Bon Appétit Management Company

For most industries, state law in North Carolina mandates that children must be at least 14 years old to work. But like the rest of the country, there is no age requirement for agricultural work and many start at 10 or 12, and get exposed to toxic pesticides during formative years. Toxic Free NC is a non-profit organization that works to “put people before pesticides” and advocates for alternatives that protect the health and environment of those in the surrounding community. In 2008, they started the Farm Worker Documentary Project, documenting the experiences of workers in fields and labor camps across North Carolina. Their most recent project is called Overworked & Under Spray: Young Farm Workers’ Pesticide Stories. Six young farm workers talk about their pesticide exposure in the fields and the resulting health effects. The film also includes advocacy […]

For the second dinner in our Eat With Bon Appétit series, we once again gathered at Mijita in San Francisco. This time, the guest of honor was Barry Estabrook, author of the new book Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit. The winner of a 2011 James Beard Award for his blog, Politics of the Plate, Barry has dug deep into the sterile, sandy soil of Florida’s tomato industry to reveal why most of the tomatoes Americans eat have no flavor and to illuminate the equally unsavory labor practices under which these rock-hard fruits are grown.

Five tips for aspiring farmers on creating socially just farms, from Jim Cochran and Sandy Brown of California’s Swanton Berry farm, the “poster farm” of the fair-food movement.

The conditions that farmworkers face in the everyday course of trying to do their jobs are grueling, often dangerous, and sometimes even abusive. It’s the age-old “if a tree falls in the forest” riddle: if these problems are invisible to most Americans, do they really exist? The answer is yes, of course they do. And I am proud to have worked on a 65-page report about farmworker employment issues that documents them.

Industrial-scale agriculture often exacts a steep human cost. That was one of the lessons I learned last week from farmer Bob Knight and farmworker Marco Franco of the Inland Orange Conservancy, Bon Appétit at the University of Redland’s first Farm to Fork partner. They were the guest speakers at one of our Stories from the Fields events, held at the University Club.

The Oxfam Hunger Banquet is the only banquet I’ve ever attended where I was served just rice and water. The banquet, held March 7 at Seattle University, makes the inequalities of our world vividly clear in order to raise awareness about the experience of hunger and get people thinking and talking about how to take action to fight poverty. I used it as a jumping off point to also talk about the injustices experienced by female farm workers.

By Vera Chang, West Coast Fellow for Bon Appétit Management Company Foundation  As West Coast Fellow, I’ve been traveling to some of Bon Appétit’s 1,000 Farm to Fork partners to understand their on-the-ground practices and challenges. I met farmer David Hoyle in between attending the Food Justice Conference in Eugene and presenting Stories from the Fields, about farm worker issues, at Lewis & Clark College. Dave and I chatted for a while in the rain on his farm, Creative Growers, tucked away in the back roads of Noti, Oregon.

By Vera Chang, West Coast Fellow, Bon Appétit Management Company Foundation US Government Wildlife A few months ago, a National Vice President of the United Farm Workers Union came to Bon Appétit’s office to discuss a potential collaboration between our organizations. In our conversation, we noted challenges we both face over the question: How can we institutionalize justice for farm workers? Vice President Erik Nicholson commented, only half jokingly, “Sometimes I wish farmworkers were salmon because then people might care enough to protect them.” His comment is worrisome because he may actually be right… Click here to read the rest of my article, 'Swimming Upstream for Farm Workers' Rights' on Triple Pundit.  

   By Vera Chang, West Coast Fellow, Bon Appétit Management Company Foundation Here is my latest piece on our Triple Pundit business of sustainable agriculture series: When Commodities Traders See Tomato Pickers in Action. It’s about the Student Farmworker Alliance and Farmworker Rights Workshop I participated in at Strengthening the Roots: Food and Justice Convergence.

East Coast Fellow Carolina and I visited Montebello Farm, where we met Adrian Albor, a young farmer. He told us about what he learned working as a farmworker after coming to the United States from Michoacán, México. Today, he is the farm manager of 18 acres of diversified organic vegetables. Here is a vlog about Adrian of Montebello Farm.