Sarah Taber, a crop scientist with a PhD in plant medicine, is on a mission to see a more sustainable food system. Her podcast, Farm to Taber, explores the ways science, history, tech, culture, policy, marketing, psychology and design contribute to solving sustainability problems in food production.
Taber has worked across the agricultural industry in numerous roles including farm laborer, food safety auditor and consultant. In her over 20 years of experience in agriculture, Taber has come to see some glaring issues with audit practices and sustainability claims in the food industry. She specifically mentions the rise of “diploma mills” or certifying bodies with loose standards, questions about whether audit-day conditions are representative of day-to-day farm operations and issues arising from conflicts of interest between staff and management in the interview portion of some audits.
In the face of these challenges, Taber calls Equitable Food Initiative (EFI) “an updated, solidified approach to enforcing good sustainability, labor [practices] and food safety practices in the food system.” Taber invited EFI’s executive director Peter O’Driscoll to her podcast to talk about how EFI is making a difference in the fresh produce supply chain.
Their conversation highlighted the way the EFI Program’s strength comes from connections. Born out of the collaboration of diverse stakeholders, including representatives from farm labor unions, producers, retail buyers and consumer organizations, EFI’s certification model weaves together standards for labor practices, food safety and pest management.
If you train a worker to stop food safety problems, that worker is also going to understand the importance of their own voice in addressing other forms of abuse from sexual harassment, to exploitation, to forced overtime.”
– Peter O’Driscoll, Executive Director, EFI
Taber said she’s glad to see an organization rising up to create a more valuable certification process, “Before knowing that EFI existed, I just really wished that there were something that did both food safety and labor [practices], because I just always saw that you can’t really do one without the other.”
The key, O’Driscoll claims, is giving workers the skill and the opportunity to voice their concerns and speak from their expertise in order to create an organizational culture of agency and collaboration.
“EFI insists on a relationship between labor standards, food safety standards and pest management standards because they’re integrated in a holistic way. If you train a worker to stop food safety problems, that worker is also going to understand the importance of their own voice in addressing other forms of abuse from sexual harassment, to exploitation, to forced overtime,” O’Driscoll explained.
Additionally, by connecting labor practices, food safety and pest management, producers certified through EFI have the benefit of consolidating the many audits required to be in compliance with the law and more marketable to retailers each year. Touting the EFI Responsibly Grown, Farmworker Assured® label provides an avenue to be rewarded by consumers for their investment in sustainability and workforce development.
“I believe firmly that our goal is, through certification, to hold up companies that are doing the right thing and that are profitable as a function of the investment they make in their workforce. Ideally, if more and more business flows in the right direction to those kinds of companies, the other companies will be encouraged to adopt similar practices,” O’Driscoll said. He concluded, “We believe there’s an opportunity to create a race to the top and we want to be a part of that solution.”
To learn more about the collective impact EFI is making in the produce industry, check out equitablefood.org/our-impact/.
