

A family friend called me the other day asking why it felt like she was paying twice as much for groceries as last year and why she couldn’t always find some of her favorite items. I’ve also noticed some local grocery chains are raising prices, but they are also running 5-10% out of stocks on a weekly basis. In particular the smaller, local stores that do not have the volume-based, priority agreements that larger chains leverage seem to be affected most. The grocery industry is facing a confluence of factors that will impact costs and in-stock rates for the foreseeable future, including worker pushback and turnover, stark wealth inequalities, raw material cost increases, multiple layers of supply chain logjams, as well as fragile logistics system that just aren’t built to withstand these pressures. But it doesn’t have to be this way. 

This week we will look at the most visible aspect of the supply chain crisis, and that is labor. But this is not aboutscapegoating and demonizing workers for avoiding shitty jobs. In reality, Covid-19 has had a devastating impact on food system workers over the past 18 months. Over 90,000 processing and farmworkers were infected and at least 465 died, while over 43,300 grocery workers fell ill and at least 197 died. These numbers don’t account for the friends, family and community members who were also impacted, particularly in meatpacking towns that were Covid-19 hotspots. Many food system workers who fought off the virus are still experiencing long-haul symptoms, and many who remain in the industry are bitter, fearful and disillusioned about the pace and working conditions. Our supply chain and food industry workforce have faced unprecedented trauma, yet keep grinding it out every day to feed us.

But the popular “worker shortages” narrative misses the rapid turnover and disillusionment impacting these industries. Nearly 650,000 retail workers put in their notice in April 2021, and nearly 2 in 5 retail workers has been thinking of quitting and considering new opportunities. This trends similar to food service and hospitality, which has also seen nearly 5% turnover on a monthly basis. This is because the pandemic made a tough job unbearable for many, on top of the safety and health issues. Longer hours, erratic schedules, understaffed departments and pay rates that barely cover the bills, let alone account for the daily strain. Retail workers have had to be the enforcers of mask mandates, social distancing and store sanitation standards, on top of building displays, stocking shelves, ringing up customers and handling deliveries, i.e., the stuff that retailers actually do to stay in business. They have had to deal with increasingly rude customers, harassment and physical attacks. A few retail workers have even been shot and killed by belligerent, armed customers. And retail workers continue to contract Covid-19 infections as mask mandates and safety precautions have been relaxed due to OSHA inaction.

And while many retailers have implemented signing bonuses, generous incentive packages  and higher pay rates to lure new workers, some of the largest and most popular food retailers did not equitably share their pandemic profits with their incumbent workforce. Some implemented restructuring and cost-cutting measures despite the pandemic sales bump. And large retailers were even able to grant shareholder dividends and stock buybacks for the wealthy investors and executives that stayed far from the front lines, transferring massive amounts of wealth out of the pockets of clerks and cashiers. 

Yet the wealth and income gap for this diverse, blue collar workforce remains stark. Employer wage theft from workers accounts for at least $8 Billion a year, nearly half of all other property theft combined, and it is rarely prosecuted. If the minimum wage rates had increased at the same rate as Wall Street bonuses since 1985, it would be worth $44 an hour today. If wage rates had increased at the same rate as productivity since 1968, the minimum should be $25 an hour. Another way to look at it is that a full-time worker earning the national median wage of $50,000 should be making almost $100,000 now, if our economic growth had continued to be shared over the last 45 years the way it was in the quarter-century after World War II. This accounts for $2.5 Trillion in lost wages every year for the bottom 90% of workers, which includes the vast majority of the 1 in 7 American workers employed in the food system. That’s worth two and half Afghanistan foreign policy debacles annually.

Retail workers may not always know these specifics, but the feeling of being hosed is pretty widespread and mainstream. They are pushing back and demanding better wages at their current jobs, looking for new careers, and putting in notice while living off of their savings and stimulus checks. And they are avoiding and shaming businesses that are still living in the pre-Covid world where it was acceptable to pay terribly, schedule erratically and get away with it. And because the food industry has not systematically dealt with such issues, even some wonderful, high-road businesses are getting caught in the crossfire, unable to fill positions or fulfill customer needs, while other businesses rapidly adopt automation  that may make certain retail jobs obsolete.

Yet due to this pressure, as well as widespread activist campaigns to raise the wage floor despite government inaction, starting pay rates are slowing inching towards the $15 minimum that has been the demand for over a decade. Nine states, led by Florida, New York and California, are on their way toward a $15 minimum wage and several cities have done likewise. Some industry CEO’s are getting the message, including Wal-Mart, Costco, Starbucks and Chipotle. Even McDonald’s is no longer lobbying against this new minimum wage, and earlier this year its CEO told investors that “we’ll do just fine” with it. Or as Marc Perrone, the head of UFCW, recently put it more bluntly, “People have come to the conclusion they’re worth more money, and that has helped raise the floor with wages.”

Retailers and other supply chain employers should center worker well-being and upward mobility, and should focus on better pay, just cause protections, stable schedules, safer working conditions and benefits like paid sick leave and vacation time to attract and retail workers. Employers should encourage more workplace democracy and employee engagement, while making sure there is diversity and social equity in the cap tables, option pools and bonus payouts. Congress should pass the PRO-Act immediately; unions have always been the strongest path the prosperity for working people.

But labor is just one aspect of the supply chain equation. Next we’ll take a broader look at food prices, logistics and the operating systems that are crippling our ability to withstand systemic crises, and we’ll offer some ideas on what we can do better.

Why School Lunch Should Always Be Free

Pam Koch is the Executive Director and an Associate Research Professor at the Laurie M. Tisch Center for Food, Education and Policy, Program in Nutrition. She conducts research with schools and communities to give people power to demand healthy, just, sustainable food. She translates her research into curricula for school teachers, recommendations for policy makers, and resources for advocates. She has evaluated many school-based programs that improve school meals, create school gardens, conduct cooking sessions, and promote food justice. She teaches an online professional development course for educators, Teaching Food and Nutrition for All. Her work contributes to increased access to nutritious, delicious and sustainable food for all.

Errol Schweizer: What is your scope and areas of interests, especially in your leadership role?

Pam Koch: So as the executive director, I kind of oversee everything. And I really think that our mission and vision describe best what we do so. The Laurie M. Tisch Center for Food education and policy, conducts research on food and nutrition, education, practice, and policy. And then we translate that research into resources that can be used by educators, policymakers, and advocates to give people power to demand healthy, just sustainable food. And our vision is that through nutrition education, we can change the status quo.

ES: How do you apply this philosophy?

PK: So we really see schools as levers of social change. And so almost all of our research and advocacy relates to schools. We are advocating for really great experiences that students can have with food and nutrition education. And that can include experiences gardening; school gardens are thankfully on the rise. And so many students are getting experiences being in the garden, this hands on experiences, getting to put seeds in the ground and watch them grow. And then to harvest them is really just amazing, not only because of what it does for the students at that time, but it allows them an appreciation or understanding of what it takes to grow food. And I think then they start to think about all the food that they eat in a really, really different way. Very related to that is our other main research area, working on school meals, because we believe that kids need to eat while they're in school. And then to create the best, most positive meal experience we can have for all students, particularly for the students who are coming from food insecure homes, that are really relying on those meals for a lot of what they're eating. Because it happens each and every day, it can actually be a really great educational tool for kids to learn about food and eating.

We have a school meals program in our country, which is a program that can reach every community in the country because every community has schools. What we realized through this is that when students are in schools, they're basically a captive audience, right? It was this wonderful opportunity to provide food to not only school children, but in many places, also to other people that didn't even have children that needed food, because schools are right there in every community. And so I think what we can really learn is that schools can play a role in food security. 

I think the other learning from this is the program that's called pandemic electronic benefit transfer (P-EBT). It's like getting a credit card or debit card to be able to use for food. And so what pandemic electronic benefit transfer did is it made up for the breakfast and lunch that children would have gotten in school. So it was for all families who were eligible for free lunch. So that was either families that economically are eligible for free lunch, or families that were actually part of districts that everyone got meals for free. Just to give an example. New York City schools go through the end of June. So from March to June (2020), it was determined that on average, 74 school days were closed, and families got $5.70 a day, which was the cost of breakfast and lunch. So it came to $420. But that made a real difference to families. 

The other really important learning is that basically for this school year, school meals are free for all students. And that is called Universal free meals. And basically there's a lot of debates over whether when we have government programs, they should be universal, like this is, versus targeted for those who need it. I know a lot of other advocates and academics feel the same way that I do on this. It is something that really does make sense to be universal for some of the reasons that I said before, all students are in school all day and they need to eat. And basically, we want to then have the meals be something that feels like it's for everyone. Right now, it's often seen as a poverty program that happens to be run in schools. And so just as an example, almost all schools will describe where they are by the percentage of students that qualify for free and reduced price lunch. It is reinforcing that this is a poverty program in schools, and that program is really only for poor children. 

Sometimes I give the analogy of what would it be like if instead of school lunch being a poverty program, science books were a poverty program. So if you were a wealthy family, you had to pay for the science book, if you were not such a wealthy family, you got the science book for free. So just think if what we said is like, “Oh, this is a school where 95% of the students qualify for free science books.” It would be a really different way of looking at things. We have this opportunity through school meals being free for the school year, that we can actually see how this works in schools and use this as an opportunity for a lot of experiments of how does the perception of meals change. 

I can tell you, there's a lot of countries around the world that really see school meals as an educational opportunity. Many, many countries really see school meals as an educational part of the day in a way to teach students about food and culture and health and eating and community and less formal ways of interacting with each other. So I hope that that's another one of the learnings that we have is how do we make universal free meals work? 

I always like to say that today's children are tomorrow's adults that are going to be facing the really severe public health consequences we have from our current food supply. They will also be facing the ecological destruction that we are having from our current food supply. And also facing the consequences of the injustice, that particularly black indigenous and people of color/BIPOC communities have had of not having access to healthy food for centuries. I believe it is really, really important for us, especially with our current food supply, for all children to get really great education and really great hands on experiences with food gardening, cooking and then as they get older to really understand the consequences of the food supply.

ES: What is the relationship between food and wellbeing for children and teenagers in schools, as well as the importance of food education? 

PK: The relationship between food and mental health is an emerging area, and something that we really need to take a lot more seriously and do a lot more research on. The research that we have on it so far really shows it's a two way street. Basically, if you're eating well, you're going to be better able to handle mental health challenges that come up. And it doesn't mean eating well is a remedy for things like depression or other issues. However, if you are eating well, and you are depressed, or having anxiety, you're going to be better be able to respond to therapy. So eating well helps mental health. If you're in good mental health, you're going to be in a place where you actually can have a sense of wellness, a sense of caring about yourself. So I think it means as we're caring for the mental health and wellbeing particularly of our youth, food can help that a lot. 

ES: Any closing thoughts or anything else you want to share?

PK: Get involved! Because if we all do this together, we can make the world a healthier, more just and more sustainable place. 

Navigating Our Exploitive Food System: Errol Schweizer on Green Dreamer Podcast

“The food system is rooted in this plantation slavery model that evolved alongside, and really fed, the development of capitalism. Even today, big food companies still have forced labor, slavery, or trafficking in their supply chain. So how much has actually changed?”

— ERROL SCHWEIZER

Green Dreamer is an independent, community-powered podcast exploring our paths to collective healing, ecological regeneration, and true abundance and wellness for all. Please support Green Dreamer on Patreon. https://www.patreon.com/greendreamer

How might "eco-" or "ethical" certifications fall short of our hopes or expectations for what they mean and guarantee? What is it that leads many socially-driven food startups to become co-opted?

In this episode, we welcome Errol Schweizer (Instagram; Twitter). Born in The Bronx, New York, Errol has over 25 years of experience in the food industry—from grill cook, stock clerk, and purchasing manager, to V.P. of Grocery, a position he held at Whole Foods for seven years. He has developed plant-based, Organic, Non-GMO, and regenerative supply chains and product standards for over a decade. Since 2016, he has been a Board Member, Co-Founder, and Advisor to over two dozen food retail and CPG enterprises. Currently, Errol is active in regional food policy, healthy food access, and labor advocacy, and is the Co-Founder and Host of The Checkout Podcast.

The musical offering in this episode is Karma by Sarah Kinsley.

Errol Schweizer: I came up through the ranks because I worked really hard, but also I was really fortunate. I had not only my own privileges but good timing and great mentors. So I always felt really connected to the folks in the stores or on the ground in facilities. For me, it was always about feeding the world good food, and there was always an aspect of justice to it.

The contradictions came in the fact that we were doing it in a capitalist system, which emphasizes the need for profit, productivity, and growth. I realized early on in my career that I was going to have to figure out how to navigate that contradiction, how I was going to personally deal with the fact that not every decision that we made was going to benefit everybody, and what role I was going to play in that.

I left Whole Foods almost six years ago. When I was there, there was very much a grassroots sort of vibe. You could do a lot of interesting, innovative things, but it was also a company that really seemed to take care of its employees. It wasn't unionized, which was always something that I was uncomfortable with, being a lifelong union advocate and supporter. But there, it was the best pay scale in the industry, great benefits, opportunities for advancement, so I stuck with it. I accepted that contradiction. There was an opportunity to build solidarity with your co-workers.

So for me, it was like, "Okay, if we can't have any formal structure, let me do my best to build strong relationships of mutual support with the people that I work with, our suppliers, our vendors." But once again, it's capitalism—the market catches up, competition catches up. The investors got impatient and wanted higher profits, higher productivity. Eventually, expenses get cut... and labor is a variable expense: it's always the first thing to get reduced. And you're seeing that now across the board in retail with the restructuring of layoffs... There's a brief moment now where they're looking for more employees, but that won't last because they're replacing a lot of folks with automation, algorithms, and artificial intelligence.

Even though I've been through the system, I'm still very stubborn about my worldview and about when I do see injustice, imbalance, and exploitation.

The food industry is ground zero for injustice, imbalance, and exploitation.

Even though I still consider myself a food industry lifer, I'm really dissatisfied with how the industry has evolved, how many people, the ecosystem, animals are treated. We've tried to improve upon a lot of things, but there's still so much work to do. And in a lot of ways, things are worse, too.

Kamea Chayne: I've been thinking about how the rise in our need for certifications is very much reflective of a loss of community, where, rather than addressing the root causes for the loss of trust from this fragmented, opaque, complex global supply chain inside of a profit-first hierarchical system, we've turned to policing and commodifying trust instead—which manifests in very limiting certifications.

When I talked to our mutual friend, Loren of A Growing Culture, about this train of thought, he said that you're the person I have to speak to about this because of your decades of experience as an industry insider, having witnessed the fraud and shortcomings of certain labels you've worked with.

So what are some examples you can tell us of "eco-" or "ethical" certifications falling short of people's hopes or expectations for what they mean and guarantee?

Errol Schweizer: Let me get to the punch line first: In a market system, certifications are, unfortunately, one of the only ways to guarantee trust, transparency, authenticity, because we live in a globalized capitalist system.

It's something that has evolved into, particularly in the last 40 to 50 years, what we would call the neoliberal era—the era of privatization and the reduction in state services, a focus on the racialization of capital and how the division of labor cuts across race and class.

The main thing is that the role of the state and government is to encourage, underwrite, and subsidize private capital, to subsidize big business.

A quick side note is that the organic food industry and some of the ethical sourcing labels exist almost outside of that because there are not as many state subsidies and underwriting that you'd find in big agriculture. The conventional meat industry is subsidized to the tune of 38 billion dollars a year. The Trump administration underwrote big agriculture: primarily GMO, commodity, monoculture crop production for animal feed and processed ingredients to the tune of 65 billion dollars, in less than three years. And of course, 99.9% of this went to wealthy white farmers—once again, the racialization of capital.

So why certification? Certifications in the free trade system are an established way of communicating trust through that system. It’s a pressure release. They create certain very narrowly defined attributes for consumers who want to purchase something better, or in many cases, to avoid certain ingredients or substances. It's very different from saying our whole food system is backward, upside down.

But certification is very different from saying that we need to transform our food and agricultural system to one based on principles of agroecology and fairness and justice.

Our food system now is based on the last thousand years of enclosures and privatization of land, the displacement of women as the folks who took care of the land, the commons, the healers and herbalists, which was what the witch burnings were about... That evolved into the slave trade and how folks were stolen from West Africa and Central Africa because of their agronomic knowledge: these were farming civilizations.

The food system is rooted in this plantation slavery model that evolved alongside, and really fed, the development of capitalism. Cocoa, coffee, sugar, cotton—all these crops were developed through slavery. Even today, big food companies still have forced labor, slavery, or trafficking in their supply chain. So how much has actually changed?

All of this is to contextualize why I say that certification is the best you can do within the system, because there are two options here: The first is consumer capitalism, or conscious consumerism. But this is just it's a paradigm; it's fetishization of the commodity. But it's not the only way.

So much of the change that we need to pursue in the food system exists outside of what you decide to buy at the checkout counter.

