overview
We’ve talked about what the food system
is, but who is a part of the food system?
Roughly 21.5 million people who work in the US food system are responsible for getting food
from the farm to our plates. These workers are all along the food chain and without them, all
the meals we eat—at home, at school, what we can buy from our corner store—wouldn’t be
possible. Safe to say they have a pretty important job. Yet, despite our dependency on these
jobs to feed us all, they are paid some of the lowest wages to frontline workers of any industry.
Most food chain workers—the people who produce, harvest, process, distribute, sell, and
serve food—also experience widespread exploitation, harassment, and poor working
conditions. Workers of color, women, and undocumented immigrants are especially
vulnerable to abuses in the food system, which are really human rights violations. 1
Wage theft is when
workers do not receive
their obligated pay. This
can happen in a number
of forms, such as: not
paying overtime, stealing
tips, and forcing workers
to work off the clock.
48