Editor’s Note: This blog post is the culmination of a fellowship research project by Grassroots Fellow Anthony Singh-Reynoso.

The United States food and agriculture movement has a deep history of grassroots organizing. Especially in Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities, grassroots organizing has offered a form of resistance to a food system that does not prioritize human life and dignity. Under a capitalist system, private land ownership and the desire to maximize profits has led to food being seen as an item to be bought and sold instead of as a vital necessity. As a result, those with access to capital and land, especially large corporations, enforce conditions on farms that are exploitative to the environment and the people working the land. 

Food is an essential part of our lives, and access to nourishing, culturally relevant, and equitably produced foods is necessary to ensure communities can flourish. While access to food is essential for people to thrive, over 33 million people in the United States lived in households lacking secure access to food in 2021. There are federal programs aimed at supporting impoverished communities to increase food security. However, these initiatives often do not do enough to tackle the injustices within the food system that underlie the existence of hunger. 

It is essential that food system advocates understand the history of the food and agriculture movement to ensure that we continue to learn from the organizers that have spearheaded the work before us. This blog post highlights three case studies: the struggle for farmworker justice and the United Farm Workers; the necessity of community-based methods of self-sufficiency and the Freedom Farm Cooperative; and the origins of the Farm Bill and the farmer response to the Dust Bowl. 

Case Study #1: The United Farm Workers

Farm labor is the backbone of our food system. By nurturing and harvesting crops, farmworkers ensure that people across the country have access to fresh produce daily. Despite this, farm labor is often amongst the most physically demanding and low-paid jobs in the United States. This problem is especially prevalent amongst immigrant farmworkers who are vulnerable to wage theft and labor violations due to the limited protections as a result of their immigration status. In the 1960s, organizers and labor rights leaders such as Dolores Huerta, Larry Itliong, and César Chávez formed the United Farm Workers (UFW), a labor union dedicated to improving the labor conditions of farmworkers in the United States. 

The western United States has historically relied on labor from immigrant groups to fulfill the demand for farm labor. Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, and Mexican immigrants in the 19th century performed most of the physically demanding, low-wage labor in the western United States. By the mid-20th century, the majority of farmworkers in the western United States were of Mexican descent as a result of the Bracero Program. The Bracero Program, which ran from 1942 to 1964, was a series of agreements between the United States and Mexico that permitted millions of individuals from Mexico to work in the United States on short-term contracts, primarily in agricultural fields. The program arose out of a fear from growers that World War II would lead to labor shortages in agricultural jobs due to the internment of Japanese immigrants and Japanese-American citizens.

Migrant farmworkers participating in the Bracero Program were subject to exploitative working conditions with little protections. Their residency in the US was tied to their contract jobs. Along with physically demanding labor and low wages, migrant laborers were placed into unsanitary housing conditions lacking running water, electricity, or cooking facilities, had little to no access to education, and were subjected to harmful pesticide exposure. Language barriers and fear of retaliation made it difficult for farm laborers to organize in response to these conditions. 

Organizing for labor justice within food and agriculture was prevalent in the 20th century, but the existence of the Bracero Program made unionization nearly impossible. Organizations such as the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), led by Larry Itliong, and the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), led by Dolores Huerta and César Chávez, attempted to unionize farmworkers. However, Braceros were brought in as scabs, or strikebreakers, whenever workers made an attempt to strike against exploitative conditions. As a result, organizers shifted their focus to put public pressure on politicians to end the Bracero Program, leading to its termination in 1964. 

With the termination of the Bracero Program, labor organizers made strides in improving the working conditions for farm laborers. Beginning in 1965, a series of strikes in Coachella, CA led to increased wages for farm workers throughout the region, but growers still did not agree to union recognition. In September of that year, as farmworkers followed the grape harvest north to Delano, CA, farmworkers demanded a raise in wages as they had received in Coachella. After growers refused to provide them with increased pay, Larry Itliong of AWOC organized a strike on nine farms. This strike proved to be a turning point in farmworker organizing. Prior to the 1965 strikes in Delano, Filipino and Mexican workers were largely organizing separately, often recruited by growers to cross each other’s picket lines. 

