In imaginative, lively prose, Mayukh Sen—a queer, brown child of immigrants—reconstructs the lives of these women in vivid and empathetic detail, daring to ask why some were famous in their own time, but not in ours, and why others shine brightly even today. Weaving together histories of food, immigration, and gender, Taste Makers will challenge the way readers look at what’s on their plate—and the women whose labor, overlooked for so long, makes those meals possible.

The post Taste Makers: Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food in America appeared first on Real Food Media.

This year for #FarmworkerAwarenessWeek (and beyond), we join workers across the country in calling for frontline farmworkers to be prioritized for Covid-19 vaccination and for comprehensive immigration reform in 2021.

Study after study has shown that Black, Indigenous, and People of Color face greater exposure to Covid-19 in part because they disproportionately make up the essential workforce. In California, Latinx food and agriculture workers have seen a 59% increase in mortality during Covid—compared to 6% among white Californians; 16% for white food and agriculture workers; and 28% for Black Californians.

As a recent Food Chain Workers Alliance report notes, while the CDC issued health & safety guidance for farms in June 2020, farm employers are not obligated to comply. Alliance members surveyed reported that most farmworkers received no training on Covid-19, received no PPE, and many live in crowded labor camps where social distancing is impossible. Recent Politico reporting also documents this staggering vulnerability among farmworkers.

This is why it is critical that farmworkers be prioritized in the conversation about vaccine access and broader health and labor protections. In Florida, farm labor groups are asking supporters to sign on to this open letter to Governor DeSantis to prioritize farmworkers in the vaccine rollout, including distributing in rural areas, increasing flexibility in ID requirements, and providing information in different languages.

Lastly, immigration reform—that expands access to rights and protection for all workers, especially the right to organize—is urgently needed. But these policies must be meaningful and center human rights. The Farmworkforce Modernization Act moves in the opposite direction and thus, we join the Food Chain Workers Alliance and other farm labor partners in opposing it (see Take Action below to contact your representative).

In community and solidarity,

Tanya, Christina, Tiffani, and Anna

 
Read the full issue of the Real Food Scoop
 

Featured image: Farmworker Association of Florida 

The post Real Food Scoop | No. 43 appeared first on Real Food Media.

If you are able, consider donating all or part of your stimulus check to an organization that is working to address immediate needs and build long-term power around the US. Support a group in your community or check out our suggestions below: 

Alianza Nacional de Campesinas

The first national, women-led, farmworker women’s organization is working closely with member organizations and farmworker advocacy groups to address the challenges and needs specific to farmworker women around the nation. 

DONATE

First Nations Development Institute’s COVID-19 Emergency Response Fund

The Navajo Nation has the third-highest coronavirus infection rate. Native communities that have been consistently divested from are suffering from a lack of access to resources as basic as clean water. 

DONATE

Food Chain Workers Alliance

People who work all along the food chain have lacked access to paid sick leave, living wages, job security, and other foundations of safe, dignified work. The Food Chain Workers Alliance works with grassroots labor organizations across the US to fight for fair working conditions.

DONATE

National Domestic Workers Alliance Coronavirus Care Fund

Caregivers across the spectrum, from in-home caretakers to house cleaners—many of whom are immigrants and most of whom are women of color—are without a safety net during this time. 

DONATE

National Black Food & Justice Alliance Mutual Aid Fund

This mutual aid fund will re-grant money to Black farmers and land stewards ramping up food production for communities across the country. 

DONATE

One Fair Wage Emergency Fund

With many workers earning only the federally mandated minimum wage of $2.13 for tipped workers, tipped workers were struggling before COVID-19—and things have only gotten worse. This fund provides cash assistance to those who need it most.  

DONATE

Restaurant Opportunities Center United Disaster Relief Fund

By one estimate, 75 percent of restaurants could go out of business during this crisis. ROC United put together a disaster relief fund to support restaurant workers in danger of losing their jobs.

DONATE

Soul Fire Farm

Soul Fire Farm has been inspiring BIack, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) farmers around the world by decentering whiteness in agrarianism (check out the Real Food Reads book and podcast episode, Farming While Black). During the crisis, they’ve held regular virtual convenings to assess needs and build solidarity, as well as provide food for members of their community.

DONATE

The post Use Your Stimulus Check to Support Farmers & Food Workers appeared first on Real Food Media.

Although the majority of farms in the United States have US-born owners who identify as white, a growing number of new farmers are immigrants. Many of them are from Mexico and originally came to the United States looking for work in agriculture.

In The New American Farmer, Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern explores the experiences of Latino/a immigrant farmers as they transition from farmworkers to farm owners, offering a new perspective on racial inequity and sustainable farming. She finds that many of these new farmers rely on farming practices from their home countries—including growing multiple crops simultaneously, using integrated pest management, maintaining small-scale production, and employing family labor.

Drawing on extensive interviews with farmers and organizers, Minkoff-Zern describes the social, economic, and political barriers immigrant farmers must overcome, from navigating USDA bureaucracy to exclusion from opportunities based on race. Immigrant farmers, with their knowledge and experience of alternative farming practices, are actively and substantially contributing to the movement for a more sustainable food system—scholars and food activists should take notice.

Click here to download the open-access book. 

The post The New American Farmer: Immigration, Race, and the Struggle for Sustainability appeared first on Real Food Media.

ICE officials raided numerous Mississippi food processing plants on August 7, arresting 680 mostly Latin-American workers in what marked the largest workplace sting in over ten years.

The raids happened just as Donald Trump was arriving at El Paso, Texas, the majority-Latinx city where a white nationalist linked to the white supremacist theory of a “Hispanic invasion” was charged in a shooting that left 22 people dead in the border city.

