FERN’s Friday Feed: The UFW’s struggle for relevance
Welcome to FERN’s Friday Feed (#FFF), where we share the stories from this week that made us stop and think.
Can United Farm Workers become a force once again in agriculture?
The Fresno Bee
“The [United Farm Workers] and its supporters say more collective bargaining is needed to blunt rising inequality by increasing wages for some of the lowest-paid workers in the country. But the union has never gained a foothold in the industry,” write Melissa Montalvo and Nigel Duara. “In fact, membership is so low that UC Merced researchers say farmworker union membership is now statistically zero. Today, UFW focuses its efforts on political advocacy, hoping for better election outcomes by making accommodations such as at-home voting. Even if the measure passes, it’s unclear whether that will lead to more members.”
Delivery logs tell the story of how Big Beef is destroying the Amazon
Bloomberg Green
“For more than a decade, JBS has committed to ridding its supply chain of animals born or raised on deforested land. Bloomberg analyzed about 1 million delivery logs that JBS accidentally posted online to show just how far its footprint has reached into the Amazon in that period,” writes Jessica Brice. “A 10-day trip into the heart of Brazil’s cattle country put on full display how easily and openly cows from illegally cleared land flood supply chains. JBS says it sets the highest standards for its suppliers, but it’s using a greenwashed version of an animal’s origin and working within a legal system so full of loopholes that prosecutors, environmentalists and even ranchers themselves consider it a farce.”
California seeks to give fast-food workers a say in working conditions
The New Republic
“Like many service industries, from package fulfillment to retail, fast food has achieved ubiquity in the U.S. through a militant cutting of labor costs—and, perhaps even more importantly, by erasing any sense of worker autonomy,” writes Alex Park. “But now … fast food is becoming a locus for a labor movement growing more confident as it extends its list of demands to include a permanent voice in the halls of power. After years of unions advocating for a higher minimum wage for service industry workers, Democrats in California’s state assembly are considering a bold proposal that might actually give fast-food workers their autonomy back.”
The young farmers trying to revolutionize agriculture in Puerto Rico
The Guardian
In Puerto Rico, where “less than 2% of the workforce is employed in agriculture and … two in five people experienced food insecurity,” writes Nina Lakhani, “[s]mall scale sustainable farming known as agroecology is driving a resurgence in locally grown produce that chefs, farmers, entrepreneurs and researchers argue can help revitalize the local economy, improve food sovereignty and both mitigate and adapt to the climate crisis.”
When it comes to climate change, ‘eat local’ may not be the answer
Anthropocene Magazine
“[I]n recent decades the term ‘globalization’ has become unwelcome in many conversations about food. Instead, calls to ‘buy local, eat local’ have dominated the discourse, taking hold especially in wealthy, Western countries … This narrative, however, is gradually shifting—and in some cases even being turned on its head,” writes Emma Bryce. “[E]xperts are beginning to question whether locavorism is an effective solution to monumental environmental challenges, such as ensuring food security across the planet in the face of climate change.”