S9 Ep3: Voices from the Field: Grassroots Strategies to Empower Farmers and Ensure Food Security with Rosalinda Guillen
“If we were smart as a country, we would look at all of these immigrants that are new citizens of the United States, and look at all of these food production methods and skills that they bring. We would have better food security by including the immigrant farmers in the decision-making on how food production is going to be developed for the future is hitting us really hard with climate change.” —Rosalinda Guillen
Series: Labor Day Special Episode 2
Farming is the backbone of our communities, yet too often, the hard-working men and women who toil in the fields are overlooked and undervalued.
But a growing movement is changing that narrative, empowering farmers to take the reins and shape a more sustainable, equitable food system. Community to Community (C2C), founded by Rosalinda Guillen, is a pioneering organization that empowers farm workers and immigrant communities to lead the charge in building a more sustainable, equitable, and community-driven food system.
In this episode, Justine and Rosalinda discuss the challenges and barriers in organizing farm workers, the integration of immigrant farmers' practices, the vision for community farms and food security, the role of regenerative agriculture in addressing climate change, and Rosalinda’s hopes for the future of empowering farmers and transforming the food system.
Connect with Rosalinda:
Rosalinda Guillen (she/hers) is the founder of Community to Community and a lead strategist and visionary within the non-hierarchical ecofeminist leadership of C2C. Her perspective is fundamentally influenced by her introduction to the multi-racial, working-class community organizing model of the Rainbow Coalition, the Cesar Chavez house meeting model, The World Social Forum, the Landless Workers Movement (MST) of Brazil and growing up a farmworker in La Conner, WA. Rosalinda has organized farmworkers in WA State and the strawberry fields of Salinas CA. She has represented farmworkers in the Legislatures of California and Washington State and in ongoing policy and Movement dialogues on immigration issues, climate change, labor rights, trade agreements, ecofeminism, and strengthening the food sovereignty movement towards a Solidarity Economy.
Episode Highlights:
01:30 What is C2C?
09:18 Learning How to Organize a Community
11:54 Creating a New Narrative
18:09 Getting Into Consensus
21:49 Agricultural Lessons From Immigrant Farmers
26:50 The Answer is in Collaboration
30:45 The Role of Regenerative Agriculture
Tweets:
Cultivating change from the ground up. Join @jreichman and Community to Community (C2C) Founder, Rosalinda Guillen as they explore innovative grassroots initiatives to empower farmers and transform the food system. #podcast #entrepreneurship #socialgood #inspiration #impactmatters #NextGenChef #EssentialIngredients #Season9 #C2C #SustainableAgriculture #FarmWorkerRights #WorkerOwnership #CooperativeEconomy #RegenerativeAgriculture #CommunityFarming #ImmigrantFarmers #FoodSecurity
Inspirational Quotes:
11:23 “The agricultural industry was founded on slavery. It was founded on stolen land… We had always been in this generational poverty cycle because we were farm workers.” —Rosalinda Guillen
12:34 “I was a worker and as a worker, I had power.” —Rosalinda Guillen
14:49 “Our vision is to be able to develop farm workers ability to show our community a better way that farmers can produce food and still be part of food systems.” —Rosalinda Guillen
16:27 “Farm workers have skills that need to be compensated for. It isn't entry level work, it is highly skilled work, and that highly skilled work is keeping the food system in the United States vibrant and profitable for the farmers and the industry itself.” —Rosalinda Guillen
18:23 “In order for it to be effective, everybody has to be able to have a voice, come together and be able to share their feelings, their thoughts, what's working, what's not, and then everyone can come to a consensus.” —Justine Reichman
21:00 “If we were smart as a country, we would look at all of these immigrants that are new citizens of the United States, and look at all of these food production methods and skills that they bring. We would have better food security by including the immigrant farmers in the decision-making on how food production is going to be developed for the future is hitting us really hard with climate change.” —Rosalinda Guillen
27:47 “Cooperative development gives us the processes for democracy in decision-making on a piece of land for farmers.” —Rosalinda Guillen
30:14 “Bringing people together around these new ideas is very difficult because we're still very much focused on the profit-making of food production, instead of the community-building and the health-building of eaters.” —Rosalinda Guillen
31:16 “The level of conversation has to rise about, you know, the common need to be able to have food security at the local level.” —Rosalinda Guillen
Transcriptions:
Justine Reichman: Good morning, and welcome to Essential Ingredients. I'm your host, Justine Reichman. With me today is Rosalinda Guillen. So nice to meet you, Rosalinda. And thank you for joining us.
