“What makes strawberry production successful is also what has been threatening it,” Guthman said.
When the industry grows, it creates more problems, like a diminishing labor force and increased pesticide use. The system in place is a cycle, Guthman said. The strawberry is one of the most pesticide and labor-intensive crops. This is because land is priced for the cost of strawberries, which makes it nearly impossible to sell for other crops and developments. Yet, it has also perpetuated issues in the area like high land values. In Watsonville the economy is centered around strawberries, Guthman said, and it is highly lucrative. Since first introduced by the Spanish, strawberries have been a major constant in the narrative of this region. This has allowed the politics of this community, established through agriculture, to play out through generations.īefore President Donald Trump was elected and began to target undocumented immigrants, before César Chávez fought for fair labor conditions, before the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II - there were strawberries. Watsonville, a town of only 50,000, is incredibly diverse. Agriculture is one of the largest industries and creates almost half a million jobs, including the 14,900 jobs created by berry production on the Central Coast. “Hiroshi Shikuma: Strawberry Growing in the Pajaro Valley” (Regional History Project, UCSC Library, 1986).įood production is a major contributor to the economy, especially in California. From Randall Jarrell, Interviewer and Editor. University Library, University of California Santa Cruz.
“And so I mean just to me, of course it’s political. “Obviously something that people - that everyone in the world needs to have, and there is tremendous inequality in the relationship of production and distribution and function,” said UC Santa Cruz community studies professor Julie Guthman, who has been researching the intersection between food and politics for years. This mix of food and politics is prominent in the small, central California coastal town of Watsonville - with the strawberry at the heart of it all. Food affects cultural history, cost of living and authority.
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