WWOOFusa
Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms, or WWOOF for short, is comprised of several nation-based programs that “link visitors with organic farmers, prompt an educational exchange, and build a global community conscious of ecological farming practices” (wwoofusa homepage). Founded in the UK in 1971, WWOOF has independent operations in 132 countries. WWOOFusa is the United States branch of this organization and currently (as of Apr 22, 2022) advertises 1459 farmstay locations across the country. WWOOF is an educational work trade exchange program that connects potential farm workers to these farmstay hosts, who provide lodging, experiential learning, cultural exchange, and meals sourced (at least in part) from the farmstay. In turn, WWOOFers provide farmstays with 25-40 hours of labor each week. Stay lengths can vary from single weekends to entire growing seasons, and can be anything from urban community gardens to family-run homesteads to bison ranches or anything in between.
To participate in the WWOOF program as a worker, WWOOFers must pay a $40 membership fee for a year’s access to the host database. Generally, WWOOFers must also cover their own travel costs and manage their transportation to the often-rural locations, though there are some exceptions. To be listed in the WWOOF database, hosts must pay an annual sliding scale fee of $20-50 and be able to provide WWOOFers with approximately 4-6 hours of work per day, clean, dry housing, and 3 meals of food per day. While the organization encourages organic and sustainable farming techniques, it does not require farms to be Certified Organic to display themselves as hosts. The website advises that hosts “acknowledge that WWOOFers are not free laborers. Instead, they are people who offer their time on host projects and activities in order to learn about organic farming and sustainable living practices and to help where needed” (be a host page).
When looking for a farmstay opportunity, WWOOFers will use the “find a host” feature to navigate the extensive database. The website offers a wide variety of filters, such as “Host Location, Language, Animals, Host Type, Methodologies, Certified Organic, WWOOFing with Children/Pets,” and more. The filtering option that was of most interest to me when I began this project was the option to search exclusively for “BIPOC-operated” farmstays. Within the entire WWOOFusa database, only 57 hosts have listed themselves under this filtering option, a mere 4% of the listings. On the other hand, the host type filter for “permaculture” lists over 500 farmstays. This wide gap between these two filtering options sparked the questions that made this project a possibility. Who does WWOOFusa serve, and why do more “BIPOC-operated” farms not utilize this resource? What enables this disparity? (How) does the work being done by Black and Indigenous farmers in the US exist in tension with WWOOFing?
