The Agricultural Justice Project (AJP) works to transform the existing agricultural system. We seek empowerment, justice and fairness for all who labor from farm to retail. Central to our mission are the principles that all humans deserve respect, the freedom to live with dignity and nurture community, and share responsibility for preserving the earth’s resources for future generations.

Consolidation of power, an economy driven by profit, structural racism, and the individualistic nature of our culture are among the root causes of the severe injustices in our food system. These give rise to the advantage of some people over others and invite corruption and lack of transparency while silencing many voices. People are pitted against people, sector against sector. Essential values are discredited and true costs externalized as we ignore the interconnectedness of whole systems. Working people who have the power to change the system remain disunited and in the dark. The very same mechanisms that have led to the need for food justice have given rise as well to the need for racial and environmental justice. The negative impacts of climate change, failure to recycle society’s wastes, and infrastructure deterioration fall most heavily on low income neighborhoods and communities of color while threatening the present and future health of all living beings. By focusing on the need for fair trading in farm products and fair treatment of food workers, AJP contributes to shifting the dominant system towards greater fairness and equity. We believe that taking care of and engaging all the members of our human family are necessary preconditions for the regeneration of a viable biosphere. Farms and food businesses that function as cohesive, integrated, aware social organisms have a special role to play in ensuring the health of humans, cultures, animals, and our planet. Our work spans the U.S. and Canada in the following main focus areas:

Providing Certification and Technical Assistance Tools to Transform the Food System.

We provide farms and food businesses with technical tools to improve work and trade practices from farm to retail, including extensive toolkits and templates, one-on-one technical assistance, and a stakeholder-driven certification program for high bar social justice standards -- Food Justice Certification (FJC), the gold standard for labor and trade practices in North America. We support and partner with third-party certifiers and worker organizations that carry out the certification and inspection process for the FJC program. Food Justice Certified products can be found on grocery store shelves, farmers markets, CSAs and roadside stands. We maintain a Social Justice Fund, through which five percent of all grants received are set aside, and a portion is used to subsidize certification fees through our cost share program for small family farms and independent retailers and cooperatives that have excellent labor practices, but are experiencing economic hardship.

Raising Awareness of the Need for Transforming the Food System and Models that Can Accomplish Change.

We engage in outreach and education to raise awareness of the disparities and injustice in the food system and the types of approaches needed to realize real change for those marginalized by the current system. Our awareness-raising work is done through social and public media, events and presentations, networking and partnering, contributing comments on other fair market claim programs and associations, providing tools for improving working and trade practices, and promoting the Food Justice Certified (FJC) label in the marketplace. The FJC label helps launch conversations about why such a label is needed and what it means, the existence of inequities and injustice in the food system, the need to address them, and actions that can be taken.

AJP is stakeholder-driven, and committed to the principles of democratic leadership. We believe that all members of the agricultural system should have a role in developing and guiding our standards and certification program.

Our Stakeholders

The size and membership of the Advisory Council and Standards Committee are determined based on principles of equal representation. AJP has identified key stakeholder groups: Farmers, Workers (food system workers and farmworkers), Retailers, Food Businesses (manufacturers, processors or brand holders), and Indigenous Communities or expertise in a field related to AJP work. The Council and Committee are established with an equal number of representatives from each stakeholder group to the extent possible. Representatives from additional groups, such as civil-society NGOs or certifiers, are also welcome to join. Contact us for more information on becoming a member.

The label is governed by three collaborative committees made up of representatives from different food system stakeholder groups:

• Advisory Council Members
• Standards Committee Members
• Board of Directors

You can read about our governance process in section 7.0 of our Policy Manual. Our bylaws are available upon request to info@agriculturaljusticeproject.org. Click here to find out what we were up to in 2015: Annual Activities Report.

In 1999, disappointed that the U.S. National Organic Program’s standards did not address the people involved in organic agriculture, Michael Sligh of the Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI – USA), Richard Mandelbaum of Comité de Apoyo a los Trabajadores Agrícolas/Farmworker Support Committee (CATA), Oscar Mendieta, Fundación RENACE, Bolivia, Elizabeth Henderson of Peacework Organic Farm and Marty Mesh of Florida Organic Growers and Consumers began a stakeholder process to develop standards for the fair and just treatment of the people involved in organic and sustainable agriculture.

While their experience was in North America, they set out to create standards that could be adapted for use anywhere in the world. They began with a review of existing social standards and then assembled a first draft of what became “Toward Social Justice and Economic Equity in the Food System: A Call for Social Stewardship Standards in Sustainable and Organic Agriculture.”

They circulated this draft to organic farmers and organic farming associations, non-profits, certification programs, eco-labeling experts, and labor and farm labor organizations. CATA also engaged in an internal process through which the organization’s farmworker members provided input to the worker standards. For two years, AJP circulated successive drafts of their standards to stakeholders in the US and abroad and received comments from around the world. To make the document accessible to a wider audience, they arranged for translations into Spanish and French. With each major revision of the document they circulated the new draft to those who had commented on previous drafts, as well as to people new to the project.

From 2002 - 2005, the founders worked with stakeholders around the world from IFOAM Organic Trade Conference in Bangkok, Thailand to meetings with the International Union of Food (IUF) in Montevideo, Uruguay. Ambitious goals and commitments were set by these meetings. One commitment was to further develop strategies to advance the social agenda in organic and sustainable agriculture, and to build cooperation between the organic and fair trade movements - strengthening the voice and participation of indigenous peoples as an urgent theme. At the close of 2005, the AJP team committed to designing a pilot project to test the standards and their practicality in the U.S. marketplace. (Download full history here)

The Original Pilot – Upper Midwest Region

The Agricultural Justice Project team worked for several years to develop a U.S. Pilot project to test its social stewardship standards on the ground. Through outreach and collaboration, the group built relationships with farmers, retailers, non-profits, and farmworker organizations around the county who are interested in developing a model of a just food system. The AJP also convened a national Advisory Council representing a broad array of stakeholders to advise and inform the group’s progress AJP meets with this Advisory Council on an annual basis. During this time, Quality Certification Services (QCS) developed the application and inspection forms, report language, and confidentiality documents necessary for a social justice certification.

The first step in piloting the project was to do informal inspections of farms in four regions of the county. These exploratory audits confirmed that AJP standards are realistic: farmers expressed the ability and desire to meet them.

A “pre-audit” of several of the region’s exemplary farms and co-ops in 2006 revealed outstanding practices, but a lack of the type of documentation that would be required for verification by a certifier.

Over the following winter, the AJP team developed a toolkit of information and resources to help the farms and co-ops document their good practices.

In the spring of 2007, Quality Certification Services (QCS) and the AJP team conducted official pilot certification audits of four farms and two co-ops in Minnesota and Wisconsin, including Bluff Country Co-op, pictured here receiving their initial pilot certification.