Clouds are gathering over the Oakes Farm's Seed to Table market. (Photo: Author)
Sept. 10, 2021 by David Silverberg
A new executive order issued by President Joe Biden requiring federal contractors to vaccinate their workforces will put pressure on “Alfie” Oakes, the fiercely anti-vaccination farmer, grocer and extreme conservative activist based in Naples, Fla., to protect his workforce from COVID-19.
Francis Alfred Oakes III claims to have 3,200 employees.
The order, Executive Order on Ensuring Adequate COVID Safety Protocols for Federal Contractors was issued yesterday, Sept. 9. (The full text of the order and a downloadable PDF is available at the end of this article.)
The order seeks “to promote economy and efficiency in procurement by contracting with sources that provide adequate COVID-19 safeguards for their workforce… .” This is being widely interpreted as mandating vaccinations for all workers on federal contracts.
While the order takes effect immediately, the Safer Federal Workforce Task Force, a government group providing federal agencies pandemic guidance, has until Sept. 24 to issue the terms, explanations of protocols and guidance to federal contractors. Federal agencies have until Oct. 8 to implement the guidance.
Oakes Farms has extensive and lucrative federal contracts, according to a Jan. 19, 2021 Naples Daily News article “Despite criticism and protests, Oakes Farms does big business with federal government,” by reporter Laura Layden.
According to the article, the company was awarded $70.2 million in the first quarter of the 2021 federal fiscal year based on contracts with the Agriculture, Defense and Justice departments. In 2017 it won a contract worth $40 million with the Defense Logistics Agency, a second contract with the same agency worth $46.8 million in 2018 and a third contract worth $45 million. In 2018 it won a contract to supply produce to the Bureau of Prisons in the Justice Department. It supplied boxes of produce to needy families under the 2020 Farmers to Families program of the Agriculture Department.
Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 Oakes has dismissed the virus as a “hoax” and a “sham.” He fought masking in Collier County, defying a county mandate and ignoring regulations. All fines for COVID violations were dismissed by an order of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), on Sept. 25, 2020.
Since the arrival of vaccines Oakes has been a prominent and vocal anti-vaxxer.
“…Our employees, no one died, zero of them died,” Oakes said in a speech to the conservative “We the People Fight Back” conference on Aug. 20 at the Naples Hilton, in Naples. “Very few of them got sick! The people that did get sick were only sick for four or five days. We did have a few people that were sick for a couple weeks but every flu season I get people that are sick for a couple of weeks.”
He continued: “So this is what I’ve seen. I’ve got no reason to lie about it. But we all did the right thing. We got plenty of sunlight, we didn’t obstruct our breathing, and we loved and had a good time. The government’s telling you, to go and stay in your house, stay out of the sun, put a mask on, take this vaccine that’s really nothing and it’s just beyond sad.”
Oakes has characterized vaccines as “Fauci’s poisonous cocktail” and stated that “plenty of sunlight, healthy eating and not stressing out” would result in a “100 percent success rate when you get the proper treatment Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin. The odds have not changed... anyone with a healthy immune system are [sic] much more likely to die getting struck by lightning.”
Oakes’ retail market, Seed to Table, gained national prominence in February for its anti-mask and COVID-denial policies.
The new executive order requiring COVID precautions applies to all new federal contracts. However, it states that when it comes to existing contracts, “agencies are strongly encouraged, to the extent permitted by law, to ensure that the safety protocols required under those contracts and contract-like instruments are consistent with the requirements specified in section 2 of this order,” section 2 being the one providing guidance on safety measures and protocols.
The order’s requirements also apply to all of a business’ locations, so that would presumably also apply to retail as well as production sites: “This clause shall apply to any workplace locations (as specified by the Task Force Guidance) in which an individual is working on or in connection with a Federal Government contract or contract-like instrument…” it states.
(Editor’s note: Oakes’ reliance on “plenty of sunlight, we didn’t obstruct our breathing, and we loved and had a good time,” is an eerie echo of one response to the Black Death, the bubonic plague of the 14th century that took the lives of a third of Europeans. In her book A Distant Mirror, historian Barbara Tuchman writes: “In another place villagers were seen dancing to drums and trumpets, and on being asked the reason, answered that, seeing their neighbors die day by day while their village remained immune, they believed they could keep the plague from entering ‘by the jollity that is in us. That is why we dance.’” Tuchman does not say if the village remained immune.)
Liberty lives in light
© 2021 by David Silverberg