Eva Longoria: “I think it’s important for us to get out the message about people who are doing it right.”

[hupso title=”VIDEO: @EvaLongoria’s exclusive endorsement of the @FairFoodProgram from the @FoodChainsFilm team!” url=”https://ciw-online.org/blog/2014/11/eva-ffp/”]

 

“Let’s buy Florida tomatoes”…  FOOD CHAINS crew releases exclusive new video endorsement of the Fair Food Program and the Florida tomato industry by Executive Director Eva Longoria!

With the national theatrical run of the exciting new documentary “Food Chains” just days away, Executive Producer Eva Longoria and the film crew have released an exclusive new video short (above) in which Ms. Longoria shares her thoughts on the Florida tomato industry, the food retailers who are supporting the Fair Food Program, and what consumers who care about farmworker justice can do to help expand and protect farmworkers’ rights.

The new video should leave little doubt as to the true message of the film, which documents both the extraordinary gains of the Fair Food Program in the Florida tomato industry since 2010 and the ongoing exploitation of farmworkers outside the boundaries of the groundbreaking partnership for human rights.  As we mentioned in a post last week, that dual focus — as well as the fact that shooting wrapped on the film back in 2012, when many of the Program’s remarkable advances were still new and in progress — has caused a bit of confusion in the early coverage of the film.  Here’s an excerpt from last week’s post:

… For the most part, shooting wrapped up on “Food Chains” in 2012, before the Program’s unprecedented gains became truly manifest.  Documentaries are by nature a backward-looking tool for telling stories, and as a result, the remarkable success of the Fair Food Program’s worker-driven social responsibility model (called the “best workplace monitoring program” in the US on the front page of the New York Times earlier this year) and the groundbreaking transformation the Program has wrought in the Florida tomato industry (which today is described as “the best working environment in American agriculture”) were touched upon only briefly in the film.

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That simple quirk of timing is not without consequence.  Coverage of the film to this point has naturally tended to focus on the negative — the exploitation of workers in Napa Valley today, for example, or the history of abuses in Florida’s fields — rather than the positive, the hopeful story of partnership and progress in Florida’s tomato industry today.  That more positive story is in the film, you just have to dig a little deeper to find it, and digging deeper is not, quite frankly, the calling card of the vast majority of media in this country.  Scandal is always more titillating than reform, and so predictably the coverage thus far of the film has tended to emphasize the usual story of farm labor exploitation over that of the Fair Food Program’s unusual success. 

But “Food Chains” is not just another documentary about farmworker exploitation.  From Edward R. Murrow’s 1960 classic “The Harvest of Shame” to last year’s PBS Frontline special “Rape in the Fields,” that story has been told and re-told many, many times.  What makes “Food Chains” truly unique is that it’s not just about the problem of farm labor abuse, but rather about the solution, a proven solution that has been long overdue and that is changing tens of thousands of lives every day here in Florida.  

With the release of Ms. Longoria’s video endorsement of the Fair Food Program and the Florida tomato industry, there should no longer be any question about the film’s message: The exploitation of this country’s farmworkers is a real and ongoing injustice at the heart of our food industry, but the Fair Food Program is a unique and proven solution to that exploitation and it deserves the support of all consumers and retail food companies that value human rights. 

So check out the video at the top of this post, and visit the Food Chains website to find a screening near you as the film opens in 25 cities nationwide this week!  And check back soon, as the news will be flying fast and furious this week on the Campaign for Fair Food front.