It exists in the realm of political advocacy, of organizing for a better food system; the realm of public purchasing, public contracts and how food can be commodified, and yet still feed folks; the realm of what we call "food sovereignty" and developing local and communal networks—which you already see in this growing network of Black, Indigenous, people of color producers, cooperatives, communities.

But if you have the access, the ability, the privilege, financial location, knowledge, that folks like us, like myself, feel we have, then you probably should buy better stuff because at least you're supporting some of the folks who are attempting to do things better in a very narrow way, as defined by the marketplace. And that's what these ethical certifications do.

I'll start with the biggest, most visible, and in some ways the most successful: USDA Organic, which is essentially federally regulated, it's a legal term. You can only call something "organic" if it's certified through the national organic program by a third-party private certifier.

Over the last couple of decades, organic has grown—now a 60 plus billion dollar market—and become somewhat watered down and compromised, primarily through the influence of big business and folks who don't necessarily have the consumer's best interests in mind. For example, some of the concerns with organic include how hydroponic is allowed in organic, even though it conflicts with organic regulations about building soil health. There's also definitely a much more lax attitude towards what they call "organic" CAFOs (concentrated animal feedlot operations)—primarily in dairy, where you have these really large-scale, conventional operations that managed to get certified organic without really changing too much of what they do.

Then there was a huge scandal about organic fraud in grain imports. Why are we importing grain? That's because so much of the grain we produce in this country is genetically modified; much of it gets contaminated unless you're very careful.

I need to say that out of all the certifications, organic is still the best and still the most trustworthy, simply because there are thousands of producers and manufacturers that are still committed to it. If you are dissatisfied with organic, the idea is to not walk away from it or reject it, but fight for it—fight to make it better, fight to make it more agroecological, fight to make it more authentic, fight the compromises that are going into it. Because the main thing that organic does is it guarantees to you—and this is something that it still does—that you are able to avoid dangerous poisons, pesticides and herbicides, the hundreds of chemicals.

If there is one reason to buy and support organic, it's because you're actually still avoiding the silent spring that Rachel Carson warned about. But that doesn't stop organic from having many shortcomings and contradictions.

Kamea Chayne: Is there a worker justice element to the USDA organic?

Errol Schweizer: No. That was pulled out in the 90s, from what I recall. There are some organic farms that are unionized, and there are others that are good with their workers in terms of providing living wages and job security.

But the focus of labor justice and worker justice needs to happen at the state and federal policy level; it is not something that you can guarantee with organic.

Frankly, there are some organic farms that are just as bad as conventional farms. I know this from talking with certifiers and activists and farm worker groups, who say that some of these small farms pay just as poorly and they treat their farm workers—primarily migrant, immigrant, or undocumented guest workers—just as bad as the conventional folks do.

Labor justice needs to be enacted with federal policy, which means making sure that farm workers have the same overtime protections, which some states are doing. This means guaranteeing that farm workers get a living wage—not minimum, or even subminimum, wage. This means that there's fair scheduling, that they have all the protections that me and you have, from the legacy of the New Deal, the National Labor Relations Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act. That needs to be applicable to farm workers federally, and it's not. That, to me, is one of the greatest oversights, and shows that that we are not that removed from the plantation model.

The New Deal, the FDR compromise with Southern Democrats, didn't want to include not only farm workers but domestic workers, who, while disproportionately people of color and Black, were actually still majority white—it was an issue of class and economic power...

Now, that legacy means that primarily immigrant, undocumented, mostly Latin American workers are excluded from those labor protections that the rest of us take for granted. Labor justice is not something you can get to with organic, because it would still mean that the other 95% plus of the food that we produce is still grown in this plantation model.

Essentially, the whole food system is underwritten by labor exploitation—the exploitation of the mostly immigrant workforce who pick, harvest, process, manufacture our food all the way up through these big manufacturing plants and processing plants. If you are interested in fixing the food system, the major focus we should have is labor and social socioeconomic justice for food system workers.

Kamea Chayne: What you just said in regards to the limitations of using certifications as a way to address worker justice, I think it's summed up by this quote that you share in "Five Actions to Reboot Food Retail" from Greg of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. He said, "Whatever they call social responsibility in the food industry has been a joke, a fraud... it is absolutely empty and soulless and unreal. It is everything that has not worked and has been done for a public relations purposes for the corporations, not the workers."

Errol Schweizer: Just as a quick background, Greg Asbed was a farm worker for a decade and a farm worker organizer for 20 years and is a co-founder of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, one of the leading farmworker justice organizations in the world, which discovered and figured out a way to leverage the marketplace to create enforceable, legally binding contracts that not only protect farm workers from the worst forms of harassment and exploitation, but to guarantee them better wages and working conditions.

So I just wanted to contextualize, because my man Greg knows what he's talking about and has lived it. He has seen, during COVID, how blatant the exploitation was and just how many people suffered, got sick, and even died. And he said no major retailer, no major food processor stepped up and said, "oh, well, this is wrong. This is bad." Their whole focus was on productivity and keeping shelves full and keeping the plants running. This was something that made me physically ill and really inspired a lot of the work that I've been doing for the last year in particular, to say, "Let's stop patting ourselves on the back, people. This is very, very bad."

If you were to extrapolate out these types of conditions within our current food system towards what we're expecting to happen with climate change, it does not bode well. COVID-19 was a test, and the food system failed miserably.

Kamea Chayne: If listeners want to learn more about the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, they were highlighted in this documentary called "Food Chains" by our previous guest Sanjay Rawal.

A tangent I want to go on, which goes hand in hand with conscious consumerism, is the amount of food innovation and startups being created in the name of "sustainable" and "ethical" food. I know you've helped bring to market success various plant-based, organic or regenerative food brands and products. But these brands that we see are really just a tiny representation of the larger landscape of all the market-driven, branded solutions to addressing the industry's crises.

I don't want to paint all startups with a broad stroke, because there are brands working to embody justice at all levels and that are centering our collective health. But there is a trend of the initially good intentions of entrepreneurs, who set out to address some of the industry's problems, being hijacked by the same game... of profit and power and domination. So they're attempting to solve certain problems but end up just repeating the same destructive patterns.

I would love if you could share some examples of how the movement of plant-based or regenerative being derailed in their purpose, and what we should learn from that.

Errol Schweizer: I still work with a number of food businesses that are attempting to figure out how to embody those ethics in a for-profit, capitalist business: it's a huge contradiction. I think folks are doing their best with the way the system is set up. There's a lot of folks that really mean what they're saying and want to do right, but there are a lot of challenges.

The first major challenge is that the odds are stacked against them. The scale of the for-profit, commodified food system, the fact that it's underwritten by public tax dollars, is just so absurd.

If you're producing organic corn, for example, you're competing with GMO corn that's underwritten by tax dollars.

If we're thinking in terms of true cost accounting, if you were to pull the public subsidies out and add in the cost of pollution—the health issues, runoff and water wastage—, conventional agriculture would be a lot more expensive than organic produce.

One of the other concerns, contradictions, and cooptation they have is finance, and how you can underwrite these businesses that are doing the right thing. Most of the food businesses are underwritten through private capital, either the private equity markets, venture capital, or what they call "family offices", etc.

Capital always wants returns. If somebody gives you a dollar, you're signing paperwork to say that within a couple of years, you're going to turn this into three dollars. So you have these legal obligations to your investors. Likewise, the investors have legal obligations to their partners, the people who actually put money into their funds. So you have to make sure that as a business, you're trying to find investors who share your values.

You think that you're picking up a hitchhiker, but they turn into a carjacker, take over your business, change the terms of the investment, and steal your company from you—that happens a lot. It's very hard to scale a business with honest money.

A lot of the money is fast, high-risk money. Folks want hockey stick growth. You have these investors who throw money at dozens of companies with the hope that one or two will end up being the Next Big Thing. There's not enough of what they call "slow money", "slow capital". So what I am saying is that the financing is a major challenge.

During COVID-19, I've been working for a number of different companies, and raising funds was hellish, very difficult. The terms are very favorable to the investors, and some companies went insolvent. Luckily, most of the companies I work with survived and are still figuring out how to navigate this mess. But some didn't get investments and some didn't get the most favorable terms.

I watch the ag-tech investor space very carefully, and what investors are throwing money at are these glitzy new technologies, like cultivated meat and synthetic biology. I'm very skeptical understanding the type of returns that they're asking for and the business model that's needed for those companies to be profitable... After all that money is put into it, I question how sustainable they actually will be, as opposed to companies that are attempting to not only stay organic, but maybe pay their employees well or make sure that all the stakeholders that they know of within their supply chain are being treated well.

There are a number of great companies like Equal Exchange, or Alter Eco, or Organic Valley—which is a farmer-owned, organic dairy co-op that has over a billion dollars in sales every year. They've got very loyal employees. If you see Organic Valley at the grocery store, you should buy it. It's one of the best companies in the world. It's not perfect, and they're still having to function in this market system, but they figured out a way to do it—to keep farmers on the land, and also greatly expand the access and availability of organic foods, which is a great thing.

But folks want to fetishize conscious consumers and say, "hey, this is the answer". As somebody who's probably sold more “ethical” products than almost anybody in this country, I'll say that conscious consumption has probably made much progress in certain aspects of the food system, but it's not the be-all-end-all. There's so much more to food activism, food policy work, and public procurement that can also shift the dialogue around the food system.

I mean, Rematriation of Indigenous lands, for example. There's only a handful of Native American-owned brands. If we were to talk about Rematriating Indigenous lands and allowing some of these lands that are either privately or publicly held now to be given back to their original stewards for food sovereignty and for them to start using Indigenous land management techniques once again, I think that would have a much bigger impact on the food system than dozens of new entrepreneurs trying to launch some cool, kitschy innovative products, which may or may not ever be successful.

Or if we were to transform public procurement and say, "let's look at all government agencies, and transform all their public procurement to what we call ‘good food purchasing program standards’ that are essentially agroecological", that would have a tremendous impact on supply chains in terms of ethical sourcing, use of organic, moving away from pesticides and GMOs, because those public purchasing contracts are legal documents. You have to abide by the standards in those documents in order to sell to those customers.

And finally, just tying that back into one other aspect, the universalization of school lunch could have such a huge impact on a good food purchasing system if we were to not only say, "School lunch should be free forever", but that it should also be produced with good food, good organic food, good wholesome food, whole food ingredients, local farmers, folks that are in the supply chain that are getting paid well, that are able to have middle class jobs and maybe save for a home and send their kids to college by producing and growing food.

You could call me a bit optimistic, but I probably know more about supply chains than anybody, and it's possible. It's a matter of willpower, of organizing, of power, and who's making these decisions.

I'm not against folks being food entrepreneurs and food innovators in the private sector, and there's a lot of folks that I love doing it, but I do encourage them to say it's not everything. In fact, I'm of the opinion that we need to greatly reduce our dependance on the marketplace, on private markets, in the food sector in particular.

We need to greatly expand the public sector. We need to expand the commons to create a food commons. We need to work towards food being a right that everybody has access to.

And to do all this, you need infrastructure, logistics, and supply chain, personnel, folks who are working in the system.

Kamea Chayne: Relatedly, you've noted before that we're not having holistic enough of conversations about the food system and who's making decisions and who's benefiting. Instead, we're fetishizing particular techniques and practices, going back to our earlier discussion.

Of course, these things are important, like certifications, but I wonder if this could be an inevitable byproduct of first democratizing and decentralizing power in the system itself. So, maybe addressing the power injustices first can then translate into changes in those practices as a result.

Errol Schweizer: Of course. In fact, I would say that if you were to democratize the decision-making and the power dynamics, you would already have a completely different set of technologies and trends that would be prioritized. Some farm worker organizations don't support "organic" because they're coming from a broad agroecological analysis of not just how the food is grown but also the financing, the decision-making, and who's benefitting from it.

This applies to the "regenerative" label, too, and "regenerative" has huge potential to mitigate climate change and create healthier, nutrient-dense food, but so much of its discussions and policies and certification organizational frameworks exclude Indigenous peoples and farm worker groups and a diverse cohort that is essentially who's working in the food system—primarily working class people of color, disproportionately women as well. They are not the ones making the decisions. This is the issue with food tech as well, whether it's cultivated meat or it's the new waves of genetically modified organisms.

It's not the technology itself that's the issue; it's who's driving it, who's prioritized in getting the finance capital. It's investors, it's entrepreneurs, it's scientists, and they're brilliant at research, but they don't know sh*t about the food system, about the food industry.

Decisions and prioritization would be different if you had different folks at the table, if you had folks who are rooted in food justice and food access, if this was put in the public interest, in the public domain.

[If only] this wasn't all about intellectual property rights and patenting the building blocks of life. All these GMOs are patented—you can't save GMO corn seed and plant them next year or you'll go to jail. You have to buy it every year. So it's not the technology itself that's the problem; it's what we call the "political economy"—who's behind it, who's investing, etc.

I really feel if the decision-makers actually reflected the food system, food trends would look a lot different. I think it would be a lot more contextualized to how people live, what their challenges are, and what they're trying to get out of it, as opposed to fetishizing the next big thing just because it has some value in the marketplace.

So I'm really interested in what folks like HEAL Food Alliance is saying, in what the Worker-Driven Social Responsibility Network is talking about, what Warehouse Workers for Justice is doing around Amazon, what Teamsters Union is doing to unionize Amazon... People of color, working class people in the food system, and their people... these are the folks that need to be at the table, folks who are involved at that level of justice.

Kamea Chayne: I do think it is important to keep remaining critical of food tech in general, since food tech drives the centralization of power with things like patents, for example, that perpetuate issues of access, because it makes things less democratized and more controlled by a few major powers within the field. So we have to remain critical of food tech—regardless of the latest thing that is being hyped up as the solution to X, Y, Z.

Something that really stood out to me is that in at least three of the past interviews that you did that I listened to, the hosts preface those episodes by telling their audience that Errol's going to say things that you're not going to like to hear, that you're going to disagree with.

First of all, I never go into a conversation expecting to agree with everything that's being said, and I actually enjoy having dialogues that challenge my preconceptions and help me to expand my perspectives and knowledge. But I'm curious to hear if you have any inklings as to why past interviewers have had to share the same warning to their audiences about you, or what it was about your message that they might have found challenging or uncomfortable, either personally or for their audience.

Errol Schweizer: Yeah, it's so weird because that's happened to me and these are interviewers who I like, and they reached out to me wanting to hear my weird perspective, and yet they're saying that their audience is fragile and sensitive and doesn't like being challenged or hearing things that may shatter their world view.

I think it just speaks to the fact that there's a lot of closed-mindedness, vested interests, and sensitivity around this. Folks need to be pushed towards things they're not willing to do on their own. What I feel my role is is embracing the fact that I have certain privileges, and thus a platform, to shine a light and elevate folks who are not necessarily in the spotlight.

When I talk with folks in the food industry, they're used to hearing the same old sh*t. So much of food media is just tautology. It's circular logic. "This is good because it's good." It's almost paid advertisements. Thankfully, there are a number of other folks who are thinking about food more critically, and I'm trying to join them.

For me, it's really important to talk about the processes and ways that you can actually implement change. I'm very practical. It's not about the distant ideal; it's about how you get there. It's building the road as you travel. It's making the road as you walk.

If you have a vision of what you think you can achieve, or what you want to do, take it step-by-step. Build it as you go, and don't say tha when we get there, things are going to be paradise, because we know how utopias end up. Every utopia has always been a sham. It's been a grift, and it's usually failed miserably and violently.

We need to make changes, to build by accompanying folks that you're working alongside who could benefit from these changes—not leading them, not being the Messiah or the prophet. Let's do it together—collaboratively, democratically.

That's sometimes hard for people to hear because they're set in their ways. I'm hoping to see particularly younger food activists or younger folks in the food industry unionize your workplace. Start there. Start with organizing, creating solidarity, mutual aid, and fellowship among your fellow workers. And if your workplace isn't viable or you're a freelancer or there are other reasons, start with your community. Get active in your community. Does your city have a food policy board or Food Policy Council? Is there a school board, a PTA, or is there something that you could start?

Don't wait for the next presidential election and hope that you get some messianic figure that will come and fix everything, because it's going to be messy. Start locally as much as you can, and start creating those systems of equality and justice and diversity and access within your network, within your sphere, within your community.

*** CLOSING ***

Kamea Chayne: What's an uplifting social media account or publication you follow or a book that's been really profound for you?

Errol Schweizer: I love A Growing Culture. I feel privileged to be friends with Loren Cardeli and his team. One of the things that really inspired me early on was reading and learning about the Zapatista rebellion. It was something that I heard about as it was happening. And it was very much about land, food, and autonomy, and it was from this social justice angle that spoke to Indigenous communities, but that was also rooted in economic justice and fair trade and fair trading relationships. And for 26, 27 years, it's inspired me, and I still try to keep up with it.

In terms of other amazing books... I'm reading a lot about the Black radical tradition: Cedric Robinson, Robin D.G. Kelley, Gerald Horne. I'm trying to really be rooted in that history. I'm also reading a lot about Indigenous history—Nick Estes, Rowen White, and Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States... If you read that alongside Paul Ortiz's An African American and Latinx History of the United States, those two are probably all that you need. Obviously, you can still check out Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. And finally, I really love Julie Guthman's work on the food industry. She wrote two seminal books: Agrarian Dreams, which is about the history of the organic food industry, and Weighing In, which is a critical analysis of obesity and the social construction of obesity and who wins and who benefits.

Kamea Chayne: What do you tell yourself to stay motivated and inspired?

Errol Schweizer: Just that there's work to be done. I look in the food industry, I look outside my window, in my community, and we have so much work to do. We have to fix these things. Things are set up to benefit a particular set of actors. The system is rigged in so many ways. It was built this way. And if you could dedicate your life towards justice, yet still figure out how to make a livelihood... tikkun olam.

Diaspora Jews believe in something called doikayt, which is hereness. You make your home where you are, not somewhere else, not some promised land, etc. And for me, that sort of justice and struggle and equity is something to try to perform in your daily life and something to work towards as much as possible.

If you have the privilege and option, or you have the necessity—for many people, it is a necessity, to struggle—for me, that's something that I figured out how to do, sometimes in a market context when I was working in grocery and creating great products and creating great supply chains. Now my focus is on not only supporting the businesses I work with but also trying to really work towards labor and social justice and racial justice.

Kamea Chayne: And what makes you most hopeful for our planet and world at the moment?

Errol Schweizer: I always feel like tomorrow could be better than today. But also, you have to have more than hope. You have to have motivation. And for me, as I said, it's about knowing there's work to be done and figuring out what you can do to impact that work.

And we have to be very careful about hope. If you have it and you can share and project it, that's great, but don't lose it. And I think one way to not lose hope is to stay disciplined and focus and to create a practice and ultimately a praxis around social justice work and positive change.

Kamea Chayne: Thank you so much, Errol, for your time and generosity and for sharing your wealth of knowledge and experience with us. What final words of wisdom do you have for us as green dreamers?

Errol Schweizer: Keep loving. Keep fighting.

Retail Category Management and Social Justice After Covid

The covid-19 pandemic strained supply chains and forced grocery retailers to quickly adapt, assess and rationalize what they were selling. Wholesalers were caught in the crossfire, their tried and true methods of inventory management built for efficiency, speed and productivity, not for the 180 degree change in consumer spending habits as vast sectors of the economy shut down. As the economy stabilizes, it’s worth considering how grocery stores decide to sell and how industry trends, relationships and broader macroeconomic factors influence what we see in stores.

Most grocery chains have a cyclical product review calendar that they share with trade partners, such as brands, product brokers and wholesalers. This schedule, usually called a category review calendar, parses out which types of product segments the purchasing personnel are evaluating on any given month. The schedule is usually set seasonally, with product launches aimed to be on shelf before their key selling season and all the pre-work to be done 4, 5 or up to 9 months previously. This pre-work includes supplier meetings, product samplings, data evaluations, product decisions, plannogramming and assortment planning, and communications to all stakeholders, including brands, wholesalers and store operations personnel, who are tasked with following through on these program decisions. If the average store has well over 100 product categories across multiple departments, then on any given month, the retailers staff will probably be taking meetings on 5-10 of these categories. A category is any obvious group of similar items that are merchandised together, such as yogurt, chips, salad dressings, kombucha or plant based meat analogues.

The retailer’s staff involved in the process is usually a group effort with a team leader typically called a category manager or category merchant. Instead of reporting up to a store manager or store operations teams, category managers usually work out of the headquarters office and report up to a director of purchasing or chief merchandising officer, with some variations on this organizational chart. A category manager usually has a couple of support staff, as they are tasked with handling a range of categories, from a handful to a whole department’s worth. The support staff typically assist with data analysis, vendor onboarding, program negotiations and communications.

Much of the work in category management is data driven. Food systems researcher Raj Patel is correct when he writes, “Outside of an intensive care unit, there are few environments so obsessively monitored and reconfigured as supermarkets.” This three dimensional space of the grocery store includes display sections and endcaps which are rotated out weekly or bimonthly and long runs of shelved aisles which stock thousands of unique sku’s and are assessed once or twice years on a category basis. Plannograms are 2 and 3 dimensional maps of store shelves that can drill down to the upc level, evaluating a range of metrics for each item, category, shelf set and department. Metrics could include gross margins, unit velocities, basket affinities, dollar sales, average retail price, average cost, as well as the delta’s, or year over year changes of each of these metrics. Other factors include seasonality, store layout and adjacencies, as well as industry trends and product attributes that work across categories, such as Organic, Non GMO, gluten free, vegan, grass-fed, Fair Trade, keto, paleo, etc. Depending on the goals and strategies of the category managers, and whether they are tasked with maintaining or increasing gross margins, increasing dollar sales, gaining more customers or competing on price with other stores in the area, each products performance and space is evaluated to figure out what should stay and what should be discontinued.

One of the most important and fulfilling jobs in category management is evaluating products and meeting with suppliers, including product tastings, facility visits and reviewing pricing, promotional programs, ingredients and packaging claims. This step could involve collaborating with the company’s own store brands team to develop private label offerings. The private label industry is a vast network of brokers, importers, manufacturers and trade groups that support retailers in developing and sourcing their own in house brands. The product evaluations also extends to third party, consumer packaged food brands, from industry behemoths with deep pockets for trade spend and consumer insights, to emerging start-up’s and mission oriented brands aiming to launch the latest innovation or trend starter. Many retailers, despite their P&L’s being beholden to incumbent brands whose trade promotions and placement fees literally keeps the lights on, also take risks on working with smaller, local and unique suppliers that will add to the ambience and brand reputation of the retailer, as well as the marketing and promotions vehicles used to differentiate the stores, show value and acquire and retain customers. Once meetings are finalized, decisions are made and communicated, taking into account the performance metrics of what’s on shelf, as well as the space requirements and program offerings of incoming products.

There is normally a high level of complexity involved in how retailers evaluate and decide what they are selling. Once the pandemic came into full swing and restaurants were shut down, people started getting sick and dying and stores became lifelines for communities and hazardous zones for employees, much of this cyclical work hit a hard pause. Retailers scrambled to find additional supply of in-demand products, from toilet paper, canned soup and frozen foods, while scrapping plans for new product launches and marketing initiatives that no longer fit the new reality. Wholesalers that supply the retailers, working off of just-in time inventories that kept their facilities productive due to low backstock and the assumption of frequent reorders, were slammed by the collapse of any rational supply and demand forecasting. Out of stocks of popular items and overstocks of products that were no longer desired or promoted, caused wholesalers to rapidly slim down their assortment, in a process called sku rationalization, that reverberated with brands and suppliers. Instead of carrying multiple, complete lines of products, wholesalers decided to sell best sellers and lowest common denominators that would keep shelves full. Innovation and product development took a backseat to making sure customers had enough to eat and stores could handle the evolving assortment while also cleaning shelves and staying safe. Hundreds of grocery store personnel died due to Covid-19, untold thousands were sickened, and whole sectors of the food industry, particularly meat processing plants and food processors became known as super-spreaders for their lack of safety protocols and production speed up’s to meet the new demand curve. There were no major retailers that suspended purchases from such suppliers.

As restrictions have eased, stimulus checks have been cashed, SNAP benefits have expanded and retail seems to be entering a new normal. Many retailers had very strong sales during the early months of the pandemic due to panic buying and in home dining growth, with some of the country’s largest chains setting sales records (while somehow justifying cutting hazard pay and closing stores), so this year a number of chains are seeing relatively slower sales and customers returning to categories that were not as popular during the pandemic. Retailers have started launching new products and evaluating categories again, with some chains setting new product strategies or taking the opportunity to reorganize their operations and procurement teams. AI and automation have taken on new levels of visibility, as retailers struggle to meet consumer preference for convenience while managing cost inflation and navigation a workforce unwilling to tolerate low wages and unsafe working conditions.

The root words of “retail”, are to re-tailor, to renew, change, rearrange, evolve. Retail is a fitting framework for an economy coming out of a catastrophic pandemic, in an industry whose workers bore the brunt of the impact and kept millions fed. As the industry churns forward, this innovation and evolution must include justice and equity, as surely as it means keeping shelves stocked.

On The Right to Food

The United States is one of the few countries in the world that does not guarantee the right to food. In the wake of the widespread food insecurity and economic upheaval caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, a number of states around the US are using legislation to remedy that, following a global trend towards greater food sovereignty and justice in the food system.

Over 81 million Americans faced food insecurity the week before Christmas 2020, or nearly 1 in 4 people. Food insecurity in the US is also highly racialized, with 29% of Black families and 25% of Latin families having faced food insecurity, and up to 14% of whites. The approval of multiple stimulus packages, the expansion of SNAP benefits and the long term availability of free school lunch and pandemic EBT did much to alleviate food insecurity for the time being. But structural issues such as income and wealth inequality, stagnant unionization rates, gentrification, displacement and uneven urban and rural infrastructure development will continue to be prevalent and impact food insecurity even as the economy recovers. 

Globally, the right to food is a legally binding human right in international law, enshrined in article 11 of the United Nation’s International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) in 1966. Over 171 countries have ratified the ICESCR and 30 countries even recognize the right to food in their constitutions. While the U.S. signed the treaty in 1977, it has not been ratified or legislated federally, so there is plenty of room for improvement. Contrast this with Brazil, whose operationalization of the Human Right to Adequate Food, through governmental agencies and extensive collaboration between institutional purchasers and local producers, has reduced extreme hunger rates from 25% to 3.5% since 1990. The Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte established a Secretariat of Food Security that runs over 20 programs that directly impact a third of Belo Horizonte’s 2.5 million citizens. The agency oversaw dramatic decreases in diabetes, infant malnutrition, and infant mortality as well as increases in fruit and vegetable consumption, creating a sustainable model for other urban centers to emulate.

In recent months, two U.S. states have put forward right to food legislation. Maine’s House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed an amendment to the state constitution that would provide “a natural, inherent and unalienable right to food”. Maine’s food insecurity rate is almost 14%, and nearly 28% among people of color, and nearly 1 in 8 Mainer’s lives in poverty. The amendment has found bipartisan support and inspiration among organic farmers and it logically follows Maine’s food sovereignty law that was passed in 2019. The Maine right to food amendment still needs to pass through the Maine Senate and faces scrutiny from the Maine department of agriculture and other sectors.

West Virginia is also considering the right to food. The Right to Food, Food Sovereignty, and Freedom From Hunger Amendment would recognize that West Virginians have a “fundamental right to be free from hunger, malnutrition, starvation and the endangerment of life from the scarcity of or lack of access to nourishing food” and intends “To provide that all people have a natural, inherent and unalienable right to food and have a fundamental right to be free from hunger, malnutrition, starvation and the endangerment of life from the scarcity of or lack of access to nourishing food.” Over 1 in 5 children in West Virginia face food insecurity and sixteen percent of West Virginians live below the poverty line, making it the sixth poorest state in the nation, so there are many residents that could benefit from the legislation.

There is a similar movement afoot in the U.K. in cities such as Newcastle, Liverpool and Manchester, with broad collaboration from municipal governments, faith leader, community groups and trade unions. The U.K. Right to Food campaign revolves around the 4 “A’s”, accountability, accessibility, availability and adequacy. These strategies for achieving the right to food fall in line with similar momentum in the U.S around universalizing school meals, expansion of food stamp or SNAP benefits, community gardening, public food utilities, and purchasing infrastructure for public contracts.

Michael Fakhri is the UN Special Rapoteur on the Right to Food and his perspective is, “The source of the right to food, and all human rights, is the fact that everyone holds an inherent dignity simply because they are alive. Therefore, the right to food includes the right to assert one’s dignity. A threat to people’s right to food is a threat to their very existence and way of life. The right to food can offer people the power they need to rebuild their food system.”

If dignity is the goal, then the right to food dovetails with other major struggles in the food system around paid sick time and compensation, Indigenous land rematriation and debt relief for Black farmers, farmworker organizing and paths to citizenship, as well as worker driven social responsibility in supply chains. Taken together, such movements articulate the potential for a food system that truly guarantees liberty and justice for all.

What’s Wrong With “Fair Trade” Dairy?

Dairy farmworkers and advocates are criticizing a new fair trade label for dairy products. Fair Trade USA’s new Fair Trade dairy program is rolling out on select sku’s of Chobani Greek Yogurt. The leading Greek yogurt brand has partnered with Fair Trade USA for Milk Matters, a customized audit process for dairy supply chains to ensure fair treatment of workers, among other laudable goals. Yet the certification process and market entry has attracted resistance from the most unlikely sources: the dairy farm workers and their advocates that such a program should be benefitting.

Fair Trade is a popular, market-driven framework that aims to support the livelihoods, working conditions, communities and environments of workers in corporate supply chains. The Fair Trade dairy program was designed to support the Worker Wellbeing vertical of Chobani’s Milk Matters initiative. Farmworker organizations in Chobani’s home base of upstate New York have instead considered it a compromise of farmworker protection and empowerment  in dairy supply chains. Fair Trade USA’s dairy program was developed in a multi-stakeholder process yet does not have farm worker representation or leadership in any of the director-level, standards-setting, standards governance or certification advisory roles, meaning the standard does not contain any direct way for farmworkers to report violations, seek remedies and participate in the standard. Meanwhile, Fair Trade USA board directors leverage Wal-Mart and Green Mountain Coffee as both professional backgrounds and fundraising sources for the certifier, while standards are typically developed in close cooperation with the brands that will market such labels to consumers.

Fair Trade USA is no stranger to controversy. After the US Department of Labor confirmed a Honduran grower supplying the Fair Trade USA-certified Fyffe’s melons was not paying minimum wage and violating Honduran labor laws, Fair Trade USA claimed there was no evidence of human right abuses until a public campaign pressured them to decertify. Fair Trade USA has also attracted controversy for the past several years, since they broke offfrom the international Fair Trade system in order prioritize supply chain development for multichannel retailers and consumer brands. And yet organizations such as Fair Trade USA also face competitive pressures, as multinational brand holders are moving away from such third party seals and developing their own internal audit processes, out of the light of public scrutiny or accountability to worker-led organizations. 

Dairy farming is incredibly difficult work and dairy farmers themselves have to contend with erratic farmgate prices, vertical integration and consolidation of processors, and shifting demand and consumer trends, such as increased butter and cheese sales which require whole milk, and steep declines in fluid milk consumption, particularly of skim or low fat milks. Many dairy farmers treat their employees like family, providing housing, stable work, immigration support and other resources, but this is not always the case. Dairy farmworkers, who are largely immigrant or undocumented, have mostly been invisible in dairy farm policy conversations, yet farmers and the industry as a whole could not function without their efforts. 

According to Fair World Project, around 80% of dairy farmworkers in New York State work on farms that are too small to be regulated by OSHA. Nearly two-thirds of dairy farmworkers reported being injured on the job, most of them even requiring medical attention. Even if a farmworker dies on the job, OSHA cannot inspect or fine the farm. Under the Fair Trade USA standards, such small farms with under 6 workers are not required to give workers pay slips or written contracts, access to first aid supplies or medical care for workplace injuries, maintain recordkeeping of workplace accidents, create a grievance policy and procedure and prevent retaliation or deportation of workers who file grievances, as well as policy, prevention and training around sexual harassment, which is endemic to farm work.  Such policies are listed as certification best practices, not requirements for a farm to be certified Fair Trade. And farms that provide housing are only required for such shelter to meet basic minimum standards of safety and sanitation after three years of being certified Fair Trade. And the Fair Trade standard does not create an exception to dairy farmworker’s at-will employment status, meaning that they can be fired without cause.

Migrant Justice, a Vermont-based farmworker-led organization has created their own worker-driven social responsibility (WSR) certification to protect fam workers, called Milk With Dignity. Milk With Dignity has been adopted by Ben & Jerry’s ice cream with no disruption to pricing or supply chains, and Migrant Justice and their allies are pressuring Hannaford Supermarkets to do likewise. As opposed to a standard developed with farm owners and corporate marketing executives, the Milk with Dignity Program was designed and led by farmworkers themselves, who are most familiar with the labor processes and challenges of the work. Such worker-driven frameworks have been proven by a ten-year Harvard longitudinal study to be the most effective way to protect human rights in corporate supply chains. WSRs create legally binding frameworks and enforcement mechanismswith corporate product buyers that ensure fair pay and prevent forced labor, harassment and sexual violence on farms. Fair trade standards do not.

