WE ARE FARMERS IN SOLIDARITY WITH FARMWORKERS
The future of agriculture in this country is interconnected to immigration and labor issues. Immigrant farm workers and other food systems workers provide essential services while bearing the weight of a system that exploits their labor with little compensation. Supporting the transition of immigrants, farm workers, and food systems workers to farm ownership and other agricultural roles will keep agricultural production stable and revitalized as a large population of farmers retire and transition their farms. We must act as an ally and advocate for immigrants rights and better labor conditions in agriculture and in the food system.
We believe that a just future for agriculture depends on the recognition that farmworkers are agricultural experts without whom farms could not operate. We work toward the elimination of the exploitation of farmworkers and towards the full recognition and respect of their expertise, rights, and freedoms. We use our power as a Coalition of working farmers to amplify our farmworker-led partners’ priorities, including immigration reform to legalize undocumented farmworkers, full labor protections, and more effective enforcement of labor violations. And we affirm that the U.S. would not have a crisis of attrition in agriculture if all structural barriers preventing farmworkers from becoming farm owners were removed.
In our 2020 survey of policy issues, our members identified Immigration and Labor Justice as one their number one priorities.
