Omitted Stakeholders: Unearthing How Strawberry Farm Workers Can Bolster the Agricultural Technology Revolution
Creators: name: Tena-Meza, Stephanie
Publisher: name: Stanford Digital Repository
Year: 2025
Subjects: Agricultural technology, Farm Workers, Salinas Valley

description: The Salinas Valley, located in the Central Coast of California, is widely recognized as the “Salad Bowl of the World” for its vast production of crops such as lettuce, broccoli, tomato, and spinach among numerous others. The state of California grows 90% of U.S. strawberries and the Salinas Valley is a top strawberry producer, accounting for 47% of the state’s total harvest (Jones, 2014). Strawberry farm workers are in charge of harvesting strawberries every season and, as such, are the backbone of the nearly one billion dollar Salinas Valley strawberry industry (Herrera, 2022). However, in many cases, farm workers face a myriad of issues in their personal lives and at work, ranging from a lack of access to healthcare to physical problems developed from farmworking. My research study highlights some of the issues they face as strawberry harvesters. At the same time, the Salinas Valley strawberry industry is facing a set of existential challenges such as a shrinking and aging labor force and extreme climate that threatens the industry’s ability to persist in the coming decades. My research turns to agriculture technology as an opportunity to develop climate resilient and sustainable solutions that address both issues while maintaining a critical eye towards job displacement, and marginalization. In my senior honors thesis, I explore how agriculture technology can offer climate resilient solutions that accomplish two things: 1) offer strawberry farm workers an improved job that is safer as well as less labor intensive and 2) alleviate the shrinking labor force and extreme climate issue in the Salinas Valley strawberry industry. My findings suggest that farm worker inclusion and collaboration during the development of agricultural technology (AgTech) is crucial in order to build AgTech that increases the productivity of farm workers, and addresses issues they experience while harvesting such as physical pain and discomfort. Farm workers have a rich knowledge and understanding of agriculture that is indispensable to solving some of the strawberry industry’s greatest current challenges. The majority of the strawberry farm workers I interviewed expressed how physically taxing harvesting is on their bodies as well as the challenges they face while working in extreme climate conditions. As demonstrated through my interviews with an AgTech company, farm worker marginalization can lead to problematic tension between farm workers and AgTech, which is counter-intuitive to increasing the productivity of farm workers and addressing issues such as the current labor shortage. Therefore, treating farm workers as key stakeholders in agriculture, including them in the development of AgTech, and designing AgTech that deliberately empowers them will foster an AgTech industry that increases productivity and addresses the current challenges of the California strawberry industry in a manner that values worker expertise and empowers farm workers.