According to Marita Canedo, the Milk With Dignity Program Coordinator for Migrant Justice, “Milk With Dignity is led by the workers and has enforceable standards. We build the voice, the capacity, and the power of the community. The Milk with Dignity program breaks new ground by incorporating requirements into buyers contracts that spell out not just quality but an entire list of vital human rights protections that suppliers must meet to sell to brands who have signed onto the program. To sell to them, farms must meet a range of standards for wages, health and safety requirements, housing conditions, scheduling requirements, as well as non-discrimination policy, non-retaliation, and other requirements to foster a safe, dignified workplace. These standards were created out of workers’ conversations and they remain front and center in the implementation.”

Another distinction is how the Fair Trade premium is distributed. Milk With Dignity mandates that farms use their premiums to improve conditions so they can comply with the code of conduct. In the Fair Trade USA framework, none of the premium is required to be invested in improving working and housing conditions. A percentage goes directly to farm owners without strings attached, and another share goes to a "community development fund" that has nothing to do with improving on-farm conditions.

And according to Fair World Project, “The FTUSA program appears designed with no intention that the standards actually be met, with no way for its designated monitors to determine what actual working conditions are… their enforcement systems lack ways for workers to understand their rights, report violations of those rights, be protected from retaliation for attempting to enforce standards, or participate in any meaningful way in monitoring their employers’ compliance. The program fails to address major structural issues in the dairy industry, including the economic pressures squeezing small-scale dairy farm owners and farmworkers, and environmental challenges.” 

These economic pressures can also vary by state. A large scale national brand such as Chobani sources from large and small farms in New York and Idaho. New York has phased in a higher minimum wage, which is $12.50 as of 12/31/20. Meanwhile, minimum wage in Idaho is $7.25. Fair Trade dairy not rationalize this variance or mandate a living wage based on cost of living or quality of life factors, nor does it square up that Idaho workers lack the overtime protections and the right to unionize that New York workers now have, thanks to efforts by the very worker-led organizations and allies that are calling out Fair Trade dairy as inadequate.

These contradictions exist because Fair Trade dairy does not center workers or consider them right-holders in their framework. Instead, the certification centers the brand owners and farm owners in standards development and marketing. Consumers are led to believe that they are buying a product that may instead actually fall short of the reality. Meanwhile, farmworker groups that reached out to Chobani to work together on designing a more worker-centered program were rebuffed. 

“We sat at the table with Chobani multiple times and delivered a memo asking that they recognize and support the right of all workers in their chain to unionize. But Chobani hasn’t listened to the workers, instead they created their “Milk Matters” campaign without the voices of workers” said Crispin Hernandez, an organizer with the Workers Center of Central New York and former dairy worker.

Indeed, farmworkers must be at the center of food system reform efforts. Farmworkers have always been excluded from basic labor protections, going back to the days of chattel slavery, up through Reconstruction, westward settlement expansion, Jim Crow and even the New Deal labor reforms, which failed to protect farmworkers of all races. The working conditions and compensation rates of the farmworkers who grow and harvest our food are still just a few steps away from the chattel slavery system that our food system was founded on. Today, with farm work done mostly by immigrants, undocumented or guest workers, such exploitation is highly racialized.

A number of states, such as New York, California and Washington, have already passed some reforms to protect farmworker organizing and/or to phase in overtime protections. But true food system reform would mean federally protecting collective bargaining and unionization drives, which has historically shown to be the most effective path to stability and prosperity for workers. It would mean comprehensive immigration reform, including abolishing guest worker programs, guaranteeing all labor protections to farmworkers and providing a clear path to citizenship. It would mean having farmworkers at the table and setting the agenda. Now that would truly be Fair Trade.

Not Just Junk: Re-thinking Food Processing

The Covid-19 pandemic shattered any illusions of a fair and resilient food system. While highly processed comfort and convenience foods trended at retail in the face of restaurant closures, supply chain disruptions and out of stocks, widespread food chain worker illnesses and deaths, and over 80 million Americans experiencing food insecurity became emblematic of the spiraling Covid-19 food system catastrophe. As we seemingly come out of the traumatic pandemic economy, how should we be considering the processed foods that fed so many households through the crisis? While ultra-processed foods are clearly linked to poor health outcomes, destruction of local and indigenous food ways, and corporate consolidation, there is also potential to make certain food processing regimes a cornerstone of food system repair and progressive change.

Food processing tends to be a polarizing topic. The NOVA system, developed in Brazil, is a detailed and nuanced framework for understanding food processing techniques. By grouping foods in four categories, from minimally and unprocessed, to whole culinary ingredients, up to the ultra-processed convenience foods that make up more than 60% of some CPG giants product portfolios, NOVA delineates important degrees of difference. Group 4 foods are the obvious villains, highly commodified and formulated to be addictive with minimal nutrient density and maxed up levels of sugars, fats, emulsifiers, humectants, dyes, additives, preservatives and stabilizers. Yet many nutrition/protein bars and plant-based meat and dairy analogues fall into Group 4, and still contain plenty of nutrients and health value. More compellingly, there is a tremendous amount of bandwidth in Groups 1-3 to create and market plenty of culturally appropriate, egalitarian and accessible products that can be preserved, stored, transported and distributed broadly. 

The focus of much progressive food writing and thought leadership is on avoiding or eliminating this Group 4 of industrialized “junk” food. Such advocacy and writing is typically nostalgic for a return to the kitchen while relying on individualist “vote with your fork” sensibilities and conscientious consumption. But while home cooking skills and access to fresh fruits and vegetables is admirable and always preferable, domestic work still tends to reify gender roles and glosses over the long history of highly skilled but low wage cooks, servants and maids whose labor undergirded the nostalgic American cookery. And in our current economic recovery from pandemic-induced trauma, many households are still navigating high costs of living, stagnant wages, lost work and stressful cohabitation with extended family, friends and relatives. The authors of Pressure Cooker, a groundbreaking study of what it really takes to feed a family, note that “Meal planning is a complex calculus that involves acknowledging the competing preferences of different family members, making sure meals can be prepared within a budget and a certain amount of time, and folding variation into the weekly menu so people don’t get bored with the same old thing.”

And so, applying a NOVA framework to food justice work could help bridge the gaps between farmgate and pantry, while not ignoring the sales of Trillions of dollars in grocery and CPG products found in retailers. Processing techniques that preserve much of the flavor, texture, nutrition and appearance of fresh foods, such as freeze drying, IQF, HPP, retort, recart, aseptic and other means of pasteurization, are already widespread in the food industry and have enabled a vast assortment of nutrient dense, tastier and innovative shelf stable, frozen and refrigerated packaged foods. Heat and eat meals, soups, beans, grains, beverages, and snacks have been merchandised by both CPG companies and retailer store brands, many of which are also Organic, Non-GMO or formulated with pronounceable whole food ingredients and minimal allergens. Expanded use of such techniques also makes the food supply less fragile and subject to the whims of climate change and supply chain disruption. They enable getting more good food to more people more effectively, while also creating skilled, preferably unionized, manufacturing jobs, a diverse assortment of brands and categories, and new supply chains development. The egalitarian potential of such processing has inspired thought leadership and praxis within the food industry. 

Eve Cohen, a grocery industry lifer and founder of Salt Lake City-based Marcellus Foods, thinks that “most food writing today instructs people to eat more whole foods, and there are countless organizations working to increase access to fresh fruits and vegetables and incentivize people to purchase them. These foods are unquestionably the foundation of a healthy diet, and increasing their availability, especially in communities that have been subjected to food apartheid, is essential work. However, these efforts often fail to take into account the time, equipment, knowledge, and energy it takes to turn those raw ingredients into meals.” 

Cohen continues, “Local processing can significantly reduce the burden on individuals to cook meals at home from fresh ingredients. Outsourcing meal planning and cooking tasks has always been a solution for those who can afford it; local processing serves to bring this convenience to entire communities. We envision local food processing as an opportunity to help create a world where the people who feed us – farmers, farmworkers, and cooks – are respected for the immense skill and creativity their jobs require.”

Patrick Mateer, CEO and co-founder of the innovative and rapidly growing frozen food company Seal The Seasons, concurs. "By partnering with family farm run IQF facilities in each region of the United States, our brand helps local farmers freeze and poly-bag their premium locally grown fruits and vegetables for delivery to grocery stores in that same geographic region.” Such techniques have also been used to develop supply chains and connect farms, processors and institutional customers in New England. 

David Mayer, Founder of Merryfield, a digital rewards app that helps customers choose healthier, minimally processed grocery products, also feels strongly about the themes of processing and food access. “We need to debunk this idea that processed equals unhealthy. Depending on the type of processing, what process you're talking about, and what ingredients you’re using or not using, there can be positive or negative consequences. There’s still a ton of products out there people should avoid. Ultra-processed foods designed from the outset to tap into people’s biological cravings for things that are salty or fatty or sweet. But a really high percentage of the products you can find on shelves today, “processed” products, have changed radically for the better. No one is going to contradict the idea that people should be focused mostly on eating whole foods as close to their natural state as possible. But it's an overly simplistic way of looking at things today.” (Disclosure: the author is a partner and advisor to Merryfield)

And while the private sector has a head start in commercializing such food processing, there’s no reason why a public food sector could not embrace these technologies. Over one Billion dollars in institutional purchasing is going through Good Food Purchasing Program rubrics in over a dozen major metro areas. This non-profit framework supports school systems, universities and other public sector buyers through an agroecological lense that emphasizes local economies, labor rights, animal welfare and plant-based foods, healthy eating and environmental sustainability, while creating revenue streams for farmers and producers growing better food. With the onboarding of the massive New York City public school system onto the program, locally and minimally processed foods will create efficiencies and save labor in prep kitchens, while truly scaling good food purchasing systems to become even more diversified and successful. And the potential for more state-level or federal agencies to buy into such a framework could be game changing for so many stakeholders in the food system, particularly as Congress considers universalizing school lunch and the long term supply chain infrastructure, logistics and support that such an initiative would need. 

And likewise, cities are starting to consider publicly funded food utilities and food commons, including farms, retail, delivery, processing/manufacturing and other means of operationalizing the right to food down to a local level. Such proposals insert public institutions into key sectors of the local food supply so that profit-motive based operations, such as just in time inventory planning, labor expense management and enterprise productivity take a back seat to the broader goal of making sure there is always plenty of good food for all. Public sector leadership in the food system could also influence the debate around trendy technologies and techniques, from GMOs and cultivated meat to regenerative agriculture, by centering and prioritizing equity, justice and community needs and not investor returns, agrarian nostalgia or techno-fetishism. If we want to repair the inequities in our food system, we should expect technologies to be open-sourced and accessible to all, not bound by monopolistic patent regimes  and intellectual property frameworks that consolidate power and funnel wealth upwards.

Such an agenda means that well-regulated and democratically controlled food processing must be in the equation, particularly to avoid disruptions from climate chaos such as Winter Storm Uri, seasonal fluctuations in supply chains and other instabilities that will characterize the post-Covid-19 food system. Foods with longer shelf life that can be quickly harvested, processed, stored and shipped will have a huge role to play in building public food sector viability and enabling food sovereignty.

As the authors of Pressure Cooker remind us, “We need collective solutions that help meet the needs of diverse American families. Some of these solutions involve food. Food should be a basic right, and we should make it easier for families to enjoy a healthy meal at the end of the day, whether they have cooked it themselves or not.” And why not? 

In NYC, Workers Are Writing the Rules for Gig Apps

In a groundbreaking show of solidarity and collaboration in New York City, Los Deliveristas Unidos at Workers Justice Project have partnered with several City Council members to introduce 6 bills aimed at regulating delivery apps and improving the working conditions and quality of life for delivery workers. 

Los Deliveristas Unidos is a campaign by Workers Justice Project, a Brooklyn-based workers resource center that serves mostly immigrant service, homecare and construction industry workers. LDU is a collective of app-based delivery workers, mostly immigrants, fighting for justice and better working conditions in one of the fastest growing sectors of the economy. LDU workers were essential in keeping NYC fed during the pandemic and the organization has been on the street organizing and representing NYC delivery workers across the five boroughs. The worker-driven effort has empowered thousands of delivery workers to organize and collectively fight the externalities and injustices caused by the business models of apps such as GrubHub, DoorDash, Relay and UberEats.

The bills came directly from LDU’s campaign demands and include:

·       Requiring all restaurants to provide access to bathrooms for delivery workers who are picking up a delivery.

·       Requiring third party delivery platforms to provide at least one non-bank payment options, and a requirement to pay workers on at least a weekly basis regardless of payment options offered.

·       Requiring third party delivery platforms to allow delivery workers to set maximum distances for orders and prevent platforms from penalizing workers for rejecting orders outside of their distance limitations.

·       Requiring the City to establish per trip minimum payments to third party delivery service workers, excluding tips.

·       Requiring third party delivery platforms to supply insulated delivery bags to workers at the platform’s expense.

·       And requiring businesses and restaurants to disclose how much of each gratuity goes to a delivery worker who delivered an order, how gratuities are distributed to delivery workers and how much of each gratuity is used to compose each delivery worker’s base wage.

Los Deliveristas Unidos has become one of the most powerful worker-led labor campaigns in recent years, organized directly by delivery workers despite adverse working conditions such as abused and assault, wage theft, bike theft, denial of bathroom access and even death. Such conditions were common prior to the pandemic but were exacerbated as the delivery workers became truly essential to the functioning of the city. The spate of legislation puts New York City in a leadership role regarding how to protect and honor the efforts of essential workers, while giving them more control over their labor process as app-based delivery platforms become more popular and widespread.

“Today, the New York City Council had the opportunity to hear directly from delivery workers on how New York can honor their contributions to our city’s recovery. Today’s hearing was a historic day for Los Deliveristas Unidos who had organized, mobilized and built a powerful organization in order to be heard,” said Ligia Guallpa, Executive Director of Workers Justice Project in reference to the bills before the city council.

“After a year of powerful organizing by Los Deliveristas Unidos, will the New York City Council listen to us, the people who kept fed and safe through the pandemic? Is New York City ready to “deliver justice” for NYC’s app-based delivery workers?” said Gustavo Ajche, a delivery worker and a member of Los Deliveristas Unidos.

City council members who had participated in sponsoring the bills were vocal in their support for the workers and organizations.

“Delivery workers have been feeding us throughout the pandemic, but too often the app companies have been starving them,” said Council Member Brad Lander, a sponsor of one of the bills and a candidate for NYC Comptroller. “Many deliveristas earn far less than the minimum wage, even though they perform hard, dangerous, essential work. To prevent app-based companies like DoorDash, Seamless and Instacart from shortchanging workers, the bill would set minimum payment standards for delivery workers, like we did for Uber/Lyft drivers, to ensure that they earn a living wage.”

“Food delivery workers kept us alive and fed during the pandemic. We also saw them defy extreme weather during this brutal winter as many of us worked from home. They are truly super heroes. It is not an understatement to say they are the most essential for essential workers,” said Council Member Carlos Menchaca, Chair of the Immigration Committee.

Council Member Justin Brannan, who sponsored two of the bills, concurred. “We will not sit back and allow companies worth billions of dollars to continue to flourish off of the backs and bicycles of exploited workers.”

The spate of bills also comes in the wake of Proposition 22 legislation in California, which deregulated the working conditions of app-based gig workers, making them more vulnerable to exploitation and precarity. Prop 22 type legislation is also expected to show up in more states in future election cycles, underwritten by the billions gig companies have made off of this business model. While the New York City delivery worker legislation is a good start in the right direction, the struggle to control the labor processes, compensation and job safety of app-based gig workers is still in its early stages. Delivery workers continue to show that they are not passive, but instead are organizing, articulating and leading the way towards a more fair and just economy.

Food System Change: Errol Schweizer Interview with Green Queen

Original: https://www.greenqueen.com.hk/food-system-change-whos-making-decisions-whos-benefiting-whos-gaining-the-wealth-errol-schweizers-got-questions-exclusive-interview/

GQ: Let’s start with your background. You used to be VP of Grocery at Whole Foods and the company can really be credited with changing the grocery game in the U.S.- it helped usher in the era of the conscious food shopper. Would you agree with that and what do you think made Whole Foods so different from other retailers? 

ES: I think for those years, Whole Foods was growing at 20% annual compound rate in sales. A good chunk of the 1990s into the 2000s, when I was there, and even into the 2010s, the employee base was super motivated and creative and empowered to just do things differently. To do more local sourcing, to develop relationships with innovative brands and develop new product assortments, new store formats. We had a lot of freedom to develop new supply chains. Retail is about giving customers what they want, you know, it’s rinse, wash, repeat. It’s very dialectical, it’s a practice space. You figure out who’s keeping you in business, how to make them happy, and keep giving them what they want. So they come back. And that’s all we did. 

I spent half my time working with suppliers on product development negotiations, I spent the other half of my time reviewing data, just to see what customers were doing, not what they were saying. I didn’t care about the marketing reports, I wanted to see what they were buying. We found all these ways to slice and dice our data – just spreadsheets and database work on how they are shopping and what they are looking for. That’s really what led us to figure out that folks love organic. 

