Worker at Farmers Market in San Francisco, CA

It is a typical Saturday at the San Francisco Ferry Building Farmers Market for the sellers at the Heirloom Organics stand. There is an abundance of greens, herbs, and edible flowers on offer this particular day. The bright, alluring display of budding, burgundy orach leaves attract customers, as does the fragrant and freshly picked mint bouquets. The worker is comfortable and content in this space. Awaiting customers, she casually places her hand on her cheeks and smiles softly. The busy morning attending to regulars and chefs in search of the best ingredients for their menus has subsided, allowing the worker a moment of rest and contemplation.

This photograph was taken at the Ferry Building Farmers Market where I work every Saturdays selling greens and root vegetables for Heirloom Organics, a farm in Hollister, CA. The woman in this photograph is my co-worker. I don’t recall when I took this photograph; it was probably last spring when orach, also known as wild mountain spinach, is normally in season. I also see a crate of ancho cress on the top shelf, and ancho cress enjoys cooler, springtime weather. These small yet significant details help point to the time when this moment in the photograph may have occurred.

As with any photograph, there are many things that remain unseen. The space and environment beyond the vegetable stand and in front of the worker are unseen. Where is her gaze? What else is in this space? Who are the people in this space and how do they interact with her and the bounteous spread before them?

There were many layers of experiences of work that occurred to arrive at this image of neatly lined crates of greens, bunches of herbs along the center, and a seemingly serene worker. Much of it was physical labor, just before dawn setting up the stand. But most of it took place on the farm. Each collard, chard, kale, cress, mustard, and spinach leaf passed through the hands of a small crew of farmworkers only a day before. Upon harvesting the greens, they triple washed them, packed them into crates, which they then stacked into a refrigerated truck bound for San Francisco.

The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that there are nearly 3 million agricultural workers in the United States. Most farmworkers in the United States are foreign-born (73%). Among those who are foreign-born, more than half were born in Mexico (68%) and most have spent 15 or more years in the United States (55%). Most farmworkers are men (78%) and relatively young with an average age of 38 years old. Thirty percent of farmworker families in the United States live below the poverty level and on average, earn an annual income of $17,500-$19,999 making farmworker wages one of the lowest in the country (NAWS, 2014).

Despite the significant contributions of farmworkers to our food system and America’s economy, the farmworkers that planted, grew, and harvested all the greens in this image remain unseen, in more ways than one.

Sources:
U.S. Department of Labor (2014). Findings from the National Agricultural Workers Survey (NAWS) 2013-2014. Retrieved September 25, 2017 from https://www.doleta.gov/agworker/pdf/NAWS_Research_Report_12_Final_508_Compliant.pdf

Commentary on Rachel Tanur's Works: Guatemalan Poultry Market

I see a young woman at a market selling chicken. The chicken around her are either entrapped in a basket or are free to roam about. Aside from poultry, she also sells a vegetable, perhaps cabbage or cauliflower, heaped in a short pile behind her. There is another woman in this photograph but their backs are towards each other and they do not interact. This young woman’s experience of work is very different from that of the young woman selling vegetables at the Ferry Building Farmers Market in San Francisco, CA. Like the worker at the Ferry Building Farmers Market, this young woman is caught in a gaze and is contemplative, but her thoughts have taken her to someplace more somber. Her expression is that of someone who is resigned to her situation. Unlike the worker in my photograph, this young woman is neither content nor serene. She was brought to this space without choice. She starts and ends her day within the boundaries of the baskets and the vegetables that surround her. This is her work and more profoundly her fate. As with my photograph, there are many things that remain unseen in this image. I can infer the geographic and socioeconomic contexts that led this young woman here, but we do not see it directly. How far did she have to travel and how early did she have to start her day to get here? As a young girl, did she have to forego an education, so she can work at the market to provide income for her family? What choices did she have? According to the Global Education Fund, more than half of the population in Guatemala live below the poverty line, forcing children to drop out of school to support their families, the majority of whom are indigenous girls living in rural areas. With limited schooling and lack of access to education, rural indigenous girls remain one of the most structurally vulnerable and disadvantaged group in Guatemala, entrapped in poverty, early marriage, and frequent childbearing. I paired these images because the stark differences in the two young women’s experiences of life and work captured my attention. I was curious about their gazes—the differences in what they are seeing, observing, and thinking. I was curious about what they are feeling. The setting within which these two images take place could not be more disparate, just as the feelings evoked by each—peaceful and content in one and tired and resigned in the other. Sources: Global Education Fund. State of Education in Guatemala. Retrieved January 24, 2017 from http://www.globaleducationfund.org/guatemala/