Rosalinda Guillen: Thank you for inviting me. And it's nice to meet you also, and nice to meet everybody out there that's listening.
Justine Reichman: Yes, me too. I wish I could meet more of those listeners, followers and viewers. We always like to encourage conversation, so those tuning in today, listening if there's something that we're talking about that you have a question about or you want to comment on, we hope you'll do that whether it's on YouTube or on our podcast so that we can continue these conversations, focus on our guests and listeners. And make sure that we bring the proper content and make it available. So I digress. Rosalinda, I'd love to introduce you. I know you're the Founder of the Community to Community, lead strategist and visionary within the non higher eco feminal leadership of CTC. Correct?
Rosalinda Guillen: That's right.
Justine Reichman: Wow. That is a mouthful. I want to make sure that we do you the courtesy of really giving you an opportunity to explain what that is, both your role and CTC is.
Rosalinda Guillen: It's a long story. Basically what it is, it's an experiment founded by myself with a lot of support from other women organizers in the labor movement, environmental justice movement, and human rights organizers. A lot of my friends back in 1999, the year 2000 or so, were having conversations about organizing in the movement as women. And especially in the labor movement, about the continuing sexism and competition, and the definition of power within social justice movements in general. And also, I'm a farm worker. So I grew up here in Skagit County. My family were all farm workers for generations. I'm the oldest of 8, and we've all worked in the fields in Washington State. So my key organizing area is in the farm worker community with farm workers, agricultural industry, food producing. So that's the area that I'm from. That's who I am. I am a farm worker. I've worked in the fields. I raised my two oldest sons migrating and living in labor camps and working. That's my culture, that's who I am as a farm worker. But also, I'm a woman, and I'm an organizer.
The idea was that I couldn't find a political space for farm workers that is broader than just organizing farm workers, and not really having a vision for a better food system in general. Because we are members, we sometimes think we're confined in the food system. So the idea was to create an organization that was women led in organizing both on the ground and policy legislative areas, and human rights areas from the farm worker perspective. So Community to Community Development was founded with that goal in mind. That it was a farm worker justice organization that would be led by farm workers, starting with me from the United States that had been organizing for quite a while, and my experience has been organizing using the Cesar Chavez farm worker organizing model. And I also was with the United Farm Workers for nine years in California.
Justine Reichman: Before you go on, can you talk to Cesar Chavez model so that listeners and the people viewing this that are not familiar with this can get an insight into more about what you're talking about.
Rosalinda Guillen: When I said the Cesar Chavez farmworker organizing model, we're talking about the way that Cesar and Dolores Huerta founded the United Farm Workers of America which was a very basic house meeting campaign. It was at the house meeting model where you actually go and knock on doors, ask to talk to farm workers and have conversations with them. And then you say, can I come back tomorrow? You bring up issues, and the farm workers would bring up issues with Cesar. And he would say, those are really important issues. Do you have other farm workers that have the same issue? Can you gather them tomorrow and we'll have a meeting here at your house? And then from that, other farm workers would come, and then Cesar would schedule house meetings with the other farm workers who would gather more farm workers in their homes, and the numbers would grow in educating in the house meeting campaigns, then would go towards a large community meeting.
So all of these folks that he was meeting with in their homes with the help of those farm workers. They would schedule a big community meeting to have a larger conversation about prioritizing issues, But more importantly, what are we going to do about it? What are you willing to do about this? And so that's what we call the Cesar Chavez organizing model. But the other component of the model that he and Dolores Huerta developed was many times linked to civic engagement. In the 50's and 60's, the majority of the farm workers working in the fields were US citizens. We were born in Texas and Arizona. We were US based farm workers. And so registering them to vote and having them participate in this civic process was a really important component of the Cesar Chavez organizing model. So we follow that model, and it's the beginning of our organizing. And so the organization was founded on these models. But then also the other component of our organization's organizing model is the organizing model that the landless people's movement uses in Brazil that they organized, and then they're in the millions.