Organic consistently grew faster than the company sales. Especially once we figured out how to meet the demand and build those supply chains. Other attributes like health foods and kosher foods were really strong growth drivers too. Anytime we did anything around things like grass-fed or sustainably-raised animal proteins, and we rolled out the 5-Step Animal Welfare Rating, we’d see a lot of adoption and repeat purchases. Customers were very much into entrepreneurs and supplier stories like diverse, socially, ethically motivated companies that treat their employees well and were committed to a healthier food system. That kind of authenticity meant a lot and that’s really what customers were buying. We had that freedom to do that, at that time at Whole Foods. That was how we tried to stay a few steps ahead of competition, and at some point, you know, with capitalism, folks catch up. A lot of other retailers started figuring out what that secret sauce was, or at least aspects of it around product development and private label. 

When I was there, I had oversight over the private label 365 items that we launched in our departments. So we used it defensively against mass market brands and other chains’ private labels as a way of retaining customers. Creating a real brand strategy, a two or three tier brand strategy in each category where you had a value – an everyday line item, and then you had a premium option. Looking at how you can flex that with promotions, programmes and markdowns, and making sure that folks had options to stock up and save as well. It was a lot of fun, with retail stuff and crossing that with the ethical authentic sourcing, transparent supply chain model, which I think other retailers are doing their best to adopt aspects of – but as you know, a lot of retail in the U.S. is racing to the bottom in terms of lower prices and expenses and cutting back on store labour. It creates this real contradiction in terms of what they’re saying and they’re doing, in terms of their assortment versus like what I said earlier, which is the real secret sauce. How you treat employees, how you empower them, how you compensate them in terms of that being related to the success of the enterprise.

GQ: Let’s go into a topic that’s really on peoples’ minds right now – regenerative agriculture. This term is suddenly being thrown around by everyone, including fashion companies, and it’s good there is more awareness. But do you think it’s possible to transition to a completely regenerative agriculture philosophy of growing food and crops and feeding a world of 10 billion?

ES: I think the problem with regenerative is it doesn’t have a definition, it doesn’t have a real framework. It’s a set of practices that a whole host of different companies and organisations are talking about. And there’s some crossover with it. Then there’s a whole lot that they’re leaving out. So I actually don’t think regenerative is the right word or concept. For this, I think there’s aspects of regenerative that are really important or seem to be consistent in terms of soil health, soil biota, and how you treat the land. But regenerative in a lot of ways is a watered down, a sort of commodified version of agroecological practices, which have been demonstrated in tons of research over the past years of how peasant and indigenous agroecological systems are more nutrient dense, more productive, and create more biodiversity. 

So when you look at these sort of Global North, Western-centric certifications, whether it’s USDA Organic – which is great and I support – or regenerative, there’s a mess of a whole dozen different certification and rubrics and frameworks, or other sustainability markers, and even established yet really obscure certifications like “biodynamic”. They all borrow aspects of agroecology. In a lot of ways, large-scale organic is essentially input substitution without toxic pesticides. Regenerative misses a lot of the narrative that organic misses around labour and social justice – who’s at the table, who’s making decisions. It’s very top down, it’s very much driven by large corporations and NGOs. And there’s a very sort of uncomfortable racial undertone to it, particularly in the U.S., around lack of representation and diversity. You know, unfortunately, I do believe we have no choice other than to feed 10 billion people through a variety of sustainable agriculture and food production methods, including regenerative techniques, but if you look at what the definition of agroecology is – what the principles of it are – that’s what really attracted more of my interest and attention.

Because every time the food industry comes up with the certification, it’s just picking and choosing in order to stay in its comfort zone and not make too many changes, sort of like rearranging the deck chairs. There’s a lot of positives with regenerative, there’s a ton of positives with organic. I’m a huge fan, but it’s also missing a lot of things. Just the fact that with organic, it doesn’t make a difference to the lives of farm workers. They’re not getting doused with pesticides, but they’re not necessarily getting paid better or getting overtime. Farm workers in the U.S. are exempt in most states from the Fair Labour Standards Act (FLSA), which is slowly changing – a number of states have started to adopt better form worker regulations including Washington, California, New York State. 

Agroecology recycles input reduction so that you have a closed loop. The focus on soil, the focus of animal health and welfare, as well as the fact that we need to get rid of concentrated animal feedlots. The industrial meat production system is one of the most evil things in existence, up there with things like the arms trade and maybe the war on drugs, and agroecology also talks about biodiversity. You’re not talking about monocultures, and that’s what a lot of what genetic modification has been about, creating these vast monocultures of production, mostly for animal feed as well for processed ingredients, seeds and oils, for example. You know, economic diversification, the sharing and co-creation of knowledge, like all this stuff that you don’t really talk about because that means having other folks on the table, it means talking to your suppliers as equals and including your employees in the decision-making process. That means including farm workers in conversations about the labour process on farms, in addition to farm owners, and culturally-appropriate diets and biodiverse diets. Let’s talk about what folks want to eat and how they can eat in a way that is grown sustainably and ethically, and not just impose the standard American diet or standard Western diet, with an overlay of “it’s plant-based” or “it’s organic”. There’s fairness and governance within the supply chain too. Once again, who’s making decisions, who’s benefiting, who’s gaining the wealth, right? This goes back to participation and decision-making. So, there’s a lot about regenerative that just doesn’t touch any of this stuff. 

Regenerative essentially talks a bit about animal health, a bit about biodiversity, and definitely talks a lot about soil health, and it talks a bit about input reduction and recycling. But most of the seller stuff fits into the political economy of food systems, which regenerative has not really touched, and in organic, it’s been watered down since the 1990s. I was an activist in the 1990s, trying to get organic standards passed and trying to be agroecological. But as it got mainstreamed, approved and then attacked, a lot of this stuff got left on the cutting room floor. Especially around fair labour and farm workers stuff, but also how the decisions are made. And, you know, also around biodiversity as a tonne of organic monoculture these days. The problem with the question is, I don’t think we’re having a holistic enough conversation about the food system, and who’s making decisions and who’s benefiting, as opposed to fetishising particular techniques, whether it’s regenerative or organic, or on the other hand, GMO and monoculture and cell tech and food tech, you know, and that’s where I think the political economy comes in. That’s what I’m very interested in these days.

GQ: Do you think that the idea of ethics in our supply chain is a newer idea? As you say, we focus a lot on fetishising technique and talking about inputs and genetic modification, but we’re only now spending more time talking about the plight of farm workers and what they deserve. Do you think that consumers are willing to pay for fair labour, given that even in the retail supply chain, food delivery or car hiring industry, we’re just wanting convenience and leisure at a cost that doesn’t allow for living wages for the workers?

ES: This is a great question. I think this needs to be solved at the policy level. You know, as a retailer, I know that when a customer is in a grocery store, they are maybe looking at a product for like two or three seconds. They see a certification or something they recognise or that has a positive affirmation for something they believe, on the one hand, or they’re telling their two kids in the shopping cart and thinking that I just need to get through the store. Or they’re on a website in-between zoom meetings. It’s just not the right solution. This needs to be at the policy level, and I can’t speak for all countries, but in the U.S. we need to really fix our labour laws. We have really weak labour laws for an industrialised Global North country. We have something called the PRO Act, which is in front of Congress these days, which would make it much harder for big companies to bust unions and it would protect union workers. Unions are the heart of the middle class – it gave us so many of the benefits we now take for granted. Yet unionisation is hovering around 11%, while more than 50% of American workers would want to be in union. So I think that’s the first thing. 

The second thing is in terms of gig work and delivery. At this point, it’s established, right? But gig app companies and the tech companies essentially extract 30% from the system in order to run their business and pay back investors, and maybe you have a handful of executives with huge windfalls. We’re talking about 30% that’s extracted three ways from the retailer or the restaurant, sometimes double-digits in terms of commission, from the customer, who’s paying a fee. Then from the supplier or the brand in terms of the retail facing apps, who are paying participation fees, as well as promotional fees. And foundationally, the gig apps are based on precarious, underpaid labor, and they're funding legislation like Proposition 22 to expand gig work that doesn't classify drivers as employees with the labor protections that go along with that. That is intrinsic to their business model and vision for profitability. So if you’re going to take that 30%, and all that wealth extraction that’s going to Silicon Valley and a handful of big wigs, and asking whether this is the best way to do what is obviously necessary and frankly, has been done before, like there was pizza delivery before. I think the point here is, once again, political economy! And my thought is: make it a public utility. The public is going to cover the cost of delivery. And in the same sentence, we’re going to fix a lot of food access issues, because a lot of food access issues are around geography and location, in addition to everybody’s gonna be paid a living wage, they’re gonna have regular hours, the people will control the app, as opposed to the app controlling the people, which I just call it digital sharecropping. It’s when the app pretty much governs your labour, which for me, is somebody who works. As somebody who has done delivery, I’ve done retail, I’ve worked in warehouses. I feel I’m very fortunate that I was born when I was, and that I was able to make a living out of [this work] and I was not subject to the type of labour process and exploitation that is endemic to the food app/food tech space now. It’s now built into the business model, it’s built on the reduction in cost at the foundation, which is that last mile of who’s making the delivery. And in the U.S., it’s very racialised, where not all, but the majority, are people of colour. Usually younger people could keep up with the pace, but also older people, and still plenty of white people. It’s a really tough industry, if you’re working in it. 

I think a lot of the experiences that are coming out make it seem really dystopian, yet, customers want it. Especially in the pandemic, or people like us who don’t necessarily always want to go out and go shopping. It’s also a privilege. So that’s why I would say, let’s put it into the public sector, people are gonna want that. Then in terms of retail itself, there is a ton of documentation about how in the U.S. the profits from the pandemic for large retailers are double-digit comps, huge growth, huge profitability. Retail margins are usually super thin and during the pandemic, their margins were fixed and stayed the same, but because the sales grew so much, the variable skyrocketed. You had huge, huge wealth extraction where larger retailers gave huge salaries and bonuses to executives. They cut back on pandemic hazard pay, many of them did layoffs and restructuring. For some of the larger retailers like Kroger, for instance, there was an overall wage decline for Kroger workers while their executives got huge payouts. Or Walmart, where the Walton family made an insane amount of money – in the nine-figures over the pandemic, more than Jeff Bezos, who made I think was something like US$70 billion in the pandemic – yet they did these restructurings and layoffs. 

I have a pretty dark assessment of retail work. You had hundreds who died, tens of thousands who got sick, you have walk outs and folks stepping up and pushing back. I will always step up and support folks like that because once again, the political economy, the maths of who’s benefiting from this – it’s a highly unfair system that benefits shareholders. All these retailers are doing shareholder buybacks these last few years. What does that mean? That’s wealth extraction back to the investors as opposed to holding the cash in the business or reinvesting in the business, or god forbid, giving people bonuses and raises and creating a new level of compensation. 

Here in the U.S., we have the Fight for $15, which was really popular since 2010. That’s really what the living wage was in 2010. It’s 2020. Now, we could comfortably say if wages had kept up with productivity, the minimum wage would be US$25 an hour. If wages had kept up with the rate of Wall Street bonuses, they’d be US$44 an hour minimum wage. We’re talking about Fight for $15 and you have all these restaurant and retail associations and private equity groups fighting that. I think it’s something that we can’t leave at the consumer level, because it’s all rigged. It’s all rigged by the time they get there. We need to readjust the whole value equation for what folks are compensated and what food is worth. 

Then finally, we need to refocus and continue to strengthen consumer subsidies as opposed to production subsidies. During the Trump administration, they pretty much gave away US$65 billion in production subsidies, primarily 99% of which went to large-scale, white-owned farms, for commodity crops and processing ingredients and the meat industry is subsidised to the tune of about US$38 billion a year. It’s horrifying to think that essentially, we’re underwriting one of the worst industries in the world with our tax dollars. There’s a lot of crossover between those two numbers. 

But thankfully, SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) has been funded, which is the food access programme, and we need to expand that. We’re having really intelligent conversations about universal school lunch, which is a great way to address food access. 

Then lastly we need to figure out how we readjust the value equation so that everybody who’s working in the food system is paid fairly, and is treated fairly. Here we don’t have a universal healthcare system. I’m an independent entrepreneur and so I pay out of pocket US$2,000 a month for good healthcare, because my wife is recovering from cancer. We have to have that. But imagine if I could reinvest that money or do something else with it, maybe even work less, who knows? 

For American workers, they’re lucky if they have a healthcare plan with their employee that covers their stuff. Then for gig workers, they’re precarious and if they’re lucky, they could get on an Obamacare plan. For many of them, they don’t have healthcare. They are biking around New York City or San Francisco or Chicago, in the traffic, without health care. Terrifying. I was a bike messenger for a while, so to me, that is like risking your life just to put food on your table and pay your rent. The whole equation is backwards. I think we need to continue to educate consumers, but it’s really about policy, about folks coming together, to organise, to make substantive changes to impact everybody for the better and stop or slow down this wealth extraction from the food system that’s really just benefiting just a small number of actors. So that’s my take on that. 

GQ: The million-dollar question here at Green Queen is your take on cellular agriculture. In your piece on cellular agriculture on Forbes, you asked a lot of important questions. What are your views on that technology and speaking of ethics, do you believe we can get to a post-animal-eating world? Do you think that we should?

ES: Let’s start with what I agree with, which is that the current food system is evil, and needs to go away. We’re talking about billions and billions of animals slaughtered. As we’ve seen during Covid-19, it’s highly exploitative to workers. I’ll just say that we’ll need a just transition for workers in industrial meat and dairy production, right? Let’s just put that on the table. The question there is, you’re talking about the caloric needs that industrial meat production fulfils and how to replace that. It goes back to what I was saying earlier about decision-making and who’s in charge? Who’s making the calls? Why haven’t agroecological processes taken off? They are popular and we keep seeing it in terms of the signals in the marketplace in various ways. Ithink a lot of it goes back to funding and investors, and what folks with resources are willing to take bets on. I say this as somebody who’s in that system, as an entrepreneur and board member for a number of companies, I’ve had to fundraise. It’s very difficult. It’s humiliating, it gives me a bad taste in my mouth, and you’re always having to position what you’re passionate about, what you care about, for folks with the resources to help you do it and scale it. 

What food industry investors are willing to invest in these days is a lot of, you know, glitzy tech stuff, just to be frank, and a lot of what they’re looking for is quick returns, hockey stick growth, it’s high risk, high reward. So on the one hand, we’re seeing a lot of cell-based culture stuff being funded. On the other hand, I think folks who are advocates for it should be very wary of the type of money that’s coming into that space, and what not only the returns that will be asked for, but the potential ownership, governance and control of those technologies will be within the next two to three or four to five years. Once you know those investors, and they’re accountable to their limited partners, they’re accountable to their shareholders, you know, they need to show that return, and then also the fact that it’s high risk money and that not all those companies will make it. But then, it’s also investment that’s not going into other aspects of the food system. You know, I’m on the board of a lentil and bean company and we’re in 2,500 stores. We have great sales, growth, great customer response and loyalty – wonderful brand and brand name. It was hell raising funds for the company, it was absolute hell for 18 months trying to find a group of investors that agree that plant-based means also eating plants, like lentils, beans, hemp. So my experience with that really soured me. I’ll continue to work within that space, because that’s part of my job, but what are the priorities from the investor? That’s where the political economy piece comes in here, and that’s where a lot of what I was thinking was, towards the end of my article was the ownership and governance of the technology in addition to whether or not it’s open source IP. 

I wanted to get to the last part of that first, because that’s actually the most important to me. Because, once again, I don’t fetishise technique. I’m really interested in the political economy, diversity and the choice within the food system and the big sustainability questions. When I see food technology come out – this is somebody who’s literally been asking the same questions for 27 years, I’m a biologist and a chemist, I’ve worked in labs and am very familiar with biotechnology and agriculture – I was asking these questions since the 1990s. Like what is the direction? What are they solving for? For world hunger, oh we’re going to reduce pesticide use. Then you can, years later, look at the results of these technologies and they’re endemic in the food system, enabling highly concentrated oligopolies, and seed and agricultural inputs like pesticides and herbicides. We’ve not solved world hunger. In fact, you could probably say it’s just as bad or worse, because there’s other issues around world hunger.

