Jerry Gao, Contributing Photographer

A film screening and question-and-answer session on Friday drew students in support of Yale’s participation in the Fair Food Program — an initiative advocating for farmworkers’ rights and working conditions.

Launched in 2011, the Fair Food Program, or FFP, gained prominence after large companies such as Walmart and McDonald’s joined, agreeing to pay a one-cent-per-pound premium to increase wages of tomato farmworkers.

The screening was cohosted by Yale’s chapter of the Student/Farmworker Alliance, or SFA, and the Yale Hunger and Homelessness Action Project, or YHHAP, student organizers advocating for Yale Hospitality to join the Fair Food Program. The film screening and Q&A was held in Luce Hall and drew 40 attendees from various universities.

“By joining the FFP, which is recognized as the gold-standard of human rights protection in agriculture, Yale will make a commitment to human rights, ensuring the produce we eat was not grown under conditions of forced labor, sexual harassment, physical assault, or wage theft,” SFA member Andrew Storino ’27 wrote in an emailed statement.

The FFP is operated by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, or CIW, a farmworker rights organization. It aims to link participating produce buyers — often retailers and restaurant chains — with farmworkers. Buyers would buy produce, originally only tomatoes, from participating farms that give workers certain protections and abide by a code of conduct. Buyers also agree to pay a premium of one cent per pound picked that goes to farmworker wages.

Lupe Gonzalo, a farmworker and CIW staff member, said in an interview — translated from Spanish by her CIW colleague Giselle Ramirez-Garcia — that while the program is relatively new, Yale’s institutional support would help grow FFP’s impact.

“It was just launched, really publicly launched with Yale starting up this campaign. It’s very new. We haven’t had any universities join the program yet because it is still very new,” she said. “But we’re very excited to see that there are little campaigns popping up in several universities.”

Ramirez and Gonzalo said the idea came from activism at Princeton, where students are “working actively” on getting their university to “formally sign a legally binding agreement with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers.”

A Yale Hospitality spokesperson declined to immediately comment in a Tuesday email to the News.

Yale has announced a 5 percent budget cut in non-salary costs as well as a pause on hiring and capital construction projects after an endowment tax increase passed through Congress. Yale Hospitality has made numerous changes to student dining that many students believe are means to cut costs.

Most recently, Yale Hospitality cited “budget constraints” in an email to YHHAP explaining the reduction in meal plan donation events.

Storino told the News that he does not believe the financial tightening should be a significant hurdle for Yale.

“Yale may face challenges which are hard to solve, but upholding human rights on the farms which grow our fruits and vegetables is not one of them,” Storino wrote.

The kickoff event pushing for Yale’s participation in the program screened “Food Chains,” a film that focused on the struggles of tomato pickers in Immokalee, Fla., who went on a hunger strike to urge Publix, a retail chain, to join the program.

“Food Chains” director Sanjay Rawal said in an interview that the title of the film came about naturally — “supermarket chains, food chains and then the idea that people have actually been put into physical shackles in modern America for the sake of a few harvests.”

Storino told the News that the organizers invited Yale Hospitality two days before the event, after being in touch with dining administrators since July. There was no response when Rawal asked during the event whether any Yale Hospitality representative was present.

Attendees interviewed by the News said they would support universities joining the program.

Juliette Palacios ’26 said she would like to see Yale Hospitality joining the FFP. Palacios’ brother, Liam Palacios, who studies at Stanford University, said that he “definitely” supports Stanford joining the program.

John Hoffer, a student and worker at Harvard, told the News that the film was “inspiring, especially the comment that small groups of people can change things.”

Gonzalo said that while there will be an additional “penny-per-pound” premium, the additional costs would be minimal for Yale.

Amanda Shanor ’03 LAW ’09 GRD ’22, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and its law school, said she worked with the CIW as her first job after college.

Shanor said in an interview with the News that FFP’s buyer-based model was a key part of their success.

“A lot of work had been done to try to get farm workers to engage with their direct agricultural employers. But they’re temporary workers, and that didn’t work. And what the CIW figured out was that they just did a power analysis of how this industry works.” Shanor said. “And they saw that further up the chain, that’s where people had leverage.”

Yale Hospitality operates 14 residential dining halls and 13 retail locations.