Now, the landless people have millions of members of the landless people's movement and the founding of the US Social Forum. So all of their organizing for years, over 20 years, led to the founding of the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, which I was very privileged to attend. I learned a lot about a solidarity economy, about sustainability and protecting the earth, about how you link the organizing on the ground to environmental justice, to protecting Mother Earth. And also, how do you build economic models that help to sustain better wages and better production that doesn't damage the people or the earth? So I was able to attend the very first Social Forum in Porto, Alegre Brazil in 2001, and it was amazing. We're all kind of blended together in the way that we organize community development.
Justine Reichman: So when you started this, we're going back to the 1990's and you first were organizing and bringing everyone together. Did you ever imagine that you'd be following these outlines, these Cesar Chavez and all these different people's ways of building their organizations to where you are today?
Rosalinda Guillen: Not at all. And I guess I'll go back to the 1990's. My organizing roots began with the founding of the Rainbow Coalition in Washington State.
Justine Reichman: Okay, let's start with that. So what is, for those that are not familiar, the Rainbow Coalition.
Rosalinda Guillen: The Rainbow Coalition was formed as part of the campaign to elect Jesse Jackson as the first black president of the United States.
Justine Reichman: Okay. This was your first entry into organizing and getting involved, lead from Jesse Jackson to labor, farm, and community around building this labor union that we've been talking about that you're part of.
Rosalinda Guillen: Well, the Jesse Jackson campaign knocked on my door to be part of the campaign to help elect a black president, which up to that time, I was not political at all. I wasn't even registered to vote. I was in my late 30's, and the engagement with the Jesse Jackson campaign led to very accomplished local organizers forming the local Rainbow Coalition of Whatcom County, and that's where I learned what community organizing was about.
Justine Reichman: At that moment that you knew as a farmer, this is how you were going to build out support and create change?
Rosalinda Guillen: No. When you first learned to organize and you understood the structure that the world has created for you to participate, especially as a farm worker, this is where I actually learned that as a farm worker, I was part of this big, larger agricultural industry. We were all in this agricultural industry, and the Rainbow Coalition was multiracial and multi-issued, and it was community based. So it was community organizing from the bottom up. And I think those are the things that I learned from the Rainbow was an organizing cohort kind of. Our Rainbow Coalition in Whatcom County is at its peak over 600 (inaudible) members. We were participating in electoral politics starting with Jesse, but then we continued after Jesse Jackson lost. We continued building the Rainbow doing local electoral politics and civic engagement for voters, especially the working poor, the homeless and the disenfranchised in our community, in Whatcom County. That taught me a lot about how you reach out to folks and engage them into a process that they have very little hope in, and have never participated in before because I was one of those people.
Justine Reichman: Can you give us maybe three different things that you learned from there that you took with you on your journey, and what led you to transitioning and not really being quite as political. Although it is, you are quite political. But equally, more specifically engaged in the farmer coalition.
Rosalinda Guillen: I learned at the Rainbow Coalition that I was a farm worker, first and foremost. The value that I brought to the community and to society was my skills and my understanding of being a farm worker in the agricultural industry. And I learned what the agricultural industry was. I learned that the agricultural industry was founded on slavery. I learned that it was founded on stolen land, the production of food in the United States. I also learned that my family and other families as farm workers, we never had a chance to really realize what everybody calls, I guess, the American Dream opportunities. We were in poverty. We were generated. We were involved. Had always been in this generational poverty cycle because we were farm workers.
Justine Reichman: How did your role there help you create a new narrative so that you could then come out of that mindset and work towards creating something that was sustainable and fruitful?
Rosalinda Guillen: Because I became a leader in the Rainbow, I ended up leading different areas of the Rainbow Coalition, especially the food sovereignty areas, the people of color being engaged in electoral politics. I listened to my ideas of a better way for farm workers to live, a better way for farmworkers to be part of the United States, and the fact that I was a worker. And that as a worker, I had power. And we got so close to electing Jesse Jackson, that was a very huge victory for us even though he wasn't elected. And he was a black man, and I was a brown person. Farm workers are brown people. I think that being a leader in the rainbow coalition and seen as a leader and recognized gave me ideas, and the Rainbow was creative in political thinking. And during that time, a group of farm workers came to ask for support for a boycott of a wine company that still exists, actually the Chateau St. Michel. And they gave me a way to take action and to understand ways that farm workers could improve their lives in Washington state through collective bargaining, because the labor movement was a huge part of the Rainbow Coalition.