So you could also say that because some of these technologies were geared towards efficiency and productivity at the farm gate, they’re rapidly adapted by farmers. They weren’t consumer-focused. We’ve seen a growth in health and diet related issues related to processed foods, and it’s not just not about the GMO, but the fact that most of the ingredients are processed, and they go into either animal feed for concentrated mass slaughtered meat and poultry, or they go into chips and soda and distillers. We’re asking these questions 25 years ago, and for me, I still have the same sort of questions. Getting back to your question about cell-based meat, my main issues of concern revolve around what it’s being fed, what the cultures are being fed and what the caloric or feed conversion is, like how efficient it is relative to meat. I’d love to see life cycle analyses of cell-cultured meat versus agro-ecological systems versus organic regenerative systems. I don’t think it’s going to be worse, but I’m asking the questions. Other questions involve the waste materials, I call it the poop – how much is produced per pound, who deals with it and what’s in it? Also the byproducts from production itself – what’s in the tea i.e. the liquid that the cell-cultures are brewed in, in these fermentation tanks? What do you do with the other stuff that’s in the steep? How much of it is produced per pound of meat, when you’re talking about literally tens of billions of pounds? That’s what you’re going to need to produce to give a decent ROI for all this money that’s flooding in? Well, what are these externalities? That’s what I haven’t really seen anything on. And there’s, I think, some good research on hormones and antibiotics. I am concerned about whether or not any of that goes back into the waste stream, it looks like they’ve figured out how to make sure that it doesn’t go into the consumer facing product itself.

You know, these are questions that I have thought of as a retail buyer, but also a retail buyer who has worked on quality standards like non-GMO, and grass-fed and plant-based. It’s also about what the regulatory rubric looks like? So I wrote it as a guide, a general guide, and I got one gentle critique from a plant-based scholar activist that this should be disambiguated. I actually said, no you’re right, these are geared towards different actors, like my whole conversation about governance and ownership. That’s really towards the founders and investors. My gut tells me we know what this is going to look like. These are going to be structured as Ubers and Twitters and Instagrams as opposed to work around co-ops and collectives and maybe even employee-owned, which for me, would be preferable. 

At the end of the day, folks are going to adopt these because they are funded and not killing billions of animals so that you can have a burger. That’s where it feeds into this. I think what folks are now calling the sort of old protein category. 

Finally, my other question would be, it’s more personal because I have food allergies and sensitivities. I know a lot of folks, friends, and family who have inflammation-related diseases. I guess just the basic question is whether this stuff is gonna make us sick? The work that cell-culture is built on in order to give it the mouthfeel of a steak, it’s going to be maybe crustacean shells and maybe plant-based and maybe GMO. It may be plastic, I don’t know. Is that digestible? Is it bioavailable? Is it going to make my joints hurt if I eat it? This is what I have to ask every time I shop and buy food, not just for myself, but for family members who have Lyme or friends who have rheumatoid arthritis, or whether they’re recovering from cancer. We’re talking about tens of millions of people who have these diet-related illnesses, but also illnesses related to what they can or really should not eat, as well as allergies, like gluten-free and soy and wheat and peanuts. 

That’s one of the main concerns I’ve always had about the Impossible Burger. It’s not whether or not the GMO is going to kill you. It’s obviously not killing people. It’s not a safety issue. It’s an allergenicity issue and the fact that it has inflammatory ingredients and cross allergenicity with soy, possibly, possibly peanuts, and definitely wheat gluten. So you exclude a lot of us from buying these types of products because of these ingredients. I’m just like, for me, it just stresses me out. It’s like, okay, is this yet another food tech that is going to contribute to food-related allergies, food inflammation issues, as well as other issues in the food system beyond sustainability? Because I do think there’s a lot of folks who are not so ‘just vegan’, but also animal-rights focused, and it’s like let’s take it because anything’s better than this mess. But then there’s a lot of us other folks who have other issues and priorities that make it difficult. It’s personal, stop excluding the segments of the populace who had these concerns. I think that’s a lot of these folks have not been exploited or lied to, but the whole paleo and keto thing, which I think is kind of sketchy without great scientific data, but for those folks who have those issues, they’re attracted to it because it doesn’t make them sick eating that way.

That’s something that I think not only the plant-based sector, but the cell-based sector is overlooking. Those are the issues. It’s a lot. As you can tell, I’m super neurotic, I overthink everything. And you know I read a ton of literature around this research and around the development. I didn’t find a lot of really clear answers, what I did find was a lot of investor froth, a lot of cheerleading, and a number of industry-funded researchers who are enthusiastic about the technology, but that makes me question their ability to ask tough questions and uncover and disclose potential externalities. They have a very focused narrative saying that this is better than factory farms, which I would hope it would be, and therefore it is a solution. For me, that’s one aspect of it that I’m not writing off because it is important. 

Finally, the whole investor space, I’m just not a big fan. I think the tech investors are very short-term in terms of their real focus on sustainability, and you’re saying that this type of technology will take cattle out of the equation and the environmental and climate change related aspects of cattle, and factory farmed animals, and that’s good. But what about the feed? What are the cells being fed? My theory or my hunch is that it’s probably GMO, because what else is cheap and widely available? You’ll just further process GMO, conventional monoculture corn, soy, maybe canola or cotton into something that can be put into the steep for the cell cultures. Therefore, you still have the same problems around land use, just you’re pulling a lot of animals out of the equation. Once again, what’s the land use conversion relative to what you need to feed a pound of cow or pig versus a pound of cell-based? I don’t know. I just want folks to think this stuff through. I want more people to ask the questions. I want more questions to be asked. Frankly, I’d love to see answers. I’d love to see third-party independent, peer-reviewed research talking about this stuff. Because we have to be careful. 

Anytime there’s a sense of urgency about solving a problem – I’ve been trying to solve these problems for 25+ years, like a lot of us have been working on this stuff – when something new comes in and it’s shiny, well-funded and saying we’ve got the solution, my gut is always: let’s slow down. Let’s think this through, be really deliberate about it. We’ve seen that story before. I think with this, you know, I’m genuinely concerned about these questions. I hope folks take it to heart, take it seriously. Then also, I hope that the folks who are in development and the finance side also respond. Then finally, the regulators need to develop a regulatory framework. Then frankly, the real regulatory framework we need is around true cost accounting and true costs of meat. 

Honestly, we could do a lot more good to the food system by just saying, meat needs to reflect the true costs of production. It needs to take into account the hog manure ponds and the oceans of cattle manure, the run-off into the Gulf of Mexico, the costs associated with animal feed and 70% of GMOs and millions of acres of conventional monocultures of corn and soy. Meat needs to take into account the cost of labour for slaughter and processing, and not just the health and wellness, and the fact that hundreds of workers have died and thousands have gotten sick. It’s not a pleasant job. I would not want to have to slaughter and kill and dismember things for a living, [it’s a big] psychological emotional toll on workers. 

Then finally, what is a just transition going to look like if we’re going to get out of that and say that we need to greatly reduce meat consumption, we need to greatly reduce production of this really destructive form of food? What do we do with all the workers? We have to make sure that they’re taken care of. That’s what a just transition is about. Once again, it goes back into the equity and diversity piece of cell culture and will that be any better? Will all these questions around social justice also be resolved within cell culture? So far, I’ve gotten zero indication that they do take into account the social justice diversity equity piece for workers. There is, as you’ve documented, a more diverse cohort of founders and even investors, but in terms of the folks in the supply chain, either way and once again, the political economy makes me very sceptical about those aspects of the technology. I know that was probably more than you bargained for. 

Why The Commons May Be The Future of The Food System

Jose Luis Vivero Pol has a PhD from the Catholic University of Louvain. He is an anti-hunger and social rights activist with fourteen years of experience on food security policies and programs. An agricultural engineer by profession, his current interests include the ethical, legal, and political dimensions of the transition toward fairer and more sustainable food systems, the governance of global commons, and the motivations for biodiversity conservation and anti-hunger actions. He is an editor of the Routledge Handbook of Food as a Commons.

ES: What do you mean by “commons”? How and where did this concept originate?

JV: It’s a collective way of managing a resource. So you have a resource, you have a community that is managing that resource and you have the governance. The governing mechanism is doing things together and doing things together is commoning. The resource is essential for the entire community. Everybody should have a stake in the management of that resource. 

ES: What is wrong with Garrett Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons?

JV: Garrett Hardin was just talking about a very specific problem that we often see, but is not particularly a commons because a commons is an organized way of managing a resource. What Garrett Hardin was referring to was a non-organized way of managing a resource. It was a bunch of free riders without any social restriction. Elinor Ostrom has an iconic book, Governing the Commons. She was the first woman economist who was awarded the Nobel Prize because of her extensive research about a particular set of commons called common-pool resources. Her entire life was devoted to debunking and demonstrating how wrong Garett Hardin was.

ES: What are some commons in everyday life that we might take for granted?

JV: The first one is the food commons. Cooking recipes is a shared knowledge. We have no intellectual property rights, no patents, even the famous cooks everywhere in the world are always open to share their recipes. It’s an accumulated knowledge that we have received from our mothers and grandmothers and from previous generations. Then, of course, Wikipedia. Everybody knows that Wikipedia has already really replaced the famous British Encyclopedia. And Wikipedia is non-profit because it's based on a network of committed people working for free just to enlighten humankind. 

Half of the entire African continent is managed as a commons. In many tribal societies in Latin American, in Africa, in Asia,  they still share resources, they govern forests as a commons, fish stocks, coastlands, seafood, etc. as a commons. And also, of course, the wild berries that you can find throughout the United States. The mushrooms, the wild asparagus, the fish in the rivers, etc. 

ES: How would a food commons be different from our current food system that treats all food as commodities?

JV: So food is first and foremost an essential resource for everybody. That essential-ness is one of the key pillars for my approach to the commons. Also, food is, legally speaking, a human right. Food is also a cultural determinant. But food is also relevant as a medicine, it’s relevant for religious purposes. And food is also, of course, a tradable good. Food can also be a commodity. A commodity means a good that’s traded in a market with a monetary value, the value in exchange. Treating food as a commodity means that only one dimension- the dimension where it can be priced, it can be monetized- that dimension is the only one that is relevant. Food as a commons can value all of those dimensions, including the tradable dimension. Therefore there should be other mechanisms other than the market that could enable us to distribute food for everybody. 

Because in the world right now we produce enough food to feed at least 10 billion people. We have 780 million officially hungry people according to the FAO WHO Report. We have more than 3 billion people who cannot afford healthy food, have a healthy diet. We have more than 2 billion people that are officially malnourished, which means they are either undernourished, underweight, or they are overweight or obese. So we’re producing enough food- what’s the problem? The problem is that only through market mechanisms we are distributing food. Therefore if you don’t have money, if you don’t have enough of what they call “purchasing power” you cannot get access to food. And therefore you are food insecure, you are hungry, you are malnourished. So what I’m trying to shift is the entire framing of food from being a commodity to being a commons and a public good and a human right. 

ES: How do market relations interfere with or intersect with commoning? 

JV: Everything related to markets is a social construct, an agreement in our societies. 

We should have a different kind of state and a different kind of market. A state that gives more freedom to the people. Not having so much command and control. Instead, more enabling or partnering states. Mariana Mazzucato already has a book on that. There are 100 billionaires and now they own more than the poorest half of the world. That means that we need to have a different type of market. Let’s say, exchanging things for profit is fine. But we need to have limitations. Limitations that are agreed upon and provided by the society because the markets cannot be dis-embedded from societies, because the markets are a tool to serve the society. 

ES: Why should we prefer a food commons in terms of production and distribution of food over our current commodity system?

JV: A food commons system is related to food justice, food democracy, food sovereignty, agroecology, and gives more power in the food system to the people, to the producers, and to the eaters. With a food commons there is an enabling state, and a more fair and more social market. Also, with a food commons system, you will have more space for people to do things, producing themselves. Now there are a lot of food safety regulations that really deter people from sharing or selling food. This hyper-regulation basically only benefits the big corporation because they can fulfill the technical requirements. Also, food councils are mushrooming all over the States. The food councils are a political manifestation of the food commons approach. Or public bakeries. Why don’t we have public bakeries where everybody could be entitled to a loaf of bread?

ES: Their daily bread!

JV: Daily bread! One per person per day. Why not?

ES: As long as it’s also gluten-free I’m in. 

JV: As a symbolic approach to realizing the right to food to everybody, you would guarantee that everybody would have at least per day minimum access to bread. You could go to that public bakery if you want. If you don’t want, you could go to a private bakery and you could buy a different type of bread.

ES: So, it’s a guaranteed right to food.

JV: That’s it. It a guarantee. It’s a minimum. Food commons have been found throughout history, and human beings have been managing food as a commons for at least 250 thousand years. 

Food is not like any other commodity. Food is essential for every living being every day. Everybody has to eat. Nature provides food for everybody. We have organized our societies in such a way that we have created scarcity, that unless you have money you can’t eat. Well, that’s not fair. We need to start thinking differently, valuing food differently, and have a stronger hand in the way that the food systems are organized.

Worker’s Justice Project Is Organizing for Dignity and Respect

 Ligia Guallpa is Executive Director of Worker’s Justice Project in NYC.

Errol  

How is Worker’s Justice Project organized?

Ligia  

Worker’s Justice Project was started in 2010 by a group of jornaleras, or women day laborers, and construction workers in Williamsburg, with the dream to have a better life, to earn better wages and have more dignified and safer working conditions.  We are a worker led organization that is made up of committees based on specific industries or a specific set of issues. So, WJP is comprised of committees that are organizing in different industries like domestic workers, who are trying to raise standards in the house cleaning industry. We have construction workers who want to set standards and create more representation in one of the deadliest industries in the country. And there is a health and safety committee that is trying to build the culture of safety across industries. And then recently, there is Los Deliveristas Unidos who organized the first app based food delivery march, realizing that they also need to be able to organize need to be able to organize against the greed and the power of large corporations and tech companies. And that's what WJP is about. It's about building a space where workers are not only making decisions about what campaigns they're leading, but a safe space where workers are coming together to confront the injustices they're facing in their workplace, in the industry, in their own communities. 

Errol  

What's it been like to be an essential worker during COVID-19? 

Ligia  

For most workers, it's been a year of survival, a year of resistance, a year of suffering, a year of pain. And many have gone through all these experiences, alone, without being recognized, without a support system. They were struggling with COVID, were struggling to pay their rent. For many of our members, their only safety net was Worker’s Justice Project. And when we say the organization, it was really each other. Because what the organization is about is a group of people who said, we have no other choice and we have no one else but each other to survive one of the worst crises of our time. And what we saw during COVID was that workers more than ever realized that organizing was the only alternative and the only safety net that they had for survival. Workers were forced to work, deliver food and clean homes sick, because there was no other way to have housing and have food to feed their families. We have seen over this past couple years is that workers are realizing that organizing is the only thing that has kept them alive. 

And recently we have embarked on trying to change and transform the food delivery industry, which is one of the industries that has been booming during the pandemic, while denying essential rights to food delivery workers, such as minimum wage, workers compensation, access to a restroom, access to health and safety equipment and other essential rights that worker centers, the labor movement have been fighting for decades. And, in New York City, we're facing a real threat of big tech companies attempting to rewrite our labor law protections for all workers that are at risk of being redefined as independent contractors.

Errol  

Tell us a bit more about Los Deliveristas Unidos.

Ligia  

What food delivery workers have been realizing for the past year, is that they have been serving an irreplaceable role in the city's recovery without any protections and most workers are completely tired of being treated less than human beings. Workers are rising up in every corner of our city and making a strong statement that enough is enough, that they're not only essential to the city's recovery, but that they deserve to be treated as human beings. Workers have come together to demand essential rights, such as access to bathrooms, personal protective equipment, the right to refuse unsafe work and receive paid sick time and hazard pay. And they're doing it in one of the most powerful ways by lifting up their voices, building solidarity. Worker’s Justice Project is deeply rooted in the value of solidarity. Collective empowerment, mutual support and building a community where together we can win, by investing in the leadership of members who want to lead and organize, but also by making sure we're able to respond to the immediate needs of our communities. 

Errol 

How does US immigration policy affect essential workers in your communities that you're advocating for and what needs to be done to repair US immigration law and foreign policy? 

Ligia  

We believe now more than ever, immigrant and essential workers deserve a dignified pathway for citizenship, especially for more than 11 million immigrant undocumented workers who have put their own lives on the line for this nation. Most of our communities, our families, our members have been experiencing fear and trauma by being terrorized and dehumanized by an administration that had been implementing policies that have separated families and terrifying our communities. Citizenship for all workers, and also taking full ownership of that, as a nation, this country is also responsible for why many of us are here, including me, my dad, my family. We migrated, not as a choice, but as a way of survival. Many of our members have been fleeing violence and wars that were created by this country. So, you know, this nation has the responsibility to protect the people who were forced to leave. 

Errol  

What changes do we need to see in the food system to make things better for essential workers? 

Ligia  

Food is the core of everything. Food is what keep us alive. Food is what the reason why migrant workers migrated to this nation for the first place. Food has become a way of survival for immigrant workers. So there's many ways of making sure that workers who are in the frontlines working to feed their own families, can have access to basic essential rights and protections in industries such as the restaurant industry, the farm work industry. By making sure that those workers who are delivering, harvesting your food are not only able to have protections but a dignified wage so they can actually be able to afford to feed their own families. And then the second is, you know, most workers who live in our neighborhoods don't have access to healthy foods. Many of our neighbors, members, even our own families couldn't access fresh vegetables, couldn't access healthy foods. And what this city needs to do is making sure that there are healthy foods accessiblein all neighborhoods. That is so essential for the survival of migrant New Yorkers who are keeping our city, running.

