Think immigrants are taking our jobs? Try picking strawberries for a day

[Kali]

https://newfoodeconomy.com/strawberry-empathy-study-labor/

Participants were also instructed to take pictures while picking. Initially, images were overwhelmingly of people and landscapes: very generic, about nothing in particular other than to chronicle who was there and what the general experience looked like. But as the day progressed, so did the feel of the photographs. By late afternoon, there were selfies of sweaty faces and wet, matted hair; one of a sweat ring in a baseball hat; a pair of soil-stained bare knees; and trays at various stages of fullness held by fingers caked with dirt and stained red.

By the day’s end everyone had taken photos documenting their physical exertion. For in the end it was precisely that “hard as hell” work that stuck with them long after we left the field for our respective middle-class homes. That work, as I learned during the exit interviews, even made some reevaluate what they thought about the people doing the work so we can eat “fresh” fruits and vegetables. Rebecca, the real estate agent, swore off “industrial strawberries,” vowing in the future to buy only local. Another claimed to have bought only Fair Trade strawberries since that day in the field. As for Jeff, the gentleman who had unapologetically called immigrant laborers “illegals,” he described how that day “softened” his stance on national immigration policy. “We need them to feed us,” he admitted sheepishly.