Leveraging Institutional Dollars for a Just and Healthy Food System - Strawberry Supply Chain Flash Cards

Strawberry supply chain

Seed Producers/

Sellers & Workers


Pesticide Companies & Workers


Fertilizer Companies & Workers


Trucking Companies

& Truck Drivers


Farm Labor Contractors


Farmworkers


Cooler/Shipper

Companies & Workers


Growers


Retailers & Workers


Restaurants, Food

Service, & Workers


FarmworkersThere are about 20,000 strawberry workers in California. Their pay is about $8,500 a year and most have not received a significant raise in 10 years. Many are paid less than minimum wage. Strawberry workers earn about 10 cents per pint. Increasing that to 15 cents, or by 50 percent, would hike the cost of a pint of berries by 5 cents.

Strawberry pickers work as many as 12 hours a day. To pick the fruit, they must bend and stoop, resulting in chronic back injuries. The work is too hard for older pickers. Four out of five are under 30. Chronic back injuries are common. Workers labor in fields treated with pesticides such as methyl bromide, one of the most toxic chemicals in use. Yet, health insurance for the workers is a rarity.

Child labor is not unusual. Women workers face sexual harassment in the fields. Bathrooms are often far from the workers or in disrepair and sometimes there is no clean drinking water. Job security does not exist. Approximately 300,000 farmworkers in the U.S. are poisoned by pesticides annually. (info from ufw.org)


Farm Labor ContractorsFarm labor contractors recruit, transport, pay, and supervise farmworkers, which allows for notorious abuse. Contractors now hire 20 percent of farmworkers nationwide and 40 percent in California. According to one California contractor, “Farm-labor contracting exists for the grower’s benefit..... By using a contractor, a grower avoids... labor laws.” (from foodfirst.org)

In April 2011, the federal government filed a human-trafficking lawsuit against a California-based farm labor contractor and eight farms in the largest case of alleged forced labor of farm workers - 200 workers from Thailand - in the United States. The men were brought to the United States under a federal H2-A visa program, which places foreign workers on U.S. farms. But once the men arrived, their passports were confiscated and they were not paid for their work. Many of the workers were barred from leaving the farms and were forced to live in cramped, dirty conditions. In many cases, the workers were threatened with deportation if they complained about the conditions.


Retailers & WorkersGrocery stores make up one of the largest industries in the United States, providing 2.5 million jobs in 2008. Young workers age 16 to 24 hold nearly one-third of grocery store jobs. Thirty percent of grocery-store workers are part-time, with the average workweek for nonsupervisory workers at 29.4 hours, compared to 33.4 hours for all industries. In 2008, nonsupervisory workers in grocery stores nationwide averaged $340 a week, compared with $608 a week for all workers in the private sector. Twenty-two percent of grocery store employees belong to a union or are covered by a union contract. (info from Bureau of Labor Statistics)

A recent report based on worker surveys in New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles found that 23.5 percent grocery workers were paid less than the minimum wage, and 65 percent were not paid overtime. (info from nelp.org)


Restaurants, Food Service, & Workers

The restaurant industry, the largest fully-private sector employer in the U.S., employs more than 10 million people. In 2009, the restaurant industry earned over $566 billion in revenue. The national median hourly wage for food preparation and service workers in 2009 was only $8.59, including tips. Restaurant workers on average made only $15,092 in 2009 compared to $45,155 for the total private sector. The median hourly wage of all white workers surveyed in eight U.S. localities was $13.25, while that of workers of color was $9.54. Over 90 percent of restaurant workers surveyed reported that they do not have health insurance through their employers. (info from rocunited.org)

On average overall, non-union food service workers earn just $7.80 per hour, while union workers make an average of $10.32 per hour. In 2008 about 2 percent of workers belonged to a union or were covered by a union contract.


Cooler/Shipper Companies & Workers

The strawberry industry is a $650-million-a year business. The cooler companies, also known as shippers, are the brands of strawberries that we see in the grocery store. Cooler companies usually do not directly employ the workers, and most do not grow the strawberries themselves. Yet, this handful of large corporations dominate the strawberry growers. They cool strawberries after they are picked. They control prices, shipping and marketing, plus how much workers are paid, whether they get benefits and how they are treated. (info from ufw.org)


GrowersThere are about 270 strawberry growers on California's central coast, producing about 65 percent of the strawberries grown in California. U.S. growers make more money from fresh strawberries than any other crop except fresh apples. (info from ufw.org)

Swanton Berry Farms is one of the few unionized strawberry growers in the country. The farmworkers and other employees are represented by the United Farm Workers union. This grower also uses organic farming methods. You can read a copy of the union contract on the website http://www.swantonberryfarm.com/.


Strawberry Nurseries & Workers


Sharecroppers


SharecroppersThe goal of the sharecropping system is to shift the risk and regulatory burden from the landholders and shippers to the workers. Under a typical scheme the grower will assign or rent an area of his acreage to a worker and their family for them to farm. It is then the responsibility of the sharecropper to cover all expenses including the hiring and payment of field workers. In many contracts the sharecropper is required to sell when and to whom the grower appoints. This can lead to abuse if the grower has a contract with a particular shipper, which will profit the grower but may force the sharecropper to sell for less than the current market value of the berries. Further, if the sharecropper cannot meet their bills then they are liable for the debt. In prior systems the sharecropper would simply not be paid or receive any portion of the profits, now however, they must assume the debt even if it is to the grower from which they leased the land. This can lead to a spiraling cycle of debt. It has been estimated that up to half of the acreage in the Salinas-Watsonville area of California is being sharecropped. [Info from Eric Schlosser, REEFER MADNESS: SEX, DRUGS, AND CHEAP LABOR IN THE AMERICAN BLACK MARKET 80 (2003)]

Documents

Leveraging Institutional Dollars for a Just and Healthy Food System - Strawberry Supply Chain Flash Cards