Errol  

So what is the future for Worker’s Justice Project?

Ligia  

So some of the things that we see is building strong organizing campaigns where workers can win essential rights in their own industries, but also play an important role that will define the future of the labor movement. We want representation, we want to strengthen the labor movement to make sure that we have a voice in the workplace, to make sure that we're able to live in our own cities with dignity and respect. 

Why Milk With Dignity Matters

Marita Canedo On Why Milk With Dignity Matters

Dairy farm workers form a vital but mostly invisible sector of the food system. Migrant Justice is a Vermont-based, farmworker-led organization bringing justice and dignity to these essential workers. Their Milk with Dignity Program was influenced by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) Fair Food Program. These worker-driven social responsibility programs (WSR’s) are designed and led by farmworkers and have been proven by a ten year longitudinal study to be the most effective framework for protecting human rights in corporate supply chains, more so than fair trade. By leveraging consumer-facing campaign pressure, WSRs create legally binding frameworks and enforcement mechanisms with corporate product buyers that ensure fair pay and prevent forced labor, harassment and sexual violence on farms. Marita Canedo is Milk with Dignity Program Coordinator for Migrant Justice.

ES: What inspired the formation of Migrant Justice?

MC: Migrant Justice was inspired by a tragic death of a dairy farm worker Jose Obeth Santiz that was the spark to bring out the light of this community that was sustaining the dairy industry. 

ES: Tell us some more about the conditions that dairy farm workers face in Vermont and elsewhere.

MC: The farms here are different from other states because they are smaller, which creates a lot of isolation, and housing is provided by the farms. So, if you lose your job, you lose your housing situation. People are working 60 to 80 hours per week. Shifts that go from 12 to 15 hours, sometimes without a break, without a day off. A lot of people are not getting minimum wage. And then there is no training, a lack of understanding health and safety issues. Milking is a very dangerous job. The cows don’t milk themselves.

ES: How does being an immigrant complicate things? Especially being near a militarized border?

MC: So, first is the cultural shock, right? A lot of people that come to Vermont, have been working on farms back in their countries. They know the work and have the love for the land, but, they have never faced the winter. And so there’s the cultural shock. And being near the border there are people who never leave the farm because border patrol is always around. Each farm is a world. So we see farmers who really want to support the employees. In other situations where it's really bad, some threaten that, “If you don’t do what I say” or “if you don’t comply with our rules, I’m going to call ICE on you”. Everybody knows that the migrant is sustaining this industry, so it’s just a dynamic of power just keeping them scared and hidden.

ES: So what are the goals and mission of Migrant Justice? 

MC: Migrant Justice is a grassroots organization. It was founded- it’s led- by the immigrant farm worker community. We build the voice, the capacity, and the power of the community. We engage with allies who accomplish these goals for human rights. Migrant Justice created a program and Ben and Jerry’s, joined as the first company to sign on. We created a program which is a solution to the lack of response from institutions and the government for our community. What we created is the Milk with Dignity Program that brings economic justice to the farms because we know that the prices of milk are the same prices in the seventies. We know that the farmers are struggling so we cannot ask farmers to invest more for the well-being of workers. We know that enforcement mechanisms need to be in place to comply with the standards and rights for the workers. Milk with Dignity was created after learning about the Fair Food Program that the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) started with the tomato industry. We learned from them. And then we adapted that to the milk.  Milkers need better shifts or they need floors to not be slippery when they are milking the cows and tomato pickers need shade in the fields. This model is adaptable to any industry. It's led by the workers and has enforceable standards. The workers created the standards, they are the experts of the farm. Ben and Jerry’s pays a premium to the farms and then this money goes- complying with the code of conduct- to the pockets of the farm workers. Not only by increasing wages but by a bonus that comes in their checks. So, it’s really like a redistribution of the money. 

ES: It really transforms a farm worker into a rights holder. An equal participant in the enterprise who is protected by legally binding agreements. Like an investor.

MC: Right. Now we are asking for supermarkets to join the Milk with Dignity program. Hannaford is owned by Ahold Delhaize which is a company from the Netherlands that has some supermarkets under the Fair Food Program. So they already know about the model. They have claimed in the past that they are going to be really strict on their sourcing and their human rights. We figured out that the Hannaford brand milk comes from farms in Vermont. And we sent a letter to the president- he never responded. We made phone calls trying to get a meeting- nothing happened. Then we launched a public campaign. They haven’t responded directly to us, but, they have made comments publicly like, “Oh, they need to create something with standards… and something for workers about wages and human rights”. And we are like, “Hey! We have the solution! Here we are!”. But of course, for these companies it takes time to understand that they don’t have the power of decision. They have the power to listen to farm workers and the communities. Because they are profiting from them. Especially now with COVID. 

ES: What do you feel are some of the most compelling achievements of Migrant Justice in addition to these campaign victories? 

MC: So, focusing on these past two years, what we’ve achieved is: we started receiving donations when COVID started and we decided to create a solidarity fund because immigrants were exempt from getting thefederal stimulus paycheck. And that pushed a campaign with the governor of Vermont to use the budget and put five million into stimulus COVID pay to the immigrants that were excluded from the federal stimulus paycheck. And other achievements before Milk with Dignity, in Vermont, regardless of your immigration status we can get you a driver's license. Also, we have fair and impartial Policing Policies, so police cannot act as immigration enforcement. This has been very critical because if you are stopped by the police they cannot ask for your immigration status, they cannot call immigration for any reason. 

ES: What is Migrant Justice’s long term vision for the food system?

MC: So we have hope that our model expands. We know that it’s real. We know that it’s something that brings us to a just transition. Because it puts in place everything that is happening in the food industry and in a way that it’s really needed. We hope that Milk with Dignity expands not only in Vermont, but all over the country. We hope that other certification programs that are being created that don't have workers’ power or  workers' input don’t try to sell us their things about “being good” when they're not. We’ve seen, for example, Fair Trade USA just created their own kind of “Milk Matters'' and even the name is insulting. We’ve seen that they don’t have the workers’ input, they are not led by workers. They are doing “community development”. Okay! Create a school! Create a field! Create a library! That doesn't mean you are addressing human rights in violation of sexual violence or human trafficking by creating these things. And that's the thing, you know? Companies see these certification programs as easier and cheaper and we are like, “No, actually, go with us. It’s not cheaper, it takes more time, but it’s real and concrete.”

ES: Do you see a future where more of the farm workers have farm ownership or co-operatives or collective farm ownership? Particularly in Vermont?

MC: That's the dream! We’re exploring those alternatives and something that we’ve started doing is partnering with a construction co-operative that does environmental and sustainable building materials. We’re learning from them- actually some members of our community are already working there as part of the co-op. So it’s something that, yeah, we are exploring/learning, and, hopefully in the future because we also have access to land, we can have something like home ownership. 

Why The People’s Coalition On Food Sovereignty Is Organizing for The Right To Food

Sylvia Mallari is the Global Co-Chairperson of the People’s Coalition on Food Sovereignty, a growing network of grassroots food producers from dozens of countries. The coalition believes in the Right To Food and organizes small farmers, agricultural workers, Indigenous Peoples, herders, pastoralists, fisherfolks, the urban poor, women, Dalits, and youth to resist agricultural policies that extract wealth and resources from their communities. The Coalition essentially is building an agenda and voice for the folks at the heart of the global food system, i.e., the millions who are typically left out of the conversations and decision making. The coalition is one among hundreds of organizations that have opposed the co-optation of the United Nations Food Systems Summit by the World Economic Forum, multinational corporations and philanthropic foundations.

ES: What is food sovereignty?

SM: Well, food sovereignty is the realization of the right to food. By people I mean the poor, the marginalized, the disenfranchised, mostly rural peoples: the farmer peasants, the fishers, the agricultural workers, rural women, to exercise the right to food, the right to produce food, and the right to control all the means and resource for consumption and distribution. That’s it. 

ES: So, what is the People’s Coalition on Food Sovereignty? What are its goals and visions?

SM: Well the coalition was founded in November 2004. But, prior to this, groups, organizations, and movements, primarily from Asia, got together in 2001. We were part of a people’s caravan that was protesting against volatility of prices of grains, and unfair rural people’s pay, and then finally we got to discuss comprehensively on what this means on the question of land and reforms needed in food and agriculture.

ES: How have Green Revolution-inspired agricultural technologies affected the lives and livelihoods of peasants and farm workers in the global south?

SM: Okay, we can name a few experiences. Here in the Philippines the Institute for Rice and Research Technology was founded in the early 60’s. This was funded by the Rockefellers and then picked up by Bill Gates, who has put billions into this. So what is wrong with this if we are to use technology and innovations to improve food and agriculture for the so called betterment of our people? But the problem is the kind, the model, of agrarian or food systems that is being propounded. These are technologies that are fossil fuel hungry and input intensive models of agriculture. 

So here in the Philippines- what happened? The production of what is called the “high yielding” variety of rice which is dependent on fossil fuel based technology, on pesticides, and fertilizers- these depleted the soil in less than a decade. They depleted the mineral resources in the land. Not to mention the dependence put on the farmers, the pressure put on the farmers so they could earn! So at first, for the first three years they said, “ah this is good” because they had so much they produced. So, they got dependent on these seeds, the fertilizers, the inputs, and in three years many farmers, especially the poor ones, go bankrupt. They are debt ridden, they sell their land to the banks, they get displaced, and then no more land. But, IRRI is still here and thriving and influencing all policy and legislative decisions in government. So, where will the persons and farmers go if they get displaced? So you have hunger, you have poverty, especially with the pandemic- with COVID-19- it has exacerbated these horrendous conditions. 

ES: What is this UN Food Summit? Why did it come about and why are so many peasant-led NGO’s boycotting it?

SM: The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres announced during the 46th session of the committee of food security that given the role of food and agriculture in attaining a sustainable development goal, it should be assessed and achieved in 2030. They said that if there is an emergency situation, if the situations of hunger and poverty have not been improved- basically the “why” for the calling for the Food Systems Summit, which was announced in late 2019- there has to be a leveraging of food and agriculture, there has to be a leveraging on the food systems. True enough. One cannot dispute that. We agree with that. 

But what is wrong? What is wrong is that just like what Michael Fakhri, the present UN Special Rapporteur On The Right To Food said, “it's like a table has been set, but the question is: what is the menu? The menu is limited. Who will be sitting at the table? Guests? And what will be talked about at the table? Are you talking about the real things at the given table? Or are real things being talked about at another table?”. So we are saying that the people who matter, the small rural food producers, I’m referring to more than 50% of the world's population, are not there at the table. Who is at the table? The reality is the big, big corporations own and control the means, the practices in food and agriculture. They are more powerful than all the governments and civil society and people’s movements combined. The reality is like that. 

So where are the peoples’ voices in the People’s Food Summit? In reality, you see that on the five tracks of the food systems- for example track one would be access to food production- there are agencies and corporations assisting these tracks. So, these big corporations; the Rockefellers are there, Gates is there, and you have these big corporations there as being champions of science and even heading some of the scientific groups that should be brainstorming for all of these five tracks. The people's movements, where are they? They are not there.

ES: What does your organization hope to accomplish? What is your alternative to this corporate food system paradigm? What can we do to help bring it about?

SM: The number one requirement is the realization of the right to food. We should be one in understanding and in the implementation, the realization of the right to food. No food, no life. No land, no life. It is as simple as that when we talk with the farmers, the peasants, and the rural food producers. That means that all policies- global, national, local should be anchored in that if you really want to survive climate change. So the question of for whom and for what should be very clear. For whom? It should be for the majority of the planet's population. For what? That should be for a better future, free from monopolies, from the dominance of profit seeking corporations. So we are not talking about profit when we talk about realization of the right to food. And then secondly, we are opting for food sovereignty and agroecology. So there should be an agroecological transition. Agroecology anchors on the attainment of genuine agrarian reform. Land should be reclaimed by the peasants and farmers. Resources should be controlled by the people. We look forward to a community of cooperatives forming themselves, organizing themselves, and deciding the agrarian program, what should be produced, how do we trade this, how do we exchange this, what are the needs? It should be about the needs. 

Of course science and technology should be there, but the question is how to make science and technology really serve the people. There should be people’s science and technology that also takes note of traditional and indigenous knowledge and practices. I believe that in the long term we can build a sustainable food system. It should be an agroecological transition, not the industrial model that we have now that is so heavily fossil fuel based, has so much waste, and is so heavily inputted with fertilizers and pesticides which poison the earth. We should not be poisoning the Earth. We should let the Earth rest. Only then can we have safe, healthy, and nutritious food.

What Questions Should We Be Asking About Cell-based Meats?

Cell-based meat, also known as cultivated meat, cellular agriculture or lab-grown meat, is one of the biggest recent trends in food technology. By cultivating such proteins in-vitro in large fermentation vats similar to those used to brew beer, researchers, marketers and investors hope to attract a broad base of customers. The hope is that many people want to enjoy meat without the cruelty and the destructive health, climate and environmental impacts of concentrated animal feedlots, and perhaps move away from a system subsidized to the tune of $38 Billion a year.

Billions of dollars in speculative investment have flowed into this space, especially in the wake of Singapore’s approval of cell-based chicken analogues. Given this capital tsunami and the growing public relations push, the entry of such products into the global food system at scale seems likely. While it is hard to imagine such new endeavors will be anywhere as bad as the conventional meat industry, how should we assess the potential impacts to supply chains, human health and the environment of cell-based meats? Let’s start with a couple of examples from food history as context.

Over a hundred years ago, Procter & Gamble introduced hydrogenated oils, or trans fats, into the food supply, an innovative trend that took off during the Great Depression and World War Two years when butter was scarce. With growing concerns connecting these oils to inflammation, heart disease and cholesterol, much of the food industry started moving away from trans fats for the last two decades (and unfortunately switched to palm oil, but that is another story). A few decades ago, the biotechnology sector introduced the world to genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Within a few years, farmers rapidly adopted the new crop technologies due to beneficial traits that controlled pests, suppressed weeds and increased yields. Today, nearly 90% of cash crops such as corn, soy, canola and cotton are genetically modified, and their ingredient derivatives are found in the majority of processed foods. But after decades of denial and obfuscation, the companies that make the chemical inputs necessary for cultivating GMO crops, particularly glyphosate which is the active ingredient in RoundUp, have been the subject of cancer lawsuits, health and environmental concerns and hefty settlements. 

With the intention of learning from some of the unforeseen consequences of previous large scale food tech innovation, here are some lines of inquiry regarding cell-based meats:

How will such products be labeled and marketed to consumers on retail shelves and in restaurants and food service? 

What is in the feed stock for the nutrient medium that such products are grown in? The volumes of meat needed to turn a profit for investors will necessitate millions of pounds or gallons of nutrient mix annually. Will the feed stock be derived from cheap, plentiful but chemical-laden byproducts of GMO agriculture , particularly soy and/or corn? Or is there some other readily available supply chain being developed? And what are the environmental and health impacts of these feedstock raw materials?

What is the “feed” conversion ratio? For every million pounds of cell-based meat produced for consumption, how much feedstock is needed? Feed conversions ratios for live chicken is 1.6:1, meaning 1.6 pounds of feed for 1lb of chicken. Considering the yield of a live chicken is 70%, would this mean that you would need 1.6 pounds of feed for .7 pounds of cultivated meat? Likewise, for a beef cow, the feed ratio is 6:1, 6 pounds of grain to 1 pound of meat. Assuming a 60% yield for live beef, should we assume that 6 pounds of feed would be needed for .6 pounds of cultivated analogous meat? And feed conversion for a healthy, young dairy cow is about 4:1. Would the feedstock requirements for cell-based dairy production be a similar ratio, or will this depend on the specific product line? Would some varieties enable the nutrient uptake to be more efficient, and if so, how and why? And how much acreage per pound of finished product will be necessary to grow such raw materials further upstream?

Will growth hormones be involved in the cultivation of these products, and if so, would the final consumer-facing product contain hormone traces or residue? 

What else is in this growth media and what is the disposal method for the spent media once the protein is extracted? How many gallons or pounds of spent media will be produced per pound of cultivated meat? Will it need to be regulated and handled as a biohazard or will it be compostable or disposable in municipal sewage and waste management systems? Are there other byproducts or waste materials from processing that contain contaminants or biohazards that will need to be mitigated and dealt with? 

How much “poop”, or metabolic waste material, will each pound of cell-based meat produce over the span of cultivation until harvest? What is in it and how will its disposal be managed? Who cleans up the “poop”?

Are animal derived ingredients, including fetal bovine cells, in the production mix? What about the use of antibiotics in cell cultures to control growth of unwanted microbes? Will antibiotic resistant material remain in the growth media after protein extraction and removal and if so, how will it be dealt with? Will there be antibiotic residue in the final consumer product? And if so, will antibiotic free options be available?