Justine Reichman: So my understanding is that under this program of area of food sovereignty, there are a few different projects that you're working on. Can you talk to us a little bit about those projects?
Rosalinda Guillen: A lot of the food sovereignty work that we're doing is about how food is produced. And one of those areas that we're really focusing on is, and this is a way that we look at, how do we build ways within our organization, Community to Community, for farmworkers to take leadership, and for farmworkers to use their skills and their visions, and bring them, manifest and make them happen? So the one thing I learned in Brazil at the World Social Forum was the idea of the solidarity economy. Building a solidarity economy through workers owning the means of production through worker owned cooperatives. In Brazil, I saw thousands and thousands of workers with all different types of worker owned co-ops. Community to Community worker owned cooperative development is huge, and we have land where we are training and developing worker owned farming co ops. And that's the idea. Our vision is to be able to develop farm workers' ability to show our community a new way or a better way that farmer, and can produce food and still be part of food systems.
Justine Reichman: So what inspired you to be on this mission in food with the farm workers and labor union?
Rosalinda Guillen: The inspiration really was the realization that I was a farm worker and the poverty that we had lived in. The lack of opportunities for my father meant that there was an infrastructure in the United States that kept farm workers poor, and that there were ways to make that better. It didn't have to be that way.
Justine Reichman: So what ways have you come up with since then? Or what were your hopes when you had that realization? You're like, okay, I need to make this better. I'm going to create this organization, or work with these people and the community to be able to improve the situation. What were you hopeful for? And how are you doing it?
Rosalinda Guillen: Well, first of all, farmworkers are in the community. Farm workers in most rural communities are invisible. They do all the work, but they're not part of the community. They're not part of the community. So recognition of the skills that farm workers bring to food production in local communities, that was one. The other one was raising the wages for that skilled work. The recognition that the work that farmworkers are doing is very skilled. It's just as skilled as the farmers that they're working for. And so building community awareness and education that farm workers have skills that need to be compensated for. That it isn't entry level work, it is highly skilled work, and that highly skilled work is keeping a food system in the United States and locally vibrant. And more importantly, profitable for the farmers and the industry itself. And my goal is to raise the wages and the benefits for farm workers working in agriculture that are commensurate with the profit that is being made by the food production farmers, and also corporate industrial agriculture. We deserve better wages. We deserve benefits, health plans. We deserve the ability to be able to own our own home, to have a medical plan, to not die at an early age. The lifespan of a farm worker in the United States is 49, that is the most clear piece of data that can tell you why organizations like mine exist. We deserve to live to 75 and 80. I'm 73, and it's like the fact that I'm able to live this long is new in the generations of Guillen's that have been farm workers in the United States.
Justine Reichman: I know that you're a champion for the farm workers under their food sovereignty program. In doing this, my understanding is they partner with a variety of different organizations. What's it like to partner with them? How did they come to a consensus?
Rosalinda Guillen: Well, I think when you're talking about other organizations, it's the consensus that has to include an equitable discussion of who we are, and why we're all working together?
Justine Reichman: You're saying that in order for it to be effective, everybody has to be able to have a voice, come together and be able to share their feelings, their thoughts, what's working, what's not. And then everyone can come to a consensus. Is that challenging?
Rosalinda Guillen: It is very challenging because farm workers are not normally part of a lot of these spaces within other communities, community organizations in rural communities. But then also, less so even in decision making spaces when it comes to local government and state government. So we have developed ways to include farm workers, because there's language barriers, there's class barriers. Most farm workers are very poor, so the ability to be able to afford to move and to participate is a barrier. And those are the barriers that Community to Community works to undo or to provide support for farmworkers so they can participate equitably.
Justine Reichman: It makes sense. I understand. So when we look at the experience that you've had teaching gardens for agroecological farming methods, what have you found farmers interested in changing?
