Each year at the end of March we join partners across the country celebrating National Farmworker Awareness Week, a nationwide event honoring farmworkers and their families. The celebration culminates today, on Cesar Chavez Day.

A week set aside to raise awareness about the more than two million workers who plant, tend and harvest our food is a wonderful opportunity. This year, we invite you to explore — and share — the great resources below as National Farmworker Awareness Week (#NFAW) wraps up.

Farmworkers and their families are clearly on the frontlines of chemical-dependent agriculture year round. That’s why we work with farmworker advocates to press for new, stronger national rules protecting workers from pesticides on the job. And that’s also why we’re a founding member of the Equitable Food Initiative.

Please dive into at least one (maybe all!) of the pieces below, and share the links — and the ideas they spark — with your online community, friends and family.

Highlights from GroundTruth 

• Thankful for bounty, motivated for change: PAN organizer Medha Chandra shares how one particular pesticide, chlorpyrifos, affects farmworkers from field to table.
• Voices united for farmworker safety! PAN staff scientist and longtime farmworker advocate Margaret Reeves describes a key moment in our fight for a new Worker Protection Standard.
• Responsibly grown, farmworker assured: The Equitable Food Initiative gets its trademark, check out this progressive new food label.
• Cesar Chavez: Parent & pesticide activist: Get inspired by this piece marking last year’s Cesar Chavez celebration, from PAN’s Executive Director Judy Hatcher.  

More food for thought

• TEDxFruitvale: Harvesting Change: In 2011, the Bon Appétit Management Company Foundation hosted 24 speakers providing thought-provoking information and inspiring ideas related to farmworkers and food system change.  
• Pesticide Lake: EarthJustice and Food Chains director Sanjay Rawa collaborated to produce this powerful seven minute film exposing the complex links between pesticide exposure and disease. 
• Student Action with Farmworkers: Check out this great website for more on NFAW and related farmworker issues.

Start here, learn more — and join the conversation about building a food system that’s healthy, thriving and sustainable for all. Si Se Puede!