The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (“CIW”) is a human rights organization composed primarily of farmworkers, most of whom work at least part of the year in Florida’s $650 million tomato industry. In 2011, CIW initiated the Fair Food Program (“FFP” or “Program”), the first manifestation of its Worker-driven Social Responsibility (“WSR”) model for ridding corporate supply chains of human rights violations. In the six short years since its inception, the Program has nearly ended the scourge of forced labor in the East Coast tomato industry. The FFP has done so by using an approach that the United Nations Working Group on Business and Human Rights has praised for its “smart mix” of monitoring tools and enforcement strategies and its potential for tackling human trafficking throughout the world.

We examine the FFP’s uniquely successful enforcement mechanisms later in this Article, but to appreciate fully the magnitude of the Program’s accomplishment in eliminating forced labor in the fields, one must first understand the extent to which modern-day slavery in American agriculture represents a continuum from the days of chattel slavery. While the phenomenon of forced labor has taken many forms over the past four centuries, the industry has never been entirely free from its clutches. Florida’s history is instructive on this point.