Rosalinda Guillen: Interested farm workers come because most of the farm workers that are immigrating into the United States are farmers themselves in Mexico or the country they come from. So they already come with a knowledge of growing food in sustainable ways without pesticides. They know how to use water better, how to understand the soil and grow the foods that do better in that soil, and how to farm. There's different farming methods. This is something that I have spoken a lot to big farmers, corporate farmers and local farmers in general. I believe that the future of sustainable food production in the United States and food security in the United States is being squandered by not including more new immigrant farmers or peasants that are settling in the United States in envisioning better, sustainable food production methods. We have people, for example in Seattle because this is local.
Justine Reichman: It's not local, it's global.
Rosalinda Guillen: It's global, yeah. But in Seattle, we have people from Africa, from Ethiopia, from the Middle East, from South America living in urban centers that are peasant farmers where they were, and they're looking for little pieces of land to grow food. And I'm thinking, if we were smart as a country, we would look at all of these immigrants that are new citizens of the United States, and look at all of these food production methods and skills that they bring, and look at climate change and the opportunities that we have here with more resources to have more better food security by including the immigrant farmers in the decision making on how food production is going to be developed for this future that's hitting us really hard with climate change. How do we protect the soil?
Justine Reichman: So speaking of that, I'm wondering, as these farmers come in from different countries and around the world and you start to see some of their practices, what have you learned from them that you are now incorporating into your initiatives?
Rosalinda Guillen: Well, a lot of it is the use of water. How to make sure that you preserve water. That you use water the best that you can, but also that you grow food that can adapt better to our local climate, soil and geography? If we're looking at different crops, and I think that that's what these immigrant farmers do is they want to grow their own food that they used to eat at home. And so they tried to do that, and they looked at how the soil adapted to the sun and the water, and also how to adapt different structures to be able to grow food. And I think conversations with some of these immigrant farmers have been very enriching for us. And most of the conversations that we have are farmers from Guerrero and Oaxaca in southern Mexico, because they've lost some of their water, some of their land has been poisoned by toxins and other issues from manufacturing.
Justine Reichman: Earlier on, you were saying that it's really important to adapt to some of the processes that the farmers that are coming around the world use. And we talk about water, and then you mentioned that they're trying to grow some of the fruits and vegetables that they use in their country. However, I think you communicated that it was important to think about what works in our climate. So wondering how that all plays together. Because if we're talking about growing what works with our environment and our climate, that's the opposite of what people from around the world, these farmers that you were mentioning come and are doing. They want to grow their fruits and vegetables elsewhere. So how do you navigate that?
Rosalinda Guillen: It's actually exciting growing food, Northwest foods, for example. We can grow in our climate like broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and local foods. Then if there's a blending happening of the immigrant farmers, or the immigrant farm workers that are living in this country learning to eat, for example, eggplant or other other vegetables, and blending that together, and finding out ways to grow some of their own food that they can not all of it. It's not possible to do it all. You may have, for example, Chile Coyote, which is a specific squash that actually ended up growing really well in the Northwest. And so then they focus on the ones that can grow better in the local climate. But the processes of growing different types of food, it's like the techniques and the skills that different farmers bring and blending those all together with the climate and the soil, and the resources that we have here. But the other process that we talk about is the social component of how farm workers from other countries farm, which is more of a process. It's more of a family process where everybody's involved in doing the work and the sharing. And I think that that is another component that we can look at here in the United States about how we go back to those processes. I believe family farmers in the United States used to have that, taking care of each other, sharing tools and knowledge. I think it's gone to corporate, this industrial corporate food production with chemicals, with pesticides instead of going back to the organic, the natural. There's more sustainable food production methods.
Justine Reichman: So if you can integrate this going forward and help people take from that culture, the community drives to build their farms, what do you hope to see in our culture with farming?
Rosalinda Guillen: The vision is what we're calling the (inaudible), it's like acres or chunks of land, anywhere between 30 to 100 acres of land where families are on the land communally producing food and selling it to a culturally appropriate food. But also food that they can make money off living on the land. It's like a community farm.