AWOC, which mainly organized Filipino farmworkers, and NFWA, which mainly organized Mexican farmworkers, began to organize together. By the end of September, thousands of farmworkers left the fields to demand an increase in wages, to which growers eventually conceded. Riding on the momentum of this success, organizers shifted their attention to large demonstrations that propelled the reality of farmworker conditions into the public consciousness to pressure growers into union recognition. 

Led by the NFWA and César Chávez, a nationwide boycott of grapes being sold without a union label began towards the end of 1965. The boycott intended to cut into the profits of large growers in Delano, including Schenley Industries. Volunteers and organizers across the nation gathered to picket businesses that sold Schenley products. The nationwide boycott, in combination with a highly publicized 300-mile march from Delano to the state’s capitol in Sacramento, resulted in a significant drop in sales for the company. As a result of public and economic pressure, Schenley agreed to sign an agreement with the NFWA in April 1966. This was the first time that a major corporation agreed to recognize a farm union, marking a major milestone in the struggle for farmworker justice. 

Seeing results from the collective power garnered by the two organizations, AWOC and NFWA merged in August of 1966 to become the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee, commonly known as the United Farm Workers (UFW). The UFW continued to organize farmworkers to achieve union contracts throughout the late 60s and early 70s, and the movement that began as a push to unionize farmworkers became inseparable from the civil rights movement. 

Today, the UFW continues to campaign for farmworker justice to ensure that farmworkers have access to benefits, good wages, and protected labor rights. Despite the major wins for farmworker protections and wage increases achieved in the ‘60s and ‘70s, farmworkers continue to earn very low wages in comparison to other workers and are vulnerable to violations of their labor rights. This is especially true for farmworkers participating in the H-2A Visa Program, which allows growers in the United States to hire agricultural laborers from other countries to fill employment gaps on their farms.

Case Study #2: The Freedom Farm Cooperative

Between the period of Reconstruction following the Civil War and the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, a series of laws, known as Jim Crow Laws, legalized racial segregation and reinforced a white supremacist racial hierarchy in the Southern United States. The legalization of racial segregation created a social environment that granted white Americans easier access to power and wealth, while African Americans had limited economic opportunities and were subject to racially motivated violence with few protections. 

In the Jim Crow South, many Black people worked in agricultural fields owned by white landowners. With increasing agricultural mechanization in the 1960s, Black communities were further stripped away of what few job opportunities they had. The conditions experienced by Black communities in the South led to increased migrations to the northern United States. Hoping to leave the danger of racist violence, poverty, and limited employment opportunities, many left to find manufacturing jobs in northern cities. 

Towards the beginning of the 1960s, organizations such as the Student Nonviolence Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and community members in the South increasingly organized and held meetings to strategize around increasing Black political participation. Fannie Lou Hamer, an important leader in the Civil Rights Movement, got her start organizing after attending one of these meetings in 1962. Hamer began volunteering as a field organizer. She led voter education and registration drives in Mississippi. After numerous attempts to register to vote and experiencing disenfranchisement as a result of literacy tests intending to prevent African Americans from voting, Hamer successfully registered to vote.

Hamer, born in 1917, was the twentieth child of a family of sharecroppers. She began working in the fields of the Marlowe plantation in Ruleville, Mississippi, at the age of six. After completing a sixth-grade education, Hamer dropped out of school to join her parents in the fields full-time at the age of 13. Her education allowed her to serve as the time and record keeper at the Marlowe Plantation. However, after Hamer’s boss learned of her attempts to register to vote, he demanded that she withdraw her application or be fired. She chose the latter option, leading to her eviction from the plantation and galvanizing her coming years of work in the civil rights movement.

