They're picking cantalopes. The rind is a little rough, which is ok if you're only handling a few dozen a day! But if you pick them all day, they'll sand your fingers raw.
Have seen people go through a couple pairs of gloves per day 😭
Why do farm workers so often wear long sleeves, hoodies, etc even when it's hot?
Short answer: being hot & sweaty is temporary. Messed-up skin (from sunburn, bug bites, sharp hairs on plants, etc) will make you itchy, in pain, sad, & unable to sleep for days : /
Why do farm workers so often wear long sleeves, hoodies, etc even when it's hot?
Short answer: being hot & sweaty is temporary. Messed-up skin (from sunburn, bug bites, sharp hairs on plants, etc) will make you itchy, in pain, sad, & unable to sleep for days : /
If you're picking fruit in an orchard, you can spend a LOT of your time just climbing up & down ladders. With a basket of fruit strapped to your chest that can weigh up to 50lbs.
It's like Cirque du Soleil where you get paid by the pound.
An orchardist in Australia did the math. He found that for every hectare (~2.5 acres) of orchard, fruit pickers go up & down ladders so many times that they climb the equivalent of 1.2 Mount Everests.
Australia usually has higher labor costs than Europe & North America. Why? It's hard to immigrate to. There's no Mexico, Eastern Europe, or North Africa attached to it.
So Australian growers came up with a solution: just use shorter trees. No ladders needed.
These so-called pedestrian orchards save a whole lot of time. They can be picked faster, so the fruit gets to market in better shape. You don't need to hire as many people to do the picking. And it's way less dangerous for workers.
It's very easy for farm labor issues to framed as "farmers vs workers."
But my job for a long time has been to help farms navigate those issues. And almost always, there's something that can be done that lessens the burden of getting a job done on both farms & workers.
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