Equitable Food Initiative, the certification organization that partners with growers, farmworkers, retailers, and consumer groups, wrapped up its fifth year of promoting Farmworker Awareness Week. Publicity and social engagement throughout the agricultural industry involved politicians, government agencies, schools, and businesses.
"While consumers have a general understanding of how their fresh foods are grown, cared for, harvested, packed, and shipped, there is often a disconnect in understanding the number of skilled individuals required to keep our grocery stores stocked," said LeAnne Ruzzamenti, director of marketing and communications for EFI. "Marking Farmworker Awareness Week allows the industry to raise awareness and celebrate the efforts of the people and skills behind the scenes producing nutritious food."
Ruzzamenti says marking Farmworker Awareness Week allows the industry to raise awareness and celebrate the efforts of the people and skills behind the scenes producing food.
Since 2020, EFI has provided a free communications toolkit to encourage industry members to participate in celebrating the week and has continued to add new tools and resources each year. The toolkit is sent to every state agricultural department, national commodity boards, and producer organizations in agriculture, asking them to share it with their members and producers. This year, the resulting media and social posts spread across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, and LinkedIn, garnering thousands of engagements and over a million impressions.
The use of the toolkit and graphics, ready-to-use talking points, and the hashtag #FarmworkerAwarenessWeek produced popular posts inside and outside the agriculture industry from organizations like the Northeast Dairy Producers Association, Blue Ridge Health, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, California Workforce Development Board and produce companies like Stemilt Growers, Superfresh Growers®, NatureSweet and Baloian Farms, to name just a few. Popular platforms also used the hashtag to promote related events, including food and clothing drives for farmworkers and their families.
Contributions to Farmworker Awareness Week were unique to each organization that participated, including politicians, government agencies, nonprofits, health organizations, and higher education institutions. Delaware Farm Bureau worked with a local morning show to highlight agriculture and farmworkers in the First State; the governor of Vermont was all in on a farmworker week proclamation; and Pennsylvania's first lady and the state's Agriculture Department secretary met with farmworkers to thank them for their work.
While Farmworker Awareness Week is only seven days a year, EFI and its partners work daily to integrate worker voice and engagement throughout the supply chain.
For more information:
LeAnne R. Ruzzamenti
Equitable Food Initiative
Tel.: +1 (202) 524-0540
leanne@equitablefood.org
https://equitablefood.org/