I’m very happy to announce that Whole Foods Market has signed an agreement with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) designed to help improve wages and working conditions for Florida tomato pickers.

I put together this blog entry to explain the steps we took that led us to make this agreement.

Just before Christmas of 2007 I became aware of a slavery indictment in Florida related to a contract harvesting operation and we received some questions about whether any of our Whole Foods Market suppliers were connected to the persons named in the suit. Our suppliers were not connected to the indicted parties in any way, but the story got my attention.

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The Whole Trade Guarantee Rose project began almost a year ago when three of us from Whole Foods Market made a trip to Ecuador to learn about Fair Trade certified roses. Right away we saw that Ecuadorian roses are gorgeous! BIG! STRONG! BOLD! After meeting with the rose workers and learning how Fair Trade benefits them, we were smitten. Before the trip was over we had the wheels in motion to bring a Whole Trade Guarantee rose to market on our stores. Read the rest of this entry »