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In reply to the discussion: Georgia Survey Finds Farmers Are Having Hard Time Replacing Migrant Workers [View all]csziggy
(34,136 posts)I've never picked strawberries, but I have picked oranges, You can't just yank the fruit off the trees - if you plug the orange, it will go bad before it will make it to market or even to the juice processing plant. There is a particular twisting motion that must be learned to keep from plugging the fruit.
Fortunately, I never had to pick oranges for a living - I would have been billed for the number of fruit I plugged! We own a couple of groves - Dad helped Granddad plant them when he was a boy. We'd pick oranges to ship to relatives up north for the holidays.
The last batches of strawberries we bought were obviously carefully picked - every berry had a cap of leaves on the top with the same length stem above them. The only damage to the strawberries was from being packed in the little cartons - the berries were beautiful with no bruising.
With something as delicate as strawberries, that has to take some practice!
Each kind of fruit and vegetable has different techniques for proper picking. In Georgia there are a wide variety of crops and the pickers cannot afford to specialize - they have to know how to pick any crop they might be hired for.
Add to that the horrible working conditions you accurately describe, and the jobs are even harder. As much as the poor pay and the unfit condition of many people who need jobs, I bet the farmers are having problems find people who know HOW to do the jobs properly.