Food isn't grown just by people living in another country. It comes from people living and working here, many living in rural communities. A new report examines whether the large companies that dominate the U.S. food industry are good for workers and consumers
Food isn't grown just by people living in another country. It comes from people living and working here, many living in rural communities. A new report examines whether the large companies that dominate the U.S. food industry are good for workers and consumers.
There’s a lot of enthusiasm these days for farm-to-table consumer coziness with our food system. Call it Slow Food, organic food, locally grown, whatever.
But too often, there’s a key piece missing from the chain: the folks doing the work.
The people picking the produce, carving up the poultry, driving the refrigerated trucks, stacking the shelves in the grocery store, and carrying the plates to the table at your favorite eatery. How well were they treated in the journey of food from farm to fork?
Sadly, not too well, according to research I’ve just helped complete. Truth is, when foodies do tend to focus on working conditions, it’s generally about workers in other countries, like coffee growers in Central America. How did workers in other nations come to matter more than the person standing there ringing the cash register? How did humane conditions for chickens come to matter more than humane treatment of working people?
A few of us at Tellus Institute and our colleagues at Sustainalytics set out recently, with support of the Rockefeller Foundation, to dig into this neglected area of worker treatment in our food system. Our report is called Worker Equity in Food and Agriculture. It takes a look at practices at the 100 largest and most influential U.S. companies. What we found is pretty troubling – as well as a few bright spots. (See our full report here.)
First, the bad news.
• Workers who produce, process, sell and serve food to consumers face some of the lowest paying jobs and the highest levels of food insecurity in the U.S.
Compared to other frontline workers, food workers earn about one-third less – only $18,900 a year. Many of these jobs lack the rudimentary protections of wage and hour laws. The federal wage for tipped workers in restaurants, for example, has been frozen at $2.13 since 1991. Food servers rely on food stamps at nearly double the rate of the overall population. The people serving us our food, in other words, are among those least able to eat well.
• Some of the most dangerous jobs in the U.S. are in the food industry.
While the fatality rate for all industries is 3.5 per 100,000 workers, in agriculture the rate is over 25, and for warehousing and transportation jobs it is 15.
And then there’s the meat slaughtering industry. Instead of outsourcing jobs to other countries – for low labor costs and lax health