Bon Appétit Management Company

While many food labels you might find in the grocery store provide insight on a farm’s environmental approach or treatment of animals (think: USDA Certified Organic or Certified Humane), few give meaningful insight on the ways farmworkers are compensated or treated. This is where programs like the Fair Food Program (FFP) and the Equitable Food Initiative (EFI) come in.

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.