Resources & AJP Toolkit

Most of our resources are gathered in our AJP Toolkit, including guidance on policies and practices, templates for policies and documents, and examples shared by farms, businesses, and other organizations. The toolkit covers various topics, including:

• • Employee handbooks
  • Writing & implementing a farm health & safety plan
  • Communication, negotiation, & building a collaborative workplace culture
  • Disciplinary, grievance, and conflict resolution processes
  • Calculating a living wage
  • Legal requirements for employment
  • Employee performance evaluations
  • Teaching programs, interns, and apprentices
  • Fair pricing, calculating production costs, and negotiating with buyers
  • Communicating your values & social commitments to customers
  • PR & outreach materials for FJC businesses

Individual Consultations

The Agricultural Justice Project is proud to offer farms and food businesses individual consultations on employment & workplace policies, communication and conflict resolution, health and safety, fair pricing, and more. We offer this service at no cost to farms, as long as our funding allows. For both farms and other food businesses, we always offer initial conversations at no cost.

If you are a farmer, rancher, or farm employee interested in a consultation:

Note: If you are a non-farm food business (retailer, restaurant, processor, distributor, etc.) interested in technical assistance, please reach out through our contact form.

How it works: After you submit your confidential self-assessment form, we will follow up by email or phone. You’ll have the chance to submit employee policy documents you’d like us to review, if you want. We’ll schedule a follow-up conversation to learn more about your goals and whatever challenges you may be facing, and we may discuss some preliminary recommendations. After the interview we’ll prepare a full report with resources and recommendations tailored to your needs. We’re also available for follow-up conversations and support after delivering your report.

We respect your privacy. Your answers and business information will be protected and fully confidential. Our individual consultation and report-writing process is private, and we will not share information about your participation with anyone. Depending on where you are located, you’ll be contacted either by the AJP or by OEFFA’s Fair Farms program, our Midwestern regional partner. Later, you may be invited to participate in webinars and meetings with other farm folks, and we may occasionally share new farm business/workplace resources when they become available. You may opt out of our communications at any time. We will never share or sell your contact information to anyone.

Questions?

Please contact us for more information.

Workshops & Networking Events

In partnership with a variety of food & farm organizations, the AJP presents on average a couple dozen workshops and networking events each year, most of them open to the public and many of them free of charge. For upcoming events please see our events calendar. For resources shared in past presentations, please see our workshop linktree (note that all resources are also available in the Farmer Toolkit, above).

The AJP also facilitates a Fair Farming networking group on the non-profit social media platform Ag Solidarity Network, a project of Marbleseed, the Wisconsin-based organic farming organization. We encourage interested farmers and farm employees to join the on-going conversation there by joining the platform and opting into the fair farming group.

Certification assistance

Farms & food businesses who want help preparing for Food Justice Certification should contact us for an individual consultation, as described above. Food businesses can reach us through our contact form, and farmers and farm employees should start with our intake survey. For more details, see the consultations section above.

The AJP offers a range of possible services for entities seeking certification, from direct consultations on implementing compliant policies and practices, to on-site audits in preparation for an inspection, to on-going consultation throughout a certification and inspection process. Some of these services can be time- and labor-intensive and are likely to incur costs. We can advise you on what services will be most helpful and cost-effective for your needs, and in most cases we have been able to provide assistance to certification applicants at low cost or no cost. We have an hourly rate for consultations and presentations for larger farms or food businesses that aren’t eligible for our free tier of services.