The Ugly Truth Behind Organic Food

The Ugly Truth Behind Organic Food

http://www.alternet.org/environment/140001/the_ugly_truth_behind_organic_food/

By Sarah Newman
May 14, 2009.

The organic labeling standards do nothing to denote how farms treat
their workers. Is your organic food a humanitarian nightmare?
--

Is it time for a strawberry to make a political statement, again?

I'm standing on a farm south of San Francisco that is unremarkable in
that it, like all of the other farms in the area, is a golden canvas
of brilliant yellow flowers with the occasional patchwork of verdant
greens, early signs of this year's season sprouting up.

It's a slice of California's multibillion-dollar agricultural region
that spreads east through the state's Central Valley, down the coast
toward Salinas -- America's salad bowl -- all the way to the Mexican
border and north toward Oregon. While still a small minority, a
growing number of these farms are now organic.

Plenty of people, including me, prefer organic produce because it is
healthier and safer. But this certification does nothing to ensure
that it was produced with sustainable agricultural practices.

The little strawberry I'm munching is part of a bigger story that
begins in the fields and ends on your plate. It's the story of a
lucrative industry that offers consumers a commodity at a low-cost
but with high consequences.

Forming the backbone of this industry are the oft-forgotten armies of
farmworkers who travel California's freeway arteries to plant and
harvest crops in every corner of this region. The policies that
oppress the 2 million people who grow our food betray its true costs.

Food writer and activist Eric Schlosser, speaking at the Slow Food
Nation conference in San Francisco last fall, said that he would
rather eat a conventional tomato picked by well-treated workers than
a local heirloom variety harvested by oppressed workers.

The strawberry I've just plucked from a neatly lined row of plants
was grown at Swanton Berry Farm, the first organic berry farm in
California and the first organic unionized farm in the nation.

The Golden State has nearly 1,800 organic growers, according to 2005
agricultural records -- 30 percent of all of the state's farms. And
Swanton Berry is in a class by itself, a renegade operation that is
bucking the corporate trends of many of its counterparts.

It's a small farm operating on 200 leased acres with 50 staff during
peak season. Its products are sold on farm stands, at regional
farmers markets stands and some Whole Foods Markets. At first glance,
it looks like all of the other picturesque farms in the area, with
weathered handmade signs that invite passers-by to pick their own or
buy fresh produce, pies and jams from the farm stand.

But inside the farm's store and visitor lounge, the scene is markedly
different from neighboring operations. Delicate glass shelves, lined
with fresh berry pies, strawberry chocolate truffles, homemade jams
and T-shirts (all for sale through an honor-system cash register),
also include photos of United Farm Workers Founder Cesar Chavez.
Memorialized near the door is the story of the farm's unionization
process in 1998. Farm Manager Forrest Cook sits at his computer in a
corner below an enormous photograph of Chavez.

And it struck me, why is this place such an anomaly in the organic movement?

The pioneers of organic farming in the 1960s were as eclectic as a
bag of mixed greens. For some hippie farmers, embracing organic
farming was part of their broader vision and commitment to
sustainable agriculture. And, that meant not just treating the land
well, but also the workers and animals on that land.

The social-movement component of organic farming, however, has been
largely discarded. What's left, to a large degree, is quaint
packaging that's strategically conceived and mass marketed to lure
consumers into thinking big organic agriculture is really a
sustainable mom-and-pop deal. The demand for organics continues to
skyrocket, even under dismal economic conditions.

Many organic growers have responded by continuing to expand their
operations and behaving similarly to their conventional counterparts.
Market forces have also encouraged conventional growers to join the
profitable organics movement (e.g. Driscoll's Berries and Tanimura
and Antle). Many organic growers are promulgating the status quo in
an industry that has kept its costs low by oppressing its workers.

"There's a real clear effort to have a stable underclass by making
sure food is cheap," says Cook of Swanton Berry.

The connection between environmental conservation through
organic-farming practices and labor rights, has been largely lost in
much of today's organics movement.

