October 10, 2024 — Greg Asbed is the co-founder of the Fair Food Program and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. He was a MacArthur Fellow in 2017.
In 2003, while speaking to a reporter from The New Yorker magazine, a U.S. Justice Department official called the agricultural industry in and around the farmworker community of Immokalee, Florida, “ground zero for modern-day slavery.” The distinction was well-earned, with six separate forced labor operations uncovered in the area and successfully prosecuted by federal officials in the six years leading up to that interview.