On big farms, protecting women and men from sexual violence has required a cultural shift. cc: CivilEats
“We’re there to make sure that workers have the knowledge to end what was an ugly situation for many years for many people,” Rodríguez said. “It’s no longer easy to stay quiet or watch what’s happening to a woman and not do anything.”
Like detectives, FFSC auditors piece together fact-rich tapestries of narrative and observation to get what they call “a high-resolution snapshot” of workers’ experiences and the power structures in the field. FFSC interviews all levels of supervisors and at least half the workforce at any given location, well above industry practice. At Lipman on St. Helena that day, this meant interviewing at least 372 workers.
“It’s the first real audit organization that I’ve ever seen,” Lipman’s Chief Farming Officer, Toby Purse, said. “You can’t fake your way through it.” FFSC’s audit reports are a whopping 60 pages.One of the challenges of the audit process is that it requires many people working many hours to run. FFSC is similar to the judicial system in many ways. Investigations can require the testimony of witnesses, the cross-examination of accused perpetrators, and/or interviews with an entire crew about an incident. But there are key distinctions that make the FFP work better with a migrant agricultural population.
“Workers have seen enough supervisors’ heads roll for things that would never have even raised an eyebrow before—a slap on the butt, an arm on the shoulder. If a worker complained about that before, first of all, they’d be fired. Second, others would laugh. It’s not a laughing matter anymore. Those days are over,” said Espinoza.
Since the Fair Food Program started in 2011, auditors say cases of sexual assault have been virtually eliminated on participating farms.called the FFP a “radically different accountability mechanism.” Ambassador Luis C. deBaca said that the FFP’s concept of workers controlling their own program for remedy and monitoring their own rights is basic but unusual—revolutionary, even—because it’s rarely, if ever, done.
“I make no bones about it. I'd prefer to have nobody in between me and my customer's relationship,” he said, when I asked him about what it’s been like to work with the FFP. I’d actually first heard about Lipman from Gloria Olivo, a Florida tomato picker, who quit work at a packing house, a work site generally favored over the fields because of the shade and greater labor protections, to harvest at Lipman. “Before I joined the company, I’d always moved from one farm to the next. There wasn’t much respect,” she told me. “People have rights here.
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