Comments on: Strawberry Farmworkers Fight for a Living Wage

By: Heidi MacDonald

Sun, 05 May 2024 19:57:34 +0000

I want to attest to the fact that picking strawberries is a grueling job. I picked strawberries as a 12-year-old in Oregon (it was common for school kids to work in the fields during summers in the 1970s). Our plants weren’t raised as pictured, so we either crawled (that’s what I did) or squatted. We were paid by the flat, with no hourly wage. I was very slow, but they kept me on because they needed the extra labor. No shade was the hardest part.

The farmer kept us far away from the migrant farmworkers. We were working for spending money; they were making their living. I felt the gravity of that even as a child. We would leave the fields on busses around 2 p.m., but the migrant workers stayed. Their entire families worked, even the little kids.

I always think of the people who pick my strawberries (and harvest other produce) and send a prayer for their safety and gratitude for their difficult work. I hope they succeed in getting paid a decent, dignified wage ASAP.

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By: Mary ONeil

Tue, 30 Apr 2024 14:03:17 +0000

Is there an official boycott of these farms? Is there a list? Who are the good growers of strawberries?

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By: Mary Anne Haren

Thu, 25 Apr 2024 18:32:40 +0000

Thoroughly excellent presentation of the unacceptable conditions under which the people who provide us with our daily meals must labor. The article offers a vivid and totally accurate account of an ongoing injustice that must be corrected. Hopefully, it will reach readers who have not yet considered the human cost of the food they enjoy every day.

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