Hamer’s lived experience with poverty and disregard by the United States government gave her a deep understanding of the importance of creating community-based methods of self-sufficiency. Mississippi had consistently ranked highly among US states in poverty rates and was ranked the poorest state in the nation in 1965. Sunflower County, where Hamer worked and lived on the Marlowe plantation, had some of the highest rates of diet-related illnesses in the nation. US officials met with residents and activists in Sunflower County, including Hamer, who demanded that the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) begin more nutrition programs in the state. However, data collection for these areas was halted due to Congressional opposition, making it clear that federal efforts to alleviate poverty and malnutrition ignored Black communities in the South.

In response to the continued governmental disregard and lack of social services for impoverished communities, Hamer founded the Freedom Farm Cooperative (FFC) in 1967 to help meet the needs of residents in Sunflower County. While the agricultural cooperative formed out of the food and nutritional needs of the county’s most vulnerable, it also focused on economic empowerment, creating affordable housing, and continuing to increase Black political participation. The cooperative provided a strategy of resistance to the violence of the white supremacist racial hierarchy and disregard by the US government. The FFC was essential for empowering the impoverished and sustaining the movement for civil rights, providing Black communities in Sunflower County an opportunity to remain in the South and create an alternative food system rooted in collectivism. 

Members of the FFC worked together to plant and harvest the crops maintained in the Co-op’s community garden spaces. FFC members were primarily Black farmworkers who had been relegated to unemployment and who lacked land access due to increasing farm mechanization and systemic racism from the USDA. Although centered on Black self-sufficiency, the FFC was open to all community members who were in need of assistance and hosted low-income white members as well. Co-op members planted crops such as okra, sweet potatoes, corn, and butter beans to be harvested and consumed by those who worked in the fields. Members also shared their harvest with impoverished community members who were unable to provide labor support. The FFC also established a “pig bank” to provide meat to members. 

In addition to feeding community members, the FFC also provided affordable housing, employment opportunities, and relief for natural disasters. Hamer’s reputation as a political organizer drew the attention of the public which allowed the FFC to secure funding from organizations, foundations, and individuals. However, in the face of economic downturns, droughts and floods in the Mississippi Delta causing crop loss, and a dependence on inconsistent funds from donors, the FFC was unable to sustain its operations and closed in 1976. In their attempts to keep the co-op afloat, the organization sought out federal funding from entities supporting anti-poverty programs such as the USDA to no avail. 

Although relatively short-lived, the FFC provides an important example of the possibilities that arise when organizers utilize their systems of support to improve their living conditions. The cooperative approached social issues with radical intent, especially given that the movement existed within a hostile and oppressive environment. It also exemplified that the food and agriculture movement cannot be separated from the movement for racial justice. 

Case Study #3: Dust Bowl 

The United States’ push for Western expansion in the 19th century resulted in an influx of settlers encroaching onto the land of Indigenous nations. This expansion was further intensified by the passage of the Homestead Act in 1862. The act encouraged settlers, referred to as “Homesteaders,” to expand westward by guaranteeing that they would receive 160 acres in exchange for agreeing to use the land for agricultural purposes. The Homestead Act was monumental in distributing millions of acres of land into private ownership of predominantly white individual settlers.

For many Homesteaders moving westward, the Homestead Act provided economic opportunity. Their recently acquired land with fertile soil and a flat landscape made it favorable for agricultural production. However, many settlers were not equipped with the skills necessary to farm the land in a way that would allow them to conserve natural resources while also making a living. The plains they appropriated were extensively plowed to grow cash crops such as wheat and overgrazed to raise cattle. 

This implementation of unsustainable agricultural practices was tied directly to a social system in the United States that dictated the settlers’ relationship with nature. The promise of economic opportunity and the pursuit of profit led many settlers to farm not just to sustain themselves, but also to make a profit. When operating under the desire to accumulate wealth, natural resources become nothing more than a set of inputs utilized to maximize profit. This resulted in the destruction of an ecological system, as well as the displacement of Indigenous peoples whose livelihoods were connected to stewarding the land appropriated by settlers.