Coordinated attacks by 600 ICE agents took place in Bay Springs, Carthage, Canton, Morton, Pelahatchie, and Sebastapol. Family and friends watched as arrested workers filled several buses at a Koch Foods Inc. plant in Morton, 40 miles east of Jackson. They were taken to a military hangar to be “processed”, i.e. be interviewed about their immigration status and have their identification documents reviewed.

Entire communities are reeling in pain today as loved ones are torn from them violently and permanently. Mothers will go to bed tonight without their children, brothers and sisters will not know whether they will ever see each other again, and children are left without parents to care for them.

For a community already under attack by informal white supremacist organizations, to have ICE and the full power of the executive branch of the US government targeting them is devastating.

Despite the fear and shock brought to all of our immigrant and indigenous migrant communities, food system workers, farmers, and organizers nationwide unite in solidarity with the workers in Mississippi. Our siblings working to put food on their table and your table in Mississippi are the latest casualties of a system that attempts to destroy our will. But we will not only survive —we will thrive as our resolve becomes focused on “our inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

• We demand an immediate moratorium on all immigration enforcement activities until Congress approves a comprehensive immigration reform bill.
• We demand that all workers captured in today’s raids be immediately released.
• We demand that all camps where children are being held be immediately shuttered and the children reunited with their families.

Until this is done we are all in a state of siege and none of us is safe. FCWA and HEAL have established a “bail fund” to help food workers and their families when they’re arrested by ICE.

Click here to visit HEAL Food Alliance and see the full list of signatories.

Donate to the Emergency Fund for Detained Workers 

The post Joint Statement: Defending Immigrant Workers Means Defending Us All appeared first on Real Food Media.

The post Life on the Other Border: Farmworkers and Food Justice in Vermont appeared first on Real Food Media.

Many of us have been or will be food workers at some point, working for tips or low wages, working while sick or without health insurance, and even experiencing harassment or other abuses. Many of the workers who tend and harvest crops and cook and serve food can’t even afford healthy food for themselves and their families. It doesn’t have to be this way.

This May Day, as we head to the streets to support workers’ rights and protect the gains of past labor organizing (little things like the weekend and 8-hour work day) we’re also excited to launch our Building Power With Food Workers organizing toolkit. It’s the first of three organizing toolkits we’re rolling out to help you get active and inspire others to come together for healthy, fair, and sustainable food.

The toolkit includes educational materials, short films, discussion questions, activities, recipes, a glossary, and more, to explore on your own or with a group. It also includes resources to help you organize a fun and engaging film screening event around food worker justice. Check out the toolkit here.

We can transform the food system by standing up—as workers and with workers.

Get the Building Power with Food Workers toolkit 

Header photo: Fibonacci Blue

The post May Day Launch of Our Food Workers Toolkit appeared first on Real Food Media.

The post Decolonize Your Diet: Mexican-American Plant-Based Recipes for Health and Healing appeared first on Real Food Media.

Across the country and around the world, people are asking important questions about their food: Where did it come from? How was it produced? And these questions are sparking conversations, movements, and policy changes with far-reaching impacts on our health and environment. Many people are also taking steps to grow their own food or buy organic for their family. But is that an option for everyone? And is it enough? What can we do to make sure the food system works for everyone?

If we believe that healthy, affordable, delicious food is a human right (and we do!), we have to ask not only where and how our food is grown, but who is behind our food. In the United States, over 21 million people work in “food chain” jobs, growing, harvesting, processing, butchering, transporting, preparing, selling, and serving food. Maybe you even work in the food system or have at one point in your life.

It’s no exaggeration to say that the food system as it currently exists does not work for food workers. Eight out of ten of the lowest-paying jobs in the country are food system jobs. While bringing food to consumers’ tables, many food workers can’t access safe and nutritious food themselves due to poverty wages. Women and workers of color are especially vulnerable to exploitation and workplace abuses, and undocumented immigrants are often afraid to speak up due to fear of deportation.

By choosing to consume food that was produced using fair labor practices, we can grow market demand for worker justice. We can—and should—also go beyond “voting with our forks” by supporting worker-led organizations and campaigns that are fighting for higher wages, fair contracts, the right to organize, safe workplaces, and protection from harassment.

The resources in this toolkit will help you organize a fun and engaging film viewing event and help participants understand why worker justice is a necessary part of food system change.

The post Organizing Toolkit: Building Power With Food Workers appeared first on Real Food Media.

Blending personal narrative and investigative journalism, Jayaraman shows us that the quality of the food that arrives at our restaurant tables depends not only on the sourcing of the ingredients. Our meals benefit from the attention and skill of the people who chop, grill, sauté, and serve. Behind the Kitchen Door is a groundbreaking exploration of the political, economic, and moral implications of dining out. Jayaraman focuses on the stories of individuals, like Daniel, who grew up on a farm in Ecuador and sought to improve the conditions for employees at Del Posto; the treatment of workers behind the scenes belied the high-toned Slow Food ethic on display in the front of the house.

Increasingly, Americans are choosing to dine at restaurants that offer organic, fair-trade, and free-range ingredients for reasons of both health and ethics. Yet few of these diners are aware of the working conditions at the restaurants themselves. But whether you eat haute cuisine or fast food, the well-being of restaurant workers is a pressing concern, affecting our health and safety, local economies, and the life of our communities. Highlighting the roles of the 10 million people, many immigrants, many people of color, who bring their passion, tenacity, and vision to the American dining experience, Jayaraman sets out a bold agenda to raise the living standards of the nation’s second-largest private sector workforce―and ensure that dining out is a positive experience on both sides of the kitchen door.

The post Behind the Kitchen Door appeared first on Real Food Media.