An Open Letter to the Members of Tilth Alliance: Betraying your values in your stance against Farmworker Rights:

Members of the Tilth Alliance, When will it be the “right time” to end farmworker exploitation? 

Yesterday, February 16, the Executive Director of Tilth Alliance submitted a letter to Senator Saldaña in opposition to SB 6045: Collective Bargaining Rights for Farmworkers. In it, she outlines the difficult economic conditions farm operators are facing, citing ‘potential ag viability’ impacts if the bill is passed. 

There was no acknowledgement of the working conditions of farmworkers in her letter. In fact, farmworkers are only mentioned when the author is speaking to meeting the needs of farm owners and operators. 

In her letter, she speaks to a report indicating that farmers in Washington state had the lowest profitability last year, and the highest increase in production costs over the past decade when compared to other states. She did not include that the average crop farmworker (the majority of farmworkers in WA state) have an average annual income between $20,000-$25,000. That the average total family annual income is only $30,000 to $35,000. 

She states that because the workforce is largely transitional and seasonal, that “the laws and regulations that govern the "normal' labor market do not work”. Willfully separating farmworkers from the rights and protections all other workers have is offensive, dehumanizing and validates the structural racism that the agricultural industry perpetuates. It also ignores the fact that in three major areas of production (Fruit and nuts, Horticulture, and Vegetables), between 23-40% of the US workforce is settled, and not a migratory workforce. Seasonal and transitional employment is not an excuse for continuing exploitative practices, so that farms can survive economically.

An estimated 345,000-600,000 farm workers and their families are settled in our communities in the United States, meaning they are not part of the migratory workforce. Many of the experienced and skilled workforce on Washington State farms are the 3rd and 4th generation of farmworker families settled in our communities.  They are our neighbors working to keep us fed year round - in our homes, schools, and workplaces. Do their families deserve to be left in poverty because the rest of the workers in their field are migrant workers? 

Executive Director Melissa Spear states at the top of her letter that family farms are at the heart of Tilth Alliance’s mission. As a past member of the Tilth Alliance, Community to Community Development shares Tilth’s understanding that independent farmers in organic production are vital to our efforts for a just food future. 

Given your vision of a “better food future” where “diverse voices are equitably represented, proactively sought out” and our past relationship as a member of your alliance, why was there no effort to reach out and hear from farmworker leadership?

Given our shared vision of an “equitable food future”, why are you prioritizing the fear-mongering from farm operators over the well-being of farmworker families? 

And so we ask you; members of the Tilth Alliance, when will the well-being of farmworkers hold equal weight as the farm operators?  

Your leadership has chosen to side with corporate industrial agriculture & systemic oppression. 

Acting on your behalf to speak against a pathway for ending structural racism in the food system.

Acting on your behalf to stop the correction of a racist policy.  

Tilth Alliance claims to be working for an “equitable food future”. Repeatedly on your values page, talking about “respecting diverse voices”, and making choices to “address historic inequities”. You even go so far as to name in your top 5 priorities “act to dismantle systems encountered through our work that perpetuate inequities and/or serve to exclude or marginalize historically oppressed populations.”

Members of the Tilth Alliance, when will you choose to act out your values? Or are they just words? 

Executive Director Melissa Spear, in your letter asking Senator Saldaña to vote against the rights of Farmworkers to organize for better working conditions, you speak to the “unique context” of agricultural work.  Is the unique context the fact that our agricultural systems have always been built on slavery, extraction and exploitation? The right of farm operators to make their livelihood at the expense of the very people who keep their operations running? 

Members of the Tilth Alliance, our lives as Farmworkers cannot wait for you. Your leadership is betraying the very values you claim. 

To all eaters in Washington State - organic sustainable farming at the expense of the wellbeing of farmworkers and their families in your communities does not help build a Just Food System. SB6045 will either go to a vote today or die on the floor. Letters like this tip the balance toward injustice. 

Your hypocrisy in standing against Farmworker Justice at this moment, is a heart felt blow and has not gone unnoticed.