At the start of the 1930s, overworked land, long periods of drought, intense heat, and high winds led to the Dust Bowl. Strong winds blew across the plains that now lacked natural vegetation to keep dry soil in place, resulting in large dust storms with a destructive force that caused many to flee the region. One of the worst dust storms, referred to as Black Sunday, caused the plains to resemble a vast desert as millions of tons of topsoil shifted through the air. 

Homesteaders were faced with a choice: they could either leave the plains and their land to find work elsewhere or they could discover a way to stay on the land and make agriculture profitable again. In response to the ongoing Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt rolled out a series of programs to improve the conditions of people suffering from the depression, known as the New Deal. The implementation of many New Deal programs continued the pattern of policy-driven structural racism, favoring white communities while refusing to provide loans and other services to communities of color. 

As Congress debated the New Deal’s agricultural bill, which would later become the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) of 1933 and serve as the foundation for the Farm Bill, farmers ensured that their voices were heard. In the face of crop failures and infrastructure damage from the Dust Bowl, farmers pleaded that the government take a more active role in assisting by declaring a national emergency. They also protested against government attempts to place limits on the number of eligible acres for which a farmer would receive conservation payments. Many farmers tended to their large farms while also caring for abandoned lots so that soil would not drift and affect their land. Farmers were successful in maintaining the conservation funding that allowed them to reduce soil blowing in the air. 

While alleviating the environmental effects of the Dust Bowl was a priority, farmers were also faced with a price drop in commodity crops, such as wheat, as a result of a surplus. This led to increased planting in hopes of increased output to meet expenses, further exacerbating soil damage. With the help of John Simpson and the Farmers Union, farmers demanded legislation that provided relief equal to the cost of production. In an effort to bring production into a closer balance with consumption and restore prices, policy makers decided to include provisions within the AAA that would provide direct payments to farmers for reducing the number of acres they had in production. 

Farmer opinions about this decision varied widely; some farmers believed that the government should open up more avenues for distribution of commodity crops while others reluctantly approved it as a temporary solution to a larger problem within agriculture. There were also farmers who demanded the government implement a land utilization program where the government purchased damaged land for protection. Although opinions on how to improve the agricultural system were often divisive, many farmers impacted by the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl shared the opinion that government must do something to move forward. In their impassioned response to the Dust Bowl, organizing amongst farmers was crucial in the establishment of many Farm Bill programs that continue today in many forms. 

Conclusion

The case studies highlighted in this blog post show that food system transformation must center the needs of people and the environment over the desire to maximize profit and maintain an economic hierarchy. The work of the United Farm Workers in the 1960s highlights the power that communities have when coalescing around a shared vision of social change. The Freedom Farm Cooperative provides a blueprint for an alternative food and agriculture system rooted in grassroots participation. The creation of many agricultural programs in response to the Dust Bowl shows that farmers must be involved in formulating the Farm Bill policies that intimately affect their livelihoods. 

Striving for justice within the food and agriculture movement requires advocates to understand the history of organizing that has led us to where we are today. Understanding what has happened in the past sheds light on the ways in which injustice within the food and agriculture system persists today and is intimately connected to other forms of oppression. Tackling the systemic conditions that have led to inequity within the food system allows advocates to work towards a shared vision of a food system rooted in justice. 

Sources

Bruns, Roger. Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers Movement. Greenwood, 2011.

Fite, Gilbert C. “Farmer Opinion and the Agricultural Adjustment Act, 1933.” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, vol. 48, no. 4, 1962, pp. 656–73. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1893147. Accessed 9 May 2023.

Mills, Kay. This Little Light of Mine: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer. Univ. Press of Kentucky, 2007.

Riney-Kehrberg, Pamela. “From the Horse’s Mouth: Dust Bowl Farmers and Their Solutions to the Problem of Aridity.” Agricultural History, vol. 66, no. 2, 1992, pp. 137–50. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3743850. Accessed 9 May 2023.

Tischauser, Leslie Vincent. Jim Crow Laws. Greenwood, 2013.

White, Monica M. Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement, The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC, 2019.

Worster, Donald. Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s. Oxford University Press, 2014.