Improving the quality of life for Southern organic farmers and farm workers

Improving the quality of life for Southern organic farmers and farm workers

Summary

Activities focused on outreach and recruitment of farmers and food businesses through newsletters, fliers, presentations, and networking about fairness in the food system. Applicants were reviewed and Florida and North Carolina are the recently selected project sites. FOG and project collaborators drafted and revised the farmer survey and survey methods. FOG conducted a literature review of quality of life (QOL) studies and drafted farmworker QOL survey questions. FOG developed a training course for farmworker organizations on farmworker rights and health and safety and inspectors to verify fair working conditions on farms.

Objectives/Performance Targets

Objective 1: Identify best practices and support for socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable agriculture through research on perceptions, priorities, and practices on organic farms in the South.

Objective 2: Assist farmers and others essential in our food system in benefiting from a socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable farming and food system model by providing education and outreach tools and certification and by assessing the impact of the system and tools.

Objective 3: Research public knowledge of and support for social, economic, and environmental sustainability in agriculture and the full food chain and explore commitment to pay for AJP certified products.

Objective 4: Develop and implement a public outreach and education model to raise public awareness of quality of life issues in agriculture and the food system.

Accomplishments/Milestones

Objective 1: The project includes mailing a survey to 300 certified organic farmers across the south to explore their priorities, practices, and constraints to incorporating fair farm and business practices into organic agriculture. FOG drafted an initial set of survey questions, shared them with the project team, and revised the survey based on feedback. Further revisions were made based on similar studies done in the U.S. The survey is being finalized. Year 1 activities also included compilation of all certified organic growers in the South to use for mailing out the survey. The survey will be mailed out at the end of April and an announcement of the survey via FOG’s email newsletter will inform agricultural organizations and farmer support groups in the South that the survey is coming, which will increase the response rate. In addition, we have decided to ask a few poignant questions to conventional growers as well via a postcard in order to gaining an understanding of the context of farmer attitudes for fairness and ensuring quality of life for those who work in the food system. The original design outlined the use of a postcard survey to organic farmers prior to the full survey in order to increase the response rate. We have opted to use the electronic announcement of the survey instead for this purpose and use the post card to gather data from a broader sample of conventional farmers so that we can have a comparison or some key questions between organic and conventional growers in the South. We anticipate the majority of the responses to be returned in the first month after the surveys are mailed out.

Objective 2: The first year of the grant was spent recruiting and networking to find farmers, handlers, groceries, and restaurants to participate in the project using monthly email newsletter blasts to 2,000 individuals representing farmers, consumers, industry, media and others; print materials distributed at conferences and presentations across the South including in Tennessee, North Carolina, Florida, and Georgia. In addition, two major presentations on the project were made to groups of interested farmers and handlers by project collaborators in North Carolina and Tennessee. Recruitment methods were assessed and revised in February 2010 after a relatively poor sign up response for any given area (two farms and one handler in North Carolina, two farms and one grocery in Virginia and two farms in Florida and one farm in Georgia). The project needed a critical mass of six to eight (including at least one retail operation in which to do the public education piece) in one region to launch this component of the project. The new strategy that was put in place over a two-week period in March 2010 included networking word-of-mouth, compiling a list of social and economic justice-oriented farms and businesses, one-on-one personalized emails (more than 25), follow up phone calls (more than 30), and face-to-face visits (seven in Florida) to individuals on the list, and facilitating the application process. This more time and labor-intensive recruitment strategy resulted in six new applicants to the project in Florida, but no additional applicants in North Carolina and Virginia. The project collaborators held a conference call to discuss the specifics of the applicants as well as the potential project sites of Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida (and possibly combining this with Georgia operations). In March 2010, the team decided to move forward with a Florida project site for applying the Agricultural Justice Project certification model and developing and implementing a public education campaign. The project team is also considering whether the budget will allow for inclusion of a second project site in North Carolina (which will be more cost-effective than adding Virginia).

In addition, this objective also necessitated development of two trainings. One training for trainers for farmworker organization staff to serve as a resource for farmworker legal rights regarding employment, farm health and safety and farmworker rights under the Agricultural Justice Project (AJP). Project collaborators (CATA and FHSI) have developed and continue to refine this training manual. The second training is the certification training that will be conducted for certification staff and inspectors, including the farmworker representative that is a requirement of the AJP model. Parts of this training were drafted during the first year. A pilot test of some of the elements of this certification training was conducted for three certification staff members.

The next steps include:
-Notifying applicants of the project site decision,
-Contacting the remaining potential Florida participants with a specific focus on farms with more labor since many of the existing applicants have little labor,
-Assisting participating farms and retailers to develop and implement policies and practices to bring them into compliance with the standards of the Agricultural Justice Project,
-Assisting participants in applying for AJP certification in 2010 and 2011,
-Finalizing and conducting the training for trainers course for farmworker organization staff,
-Training farmworkers on participating farms in health and safety, legal employment rights, and their rights under the AJP model,
-Finalizing and conducting the audit and certification training of certification staff and inspectors in late summer or fall of 2010,
-Conducing audits at participating operations in 2010 and 2011, and
-Granting certificates for those who qualify in 2010 and 2011.

Objective 3: This objective will be fulfilled through a public survey to be conducted in the restaurants and grocery stores that will be participating in the project. Therefore it is planned for after project site has been selected (see Objective 2) and will be conducted in 2010 and 2011.

Objective 4: This objective is also linked to selection of the project site and was anticipated for years 2 and 3. However, initial research on public perceptions regarding fair and just initiatives is already being conducted.

Impacts and Contributions/Outcomes

The project team anticipates building a cooperative relationship between certifiers and farmworker advocates by using the AJP model that unite these groups through joint trainings and auditing. The project will improve communication and documentation of labor policies and contracts on participating farms and for participating food businesses. The project is expected to improve the working conditions and therefore the quality of life of farmers and farmworkers, as well as food business workers for participating farms and businesses. One piece of this will be the effectiveness of the farmworker quality of life survey that is being developed by the project and will be conducted on participating farms. The hope is that the project will provide an effective survey tool that can be replicated in the future by any project aiming to assess the impact of labor conditions on farms on farmworker quality of life. Although this component was cut with the budget cuts in the initial award of the grant, FOG has created an unpaid internship for a student at the University of Florida that is fulfilling this aim without affecting the project budget. Finally, the project anticipates gaining information on the knowledge, support, and constraints regarding fairness in the foods system and will use this data to develop an education campaign that will increase knowledge and support of fairness in the food system by the public.

Collaborators: