The California Food and Farming Network convenes several working groups where our movement gathers to dive deep and take collective action on particular policy areas. These include the California Farmworker Coalition, the Regional Food Ecosystems Working Group, and the California Natives + Allies Working Group.
These decision-making bodies inform CFFN policy positions, lead research projects, and provide the scaffolding for new and growing policy campaigns. Each of our working groups aligns with CFFN’s core values and is structured to place decision making in the hands of those most impacted by the policies they seek to change.
California Farmworker Coalition (Formerly the Farmworker Advocacy Working Group)
The California Farmworker Coalition (CFC) was formed in Spring 2020 as the Farmworker Advocacy Working Group, when the disproportionate impacts of the pandemic on Latinx and Indigenous farmworker communities drew attention from media and policymakers, while farmworkers and community based organizations (CBOs) closest to them remained left out of policy conversations in California’s state capitol.
CFFN brought together a small group of CBOs and allies to respond to the growing number of policies referencing or aiming to serve farmworkers, to demand recognition of farmworkers’ essential role, and to ensure that farmworker-serving organizations have a seat at the table where state policy impacting their communities are being decided.
Since 2020, the California Farmworker Coalition has continued to grow to include CBOs working in the Central Valley, Central Coast, and Southern California. Today, the CFC builds power within grassroots organizations so that farmworker communities can set policies that impact agricultural workers in California. The CFC is a bilingual power-building space for CBOs that traditionally haven’t had a voice in Sacramento.To learn more about CFC’s work and to sign up to receive updates from the Coalition, visit www.cafarmworkercoalition.org.
Regional Food Ecosystems Working Group
A Steering Council-identified priority, this Working Group launched Spring of 2023 to explore and build out a path for the State to comprehensively invest in regional food ecosystems. With multiple evolutions over a few short years, the working group is focused on advancing and responding to state policies impacting regional food ecosystems, such as co-sponsoring AB 1961 (Wicks, 2024) which would have required the state to form a multi-sector task force to develop a Master Plan to End Hunger, exploring support of a constitutional amendment to declare food is a human right, engaging in applicable Prop 4 investments, and ensuring other state policies align with this group’s mission.
Membership is intentionally kept at a balance of diverse food system sectors, as well as both grassroots and grasstops experts who are able to bring their unique perspectives while also thinking about the food system as a whole.
This group believes that regional food ecosystems are needed to achieve the human right to food, that public policies should take steps towards this rather than reinvest in the status quo, that BIPOC communities should be leading voices in the policy process, along with Tribal consultation, and that public funds should be leveraged to build self-supporting systems that build wealth and strengthen the self-determination of communities.
CA Natives + Allies Working Group
With the guidance of CFFN’s Indigenous Steering Council members, this working group launched in the Spring of 2024 as a response to the lack of tribal representation throughout the policy-making process.
The working group was originally created as a space for CFFN members to self-organize, coordinate, develop best practices, and ensure accountability in engaging with CA Native communities in state policy and has since grown to include Indigenous people through the piloting of a Tribal Reviewers project for the current legislative cycle which aims to enlist CA Natives to review and recommend amendments to bills that impact or have the potential to impact Tribal communities.
The group also supports the co-creation of CDFA’s Tribal Food Sovereignty Program. This space is open to CA Natives and all CFFN members committed to respecting and incorporating Tribal feedback on policies.
