Episode 249: Good Food Purchasing Policies

The Farm Report

This week on The Farm Report, host Erin Fairbanks is adding to the series exploring the meat industry in collaboration with with Slow Food USA as they prepare for Slow Meat 2015, a symposium and fair taking place June 4-6 in Denver, Colorado. On the line with Jose Oliva of the Food Chain Workers Alliance, it is a coalition of worker-based organizations whose members plant, harvest, process, pack, transport, prepare, serve, and sell food, organizing to improve wages and working conditions for all workers along the food chain. The Alliance works together to build a more sustainable food system that respects workers’ rights, based on the principles of social, environmental and racial justice, in which everyone has access to healthy and affordable food. Jose discusses the Alliance’s progress as well as the work that still remains to bridge the gap between restaurant workers and a livable wage, plus why they support the Slow Meat message. After the break, Kris De la Torre of EscapeMaker.com joins Erin in the studio talking about upcoming events involving interactions with farms and agro-tourism. Do you have plans this weekend? Tune in for some great ideas occurring throughout the summer! This program was brought to you by EscapeMaker.com.

“When we talk about the food system from an economic system perspective we are talking about the largest private sector employer in the United States with well over 20 million workers… it’s about 50 percent of American that have worked or will work in a restaurant.” [11:25]

“The way that pricing is structured right now it incentivizes large, corporate-owned factory farms and it penalizes smaller, medium sized farms.” [16:28]

—Jose Oliva on The Farm Report