Justine Reichman: So what you're saying is you're hoping that by integrating this, people could grow their food, sell some of it, have enough to eat for themselves, and become self-sustaining and live together. Do you see that that is something that the US is demanding? Is the US farm community asking for something like this?
Rosalinda Guillen: I think they are. And I think that the answer is in a collaboration with immigrant communities, and they're not looking at that. You see articles we read about it all the time. Farmers have to sell their land because their children no longer want to farm. They're growing old on the farm, so nobody wants to farm anymore. Losing the farm. I know young farmers, they're not immigrants, they're young. They're children with farmers to farm and not able to do it. I just talked to some young farmers, they tried for 10 years, and they could not sustain it. They just could not survive economically. I think that there's the solution if we look at community farming using cooperative development processes for keeping the society within that community farm equitable, and working together with the collaboration that cooperative development gives us the processes for democracy in decision making on a piece of land for farmers. And if we build these community farms, we call it (inaudible), which is what they were in Mexico, but it could be different ways. My point is that a lot of small organic family farmers and young people that want to farm are asking for a solution for them to be able to keep farming.
Justine Reichman: So if we were to integrate this and they were going to build this community, what percentage of farmers do you think would be able to be more successful versus what's going on right now, what's the growth that we could expect around surviving farmers being able to keep their farm? Whereas now, we're hearing that some of these people have to sell it off. They're not making the money, etcetera.
Rosalinda Guillen: I don't think I can answer that until we try it. But I see that the other component that we're looking at now is, because of climate change is in our area, the tribal communities that have reservations land where they live in that's being poisoned in their gathering methods of food, I think there's just so many ways that we could collaborate on how food is grown in rural communities.
Justine Reichman: Can you give me two or three examples of different ways that you can collaborate?
Rosalinda Guillen: Yes. I have ideas that haven't been done yet.
Justine Reichman: Just two or three ideas that you've come up with. You're hopeful that by integrating these, we'll see positive change.
Rosalinda Guillen: The Lummi Nation and the Swinomish other nations along the Pacific are, for example, fixing their shorelines so that there's clam and oyster farming is in the natural way that it used to be. I think that if we had some community land that farm workers could then be working to be growing the vegetables and corn that our community needs making our own corn tortillas, you could have a multicultural food system in an area that respects the land, respects each other's cultures and still be able to make some money on it. When I say a profit, I'm not saying people are going to get rich off of this. But you can live well, and you can have what you need within the food system. So I just think that bringing people together around these new ideas is very difficult because we're still very much focused on the profit making of food production instead of the community building and the health building of eaters in a food system that could provide food.
Justine Reichman: So I'm curious, as you integrate these different communities and cultures from around the world, what role does regenerative agriculture play in it for you?
Rosalinda Guillen: Oh, it totally has to be central. And I think that that's the way to address climate change at the local level. Monitoring the climate change itself, which is on a global scale. We have no idea what's coming, or how we're going to have to work together so that we can all eat during this climate crisis as it keeps happening. We're hoping that it lessens, but it doesn't appear to be. And I think that that conversation, the level of conversation has to rise about the common need to be able to have food security at the local level where we don't need to worry about shipping and how does it get to us? We have it here already in different areas.
Justine Reichman: So much information, Rosalinda. So much more we could talk about, but I'd love to maybe bring you back. At this moment, though, as we close this conversation, I just would love to hear from you as you lead these initiatives, and you lead these communities, and you drive the community forward to incorporate different cultures. What are you most hopeful to see in the next three to five years? What kind of change?
Rosalinda Guillen: I think farm workers owning land and beginning to farm in the traditional ways that they know how to farm communally, in the land being owned in different types of community land trusts so that it cannot be sold for profit, and we begin to steward fruit producing land. I would like to, in five years, see at least in our area here 3 to 500 acres in community farms from being built by indigenous immigrant farm workers interacting with the larger farming community here in this area.
Justine Reichman: Thank you so much, Rosalinda, for joining me today and having this conversation. It was really enlightening. I love to hear about the different cultures that we're bringing together to help move the farming and agriculture industries forward. So I think collaboration is what I got out of this. Think Community to Community is at the foundation of so many things. Thanks for sharing that with us.
Rosalinda Guillen: Thank you for the invitation.
