Yahoo Food's Celebrity of the Year: Eva Longoria
While most celebrities would rather stick to promoting the borrowed clothes on their backs than get involved in a political issue, actress Eva Longoria proved to be the exception this year. She spent much of 2014 discussing the plight of farm workers and even served as executive producer of Food Chains, a documentary released in November about the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. These tomato pickers from Southern Florida have been pushing for fast food outlets and grocery chains to improve the working conditions for farm laborers through a program called Fair Food. So far, Walmart, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, McDonalds, Chipotle, Burger King, Subway, the YUM Brands, Aramark, Compass Group, Bon Appétit, and Sodexo have signed on, but several holdouts remain.
Longoria has been promoting Food Chains around the world, from the Berlin Film Festival, where it debuted, to the Guadalajara Film Festival to Real Time with Bill Maher. “Where we get our food is a chain, and everybody’s a part of it, from the farmers and the farm workers to the consumers and the supermarkets and fast food,” Longoria told The Insider with Yahoo earlier this year. “Everyone is connected.”
Longoria attends Eva Longoria’s Foundation dinner at Beso in October. Photo: Jeffrey Mayer / Getty Images
This is not the first time Longoria has pushed for more awareness on the issue. In 2010, she served as executive producer of The Harvest, a documentary about child farm workers in America.
With the bigger spotlight focused on the rights of farm workers, thanks in part to Longoria’s efforts and the important work of journalists like Richard Marosi of the Los Angeles Times, the subject will continue to reverberate in 2015. We look forward to seeing how Longoria’s activism on this front evolves.
We’re wrapping up 2014:
