Fighting for Fair Trade produce on campus

White was one of several students who took part in a Breakout trip organized by the Pace Center to Immokalee, Fla., where they learned about immigrants working in the tomato industry.

White and her peers slept in homeless shelters with low-income workers and spent the week meeting with tomato growers, the local workers’ coalition and detectives who investigate slavery allegations. During the trip, they heard stories of workers being chained to truck beds at night and shot in broad daylight, she said.

“We got to see that slavery exists in the United States — none of us knew that,” said James Bryant ’10, another participant on the Breakout trip. “None of us knew the extent [to which] our fruits depend on the labor of other human beings.”

The harrowing stories made a strong impression on White who said she returned to Princeton determined to learn more about the labor practices of companies supplying food on campus.

“When I came back, I realized I was part of this system,” she said. “We’re all part of this system.”

White focused on one particular project, pledging to raise awareness on campus about the ethical standing of the companies that produce the University’s bananas.

When she first inquired about the vendors supplying the bananas on campus, White said that Dining Services would not disclose a list of its produce suppliers. So she inspected the sticker labels on the fruit in the dining halls and identified Chiquita Brands International as a major supplier of bananas to the University. She then conducted further research into the companies.

She learned that in March 2007, Chiquita Brands said in a federal court that a subsidiary company paid members of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia — which the State Department lists as a foreign terrorist organization — to protect employees at its banana-growing operation there.

Chiquita Brands representatives explained the company’s payment. “We were extorted in Colombia to protect the lives of our employees,” said Ed Loyd, Manager of Corporate Communications for Chiquita. “We were never supporters of these left-wing or right-wing groups.”

“A bus of 28 employees going to one of our farms — they were all killed,” he explained. “We also had a situation in which two farm workers were beheaded with a machete. The threat was very real to us.”

In a settlement agreement with the Justice Department, Chiquita pled guilty to charges of doing business with a terrorist organization and paid a $25 million fine. The company then sold all its operations in Colombia after 100 years in the country, seeing no way it could simultaneously abide by U.S. law and protect its employees, Loyd said.

Loyd added that the company requires all producers in Latin America “to meet the same labor and certification standards we employ on our own farms, and we do send an internal auditing team to their operations to ensure they are complying with our contracts.”

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

White presented her findings in a report to Dining Services officials, who agreed to replace the bananas offered at Frist Campus Center and other retail dining locations on campus with Fair Trade certified ones if she succeeds in “an educational campaign” orienting the students toward accepting the small rise in cost for bananas.

Fair Trade certification guarantees the fair labor practices, corporate transparency and sustainability efforts of the companies that supply the produce.

Dining Services has no direct relationship to local growers or national produce companies, Dining Services Director Stu Orefice said in an e-mail. Instead, he explained, the University relies on vendors to choose and purchase products. Dining Services receives bids from three authorized vendors, who must offer USDA-approved produce to be considered for purchase.

“Vendors that do not meet our standards could potentially be removed from participating in future bids,” Orefice said.

This system also allows the University “to purchase ... produce that is locally grown in support of our sustainability goals,” he added.

Though most of the bananas purchased by the University are intended for distribution in the residential college dining halls, White said she sees the switch to Fair Trade certified bananas at retail dining locations as the first of hopefully further concessions.

“It’s better to get something done than nothing,” she said.

White added that her current objective is getting students to sign on to the project.

“It can be hard to organize an activist movement on Princeton campus,” she said. “We’re not the most activist school.”

Bryant said he is more optimistic the campaign will influence her peers on campus.

“Wrong makes wrong,” he said. “Some kind of unfair thing is going on here. If that’s going on, the University could be buying bananas from another company, and we have to pay 20 more cents — I don’t think many Princeton students would mind if it meant we would be improving the lives of other people.”

White said she plans to launch the campaign next fall so that other campus events will not interfere with its initial momentum.

“I don’t want to get lumped into Princeton Preview,” she explained, referring to the upcoming visiting weekends for admitted students. “I don’t want this issue to die out because people leave campus,” she said. “I am ready and revving to go and make a statement. Ultimately I think it’s wiser to hold off.”