What are the types of molecular scaffolds that such products will be built on and will such ingredients be transparent to consumers? Will they be animal derived, GMO-derived/plant-based or plastic/synthetic? How will they influence the allergenicity of the final product if derived from common allergens such as soy, corn, crustaceans, fungi or insects? How will insect or crustacean derived scaffolding affect Kosher or halal certification?

Will genetically engineered microorganisms, such as the yeast that produces the soy leghemoglobin (aka heme) used as the tasty, umami-rich flavor in Impossible® Burgers, have a role in the production process?

What other novel, unintended proteins or byproducts will be present in the finished product? Will these also need to be identified and labeled for consumer transparency?

Will consumers or their family members with food sensitivities/allergies, autoimmune  or inflammation issues, or otherwise afflicted with rheumatoid arthritis, Lyme disease or PANDAS be able to safely consume such products? Will there be independent, peer-reviewed, third party research to guide doctors or health care providers on this?

What is the bioavailability and nutrient density compared to various techniques of animal-based agriculture, ranging from concentrated feedlot beef to Organic, Grassfed or Regenerative beef?

Will the cell-based analogues be patented and subject to intellectual property protections? And will secrecy and knowledge hoarding enabled by patents and IP protections make these conversations around transparency a moot point?

What types of social equity are being built into the supply chains and organizational structures of cell-based agriculture companies? Who owns, governs and makes decisions? How many companies outside of Asiawill have women, people of color and otherwise not cis-hetero white men in charge? What is the distribution and allocation of shares and profits in such companies? Are any pursuing B-Corp certification, open book management, true cost accounting or other progressive corporate models? How many such companies will consider employee ownership or becoming worker cooperatives? Will such companies embrace collective bargaining and unionization efforts, and greater worker input into the labor process and decision making? 

Or perhaps the technology should be put into the public sector, especially if research is underwritten by public funds (like previous large scale tech endeavors such as the internet, cellular networks, and LCD technology) in order to ensure that it’s commercialization does not add to the critical levels of inequality, food apartheid, inaccessibility and precarity so common in the food industry. A public sector solution could ensure that all such information can be in the public domain, open sourced and accessible, with patents waived.While the technology intends to challenge the most egregious forms of animal-based agriculture, how will cell-based meat companies improve the living standards and well-being of blue-collar employees in their supply chain? Considering the competition, this should not be a high bar to overcome.

These are some of the many questions we should be asking about this new food technology as it enters the market. Transparency and openness, a clear understanding and mitigation of production externalities, plus justice and equity in business models will be signs that cell-based meat companies are a new breed of food tech. Meanwhile, ethical meat-averse consumers still have healthy, delicious and compelling alternatives to both cell-based and CAFO meat. But we can hope to cultivate trust and accountability.

(Disclosure: The author is a Board Member of the Non-GMO Project, a non-profit organization that believes that everyone has a right to know what is in their food.)

May Day 2020 Call To Action

Originally published here for May Day 2020: https://fairworldproject.org/may-day-2020-call-to-action/

May Day, or International Workers’ Day this year comes as the U.S. passes a tragic milestone: 1 million infected with COVID-19. The greatest tragedy of all: it does not have to be this way. Too many of the biggest employers in the country have been too slow to respond and have put their own profits ahead of workers’ health. May Day originated in demonstrations in the late 19th century as workers organized around then-radical demands such as an 8-hour work day and against the early industrialists they called Robber Barons getting rich off their exploitation. History calls that time the Gilded Age, calling to mind the riches those wealthy industrialists earned on the backs of those workers. But out of that era also came a broad, international labor movement that shaped the way we work today. 

This year, we see a new growth of worker organizing. On May 1st, “an unprecedented coalition of workers from some of America’s largest companies will strike.” Workers from Amazon, Instacart, Whole Foods, Walmart, Target, and FedEx are slated to walk out. Organizers cite these companies’ focus on profits at the expense of workers’ health and safety as the reason for the massive collective action. This moment is historic—most of these workers do not have formal union representation, and many of these companies have successfully squelched union organizing before. But, following a series of successful walkouts over the past few months, workers are building power. 

Welcome to the new Gilded Age. In the last couple of months, tech billionaires with names like Gates and Musk have seen their net worth increase by over $305 Billion, while over 26 million people in the U.S. have lost their jobs. At the top of the silicon heap is Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder of Amazon, who’s seen his 11% stake balloon by over $25 billion between mid-March and mid-April, while Amazon’s stock value rose by over $140 billion to $1.4 trillion dollars. How is this even possible?

Well, Jeff Bezos, makes his money the old fashioned way, by exploiting his workers, avoiding taxes, bullying his suppliers and creating monopoly conditions to dominate his competitors. For many online shoppers, Amazon is irresistible due to their “consumer welfare” policy: serving their customers faster and cheaper than anyone else. But that pace and price has resulted in working conditions that are not far removed from what 19th Century Gilded Age exploitation looked like.

Amazon warehouse staff are expected to pick and load hundreds of packages per shift, running back and forth in facilities larger than several football fields. As they dodge forklifts, automated pallet jacks, robots, and each other, they are electronically monitored for how fast and accurately they pick and pack your orders. Breaks are minimal and barely give workers time to walk the massive warehouses for a bathroom break or to stay hydrated. These conditions are exhausting and backbreaking on any normal day. When you compound this with thousands of workers on the floor per shift, lacking essential benefits like paid sick leave and childcare, it is no wonder that Amazon facilities have become hotbeds of COVID-19 infections. Amazon workers in dozens of their facilities have gotten sick and at least one has died from coronavirus related symptoms.

Amazon has had outbreaks in many U.S. facilities, including in warehouses serving New York City, Chicago, Minnesota, and Michigan. They have been slow to respond for calls to deep clean affected facilities and have been vague and circumspect when informing warehouse staff when co-workers have been infected. With viral residue able to survive on packages for over 24 hours, plus working conditions that prevent social distancing, and warehouses not always having adequate stock of gloves, masks and hand sanitizer, many Amazon workers across the country have taken matters into their own hands. Many Amazon workers are recent immigrants and Black and Latino people—the same demographics who are disproportionately represented in Coronavirus death counts. That is not a coincidence. Instead, it is a call to action. Instead of watching the death toll climb among frontline workers, and the communities of color that they disproportionately come from, Amazon needs to put the safety and wellbeing of their workforce first. It’s not like they don’t have enough money to do it.

2020 Health & Safety Crisis For Food Workers During COVID-19

Originally published here in April 2020: https://fairworldproject.org/health-safety-first-protect-food-workers-from-covid-19/

Author’s Note, May 2021: According to data collected by FERN, as of May 7, 2021at 12pm ET, at least 1,437meatpacking and food processing plants (572 meatpacking and 865 food processing) and 407 farms and production facilities have had confirmed cases of Covid-19. At least 90,055 workers (58,989 meatpacking workers, 17,980 food processing workers, and 13,086 farmworkers) have tested positive for Covid-19 and at least 383 workers (291 meatpacking workers, 49 food processing workers, and 43 farmworkers) have died.

COVID-19 is revealing the ways in which our food and farming systems are designed to extract the maximum from people and the planet in the interest of corporate profits. We talk often about how corporate consolidation gives just a few big companies the ability to push low prices and lousy terms downstream onto cocoa and coffee farmers. But that’s just one piece of the Big Food playbook. This week, food industry analyst Errol Schweizer looks at the meatpacking industry, where Big Food companies have been using their massive, consolidated power to drive down wages and drive up the danger at work for years.

Coronavirus has pulled back the curtain on many of the worst contradictions in our food system. Since March 2020, headlines have been non-stop about food waste, inefficient supply chains, and empty grocery shelves. Food workers face daily exposure to COVID-19 and are risking their lives for their jobs. The epicenter of both these food system woes and skyrocketing infection rates is our highly consolidated meat industry, particularly the Tyson, JBS, Smithfield and Cargill monopolies in beef, pork and poultry. Meatpacking workers are getting sick by the thousands.  It is time for the regulators tasked with protecting their health to issue clear, mandatory guidance for workers on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The meat and poultry industry has experienced massive consolidation in the last 40 years, while relocating production facilities in rural areas out of the public eye. These processing facilities are massive, employing thousands of people on a daily basis and processing millions of animal per year. Working conditions are abysmal and safety enforcement is lax, according to Human Rights Watch, with chronic illness and serious injury the norm among workers. Processing lines run at breakneck speeds to turn dead carcasses into consumer-friendly portions, resulting in repetitive motion injuries for many workers. Restrictive personnel policies don’t allow adequate bathroom breaks, and cavalier approaches to CDC and OSHA guidelines do little to protect worker health and safety. Nearly two-thirds of meat and poultry plant workers are immigrants and people of color, with many refugees and formerly incarcerated individuals as well. After decades of corporate consolidation and relocation to rural areas, meat industry wages have plummeted, with current wages averaging $14 per hour, a drop of 50% since the 1970’s. Workers rarely have paid sick leave and benefits are minimal, and many of them can only afford to live in substandard housing with many roommates and family members. Upton Sinclair, who wrote “The Jungle” over one hundred years ago would recognize this new normal in the meat industry: find the most vulnerable people in society, give them the most dangerous jobs at the lowest pay, and rake in the profits off of their misery. Meatpacking was already a dangerous job. Then Coronavirus hit.

The pandemic has had a horrifying and tragic impact on meat plant workers. According to data collected by FERN, over 204 meatpacking and processed food plants have confirmed cases of COVID-19, as of May 12th. Over 14,600 workers have become ill, and close to 60 have died. The rural communities that host meatpacking plants are now nationally significant coronavirus hotspots, outpacing densely-packed cities for infection rates.

Against this backdrop, the chairman of Tyson Foods, John Tyson, took out a full page ad in the New York Times in late April to warn the public that “the food supply is breaking.” Tyson warned of food shortages in grocery stores and huge food waste on farms, with millions of animals being euthanized and composted. Tyson Foods is no stranger to the halls of power and their self-serving attempt at a public service announcement found the right audience. Within 24 hours, President Donald Trump issued an Executive Order invoking the Defense Production Act to compel meat plants to remain open, while avoiding liability for the deaths and illnesses to come, as long as they follow weakly enforced guidelines from CDC and OSHA. Since this announcement, confirmed COVID-19 cases jumped 40% in counties with beef and pork packing plants, compared to a 19% rise nationally during that time period.

The uproar that followed Trump’s Order has brought the plight of meat plant workers into the light of day. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka blasted the decision, pointing out that, while the President has been slow to act to ensure the production of life-saving protective equipment, he has stepped up quickly, “favoring executives over working people, and the stock market over human lives. He is forcing workers to choose between a paycheck and their health.”

Stuart Applebaum, head of RWDSU (Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union), which represents thousands of meat plant workers in the Southeast, summed up the situation, saying “It’s the wrong decision because the best way to protect the food chain is to protect the safety of the workers.”

Organizers from Venceremos, an Arkansas-based group organizing poultry workers, have launched an online campaign to support the 30,000 Tyson workers in Arkansas. They are demanding that Tyson provide paid sick leave for workers who need to be quarantined, as well as hazard pay for working on the processing line during a pandemic. Rural Community Workers Alliance (RWCA) has filed a lawsuit against Smithfield in order to force the company to protect worker health and safety. And LULAC, a Latino civil rights group, called for a Meatless May, a boycott of chicken, beef and pork, calling on communities to stand with meat plant workers for safer conditions.

The United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), the union for over one hundred thousand meatpacking workers nationwide, has issued five demands for meat conglomerates to protect their employees from sickness: prioritize testing for essential workers, ensure access to personal protective equipment (PPE), reduce line speeds, mandate social distancing in plants, and allow infected workers to quarantine at home with pay.

The HEAL Food Alliance (Health, Environment, Agriculture, Labor) and Food Chain Workers Alliance have penned an open letter to the Department of Labor and Congress. This letter echoes the themes raised by the frontline food workers who make up much of their membership and calls for urgent, mandatory regulatory action to protect them.  Specifically, they call for:

1. OSHA to issue and enforce an Emergency Temporary Standard to protect food workers and all essential workers from COVID-19.

2. Congress to immediately pass legislation to:

   • Compel OSHA to issue an enforceable Emergency Temporary Standard—as is laid out inR. 6559—and provide OSHA with commensurate funds to implement this mandate.

   • Mandate employers to provide premium pay at a minimum of time and half to all workers given the increasingly hazardous, deadly conditions.

As the organizers from HEAL note, “food workers are not disposable.” It is clear that the meat industry is not going to police themselves, and voluntary standards leave workers vulnerable. We must support frontline workers’ calls for clear rules to protect them in the workplace—and keep more communities from getting sick.

Why The PRO-Act Is Key To Racial Justice And Economic Democracy

The initial results for RWDSU’s high profile organizing drive at an Amazon facility in Bessemer, Alabama demonstrate the extent that labor laws favor employers during unionization efforts. The historic campaign also illustrates the struggles that working class people of color face in achieving economic justice in the fast growing fulfilment and logistics sector. And more presciently, the campaign highlights the need for better legal protections for such workers seeking to unionize, namely passage of The PRO-Act.

In a video press conference on April 9, RWDSU President Stuart Appelbaum recognized the efforts of the Bessemer workers while pointing out, “The results demonstrate the powerful impact of employer intimidation and interference. Amazon misled and tried to manipulate workers. They took full advantage of terrible labor laws.” 

Amazon pulled out all of the stops to counter the union campaign in its Bessemer location. From hiring big dollar union avoidance consultants to requiring mandatory hour long anti-union meetings, to launching anti-union social media accounts and websites, and blanketing the facility with posters and banners, even in bathrooms. Amazon worked to change traffic light patterns at intersections where organizers were canvassing and even installed its own USPS mailboxes in front of the facility to collect ballots. For the time being, these tactics were successful and RWDSU has challenged the outcome of the campaign with objections filed to the National Labor Relations Board. The context of Bessemer gives that much more of a sense of urgency for the legal protections that Senate passage of the PRO (Protecting the Right To Organize) Act would bring to working people.

Passed by the House of Representatives in March, the PRO-Act is the strongest labor legislation in decades, and may also be the most effective tool to ensure economic democracy and racial justice in the modern era. The PRO Act would introduce enforceable penalties for companies that violate workers’ rights, expand collective bargaining rights and close loopholes that allow companies to exploit workers, and critically, strengthen workers’ access to fair union elections and require companies to respect the results. The bill would also enable more people currently classified as contractors to be given the status of employees, paving the way for freelancers and gig workers to negotiate better pay and working conditions. Essentially, much of what Amazon management did to convince workers to vote down and defeat the union would be illegal under the PRO-Act.

This new intersection of workplace democracy and racial justice has never been more visible and important. Over eighty percent of the Amazon warehouse workers in Bessemer are Black and a majority of them are women. This trend is consistent with recent labor history across the South: Black women have been leading unionization efforts for over fifty years, including successful efforts at textile factories, auto plants, shipyards, meat processing plants and hospitals. As Stuart Appelbaum of RWDSU noted in the video conference, “The struggle is a civil rights struggle as much as a labor struggle.”

And these demographic trends for unionization extend nationally. Nearly two-thirds of union workers are women and/or people of color and Black workers are unionized at higher rates than white workers. Black union women earn 19 percent more than women without a union and Black construction workers in New York City earn 36 percent more than nonunion black construction workers. Union wage premiums are largest for low-wage sectors where jobs are primarily held by Black, Latino and immigrant workers, such as hospitality, nursing and janitorial services. Union workers in such food service and janitorial jobs make 87 percent more in total compensation, and over 50% more in wages, than non-union workers.

These union workers are also much more likely to have employer-provided health care plans and pensions, and have much more vacation time. And in the wake of Covid-19, there is ample evidence that unions create safe workplaces by enabling workplace democracy and protection from retaliation. And public opinion of unions has become more favorable recently, with 68 percent of 18-29 years old’s viewing unions favorably and nearly 48% of non-unionized workers saying they would join a union.

Meanwhile, Big Tech companies are celebrating the current RWDSU defeat while  putting millions of dollars into union avoidance campaigns and defeating the PRO-Act. While a handful of such executives and investors have benefited from well documented racialized wealth disparities and dystopian working conditions in their supply chains, unions have a hundred year long track record of enabling better wages and working conditions, especially for women and people of color in recent decades. The struggle for racial justice won’t be won by hollow and sanctimonious corporate virtue signaling that overlooks any guarantees of material gains. It will instead require solidarity, workplace democracy and collective bargaining to overcome the decades of stagnant wages, growing wealth inequality and exploitative working conditions that have tracked with declining union density. Do you want justice, equity, diversity and inclusion in the work place? Then support the PRO-Act.

Or as RWDSU’s Mid South Regional Vice President, chicken processing plant worker and union organizer “Big Mike” Foster said during the April 9th video conference, “We have just begun to fight.”