"Environmental degradation is most often human degradation," notes
Josh Viertel, president of Slow Food USA.

"Because farms are organic, people assume that it's an enlightened
labor standard," says Michael Meuter, an attorney with California
Rural Legal Assistance. "But that's not accurate. There are
definitely labor violations on organic farms."

In 1998, Swanton Berry's owner, Jim Cochran, deviated from the status
quo and approached the United Farm Workers to negotiate a contract.
Cochran was committed to a farm that was sustainable, not just
organic. He particularly wanted to offer his workers a health plan,
but couldn't afford it.

Enter the union, which offers its "Robert F. Kennedy" medical plans
for unionized growers at a significantly cheaper rate than if the
farm set up its own ($200 per month per worker). As a unionized
operation, Cochran could now also offer pension plans to his workers,
in addition to official grievance procedures.

Irv Hershenbaum, a UFW leader, has devoted much of his life to the
farm labor movement. While workers on organic farms aren't exposed to
toxic pesticides, he argues that they, like their counterparts on
conventional farms, work without the basic protections commonly
afforded workers in other blue-collar industries. "They are working
in the 21st century with 19th century working conditions," he asserts.

Jesus Lopez, a community worker with CRLA, says he hears the same
concerns from workers on organic and nonorganic farms. The No. 1
complaint among both groups is that they receive neither state
minimum wage nor overtime pay. This in an industry where 30 percent
of all farmworker families earn less than $10,000 a year, and 24
percent live below the poverty line, according to a report by
California Institute for Rural Studies. The institute also found that
70 percent of farmworkers had no health benefits.

While unions across the country continue to fight an uphill battle to
organize members as numbers decline nationwide, unionizing
farmworkers poses an additional challenge, because most aren't
afforded legal rights by the National Labor Relations Board.

A 1975 California law offers protections for farmworkers to organize,
unlike other states. But, there doesn't seem to be much traction at
the national level to expand organic certification standards, which
only cover agricultural practices, not labor standards.

The Organic Trade Association, a marketing group that represents
organic products is focused on increasing sales and protecting the
current USDA organic standards. According to Barbara Haumann of the
association, the group "isn't minimizing labor issues, but other
[issues] have taken up so much time and energy."

The hostility of many organic growers to labor issues was evident in
a 2006 report cited by CIRS, which found that most preferred to not
include social standards in USDA certification. In contrast, says
Hershenbaum, "Cochran didn't let his fears prevent him from doing
what was best for his workers."

Cook says the union contract has been an undeniable asset to the
farm, which sells a popular, high-quality product tended by well-paid
workers who return every season. He concedes that workers still
aren't paid enough, an inevitable consequence of farmers not being
valued in our society at the level they should be.

"Consumers' demand for cheap food limits the ability to pay true
wages," he says.

Working within these confines, however, Cook believes the union
contract offers benefits that help to make the farm more sustainable
... a step beyond organic.

A stark contrast is Driscoll's Berries, a privately held company that
is one of the biggest growers of organic and conventional berries in
the world. The company has thousands of acres stretching across
California and into Mexico.

It employs 5,000 people to pick its berries, which accounts for a
quarter of California's strawberry workers. Its sales total 50
percent of all the state's berry sales, and its products can be found
on five continents. None of its workers are unionized.

Organic farmer and activist Elizabeth Henderson says that
unionization on large farms is totally appropriate.

"If Tanimura and Antle were forced to pay union wages, it would raise
the price of food and be good for small farmers, who could then raise
their prices, too," she says. She is backing a Domestic Fair Trade
label that, through a certified system, would help make consumers
aware of small farms with good labor standards..

"Unless the farm is unionized, workers are almost universally exposed
and vulnerable, whether or not the work conditions at any given time
are abusive with zero legal support for farmworkers," says Ryan Zinn
of the Organic Consumers Association.

"The greatest irony is that the people who pick your food to eat
don't have enough to eat," says Hershenbaum, quoting his mentor,
Chavez. Not all growers are as bold as Swanton Berry. But as
conscious consumers we can demand that more farms follow their lead.

.