FEATURE STORY WHAT I SAW IN THE FIELDS CHANGED THE WAY I SEE MY FOOD By Anna Ramirez-Castro, Marketing Manager
Western Growers Marketing Manager Anna Ramirez-Castro and Communications Manager Taylor Lauson connect with a member during a farm visit.
We can all agree that strawberries are a good-looking fruit. Their bright red color against the green leaves practically screams “sweet and juicy.” For most of my life, that was exactly how I shopped for them. I would walk down the grocery store aisle scanning clamshell after clamshell, looking for the reddest, plumpest, most perfect-looking berries. No discoloration. No odd shapes. No imperfections. If I was spending money on them, why wouldn’t I pick the best- looking package in the bunch? I never thought much about what happened before that clamshell reached the store. That changed about two years ago when I joined Western Growers as Marketing Manager. Before working here, my understanding of agriculture was pretty general: someone grows the food, it gets shipped to a store and I buy it. Simple, right? And when something wasn’t available, or when the price was higher than I expected, I noticed that. What I didn’t think about were all the decisions, people and My role at Western Growers has given me the opportunity to visit many of our members and tour their farming operations. I’ve walked fields, visited packing facilities, watched harvest crews work, seen new technology being tested and asked growers probably more questions than they expected from the marketing person visiting for the day. And every single time, I’ve walked away with a greater appreciation for what it takes to put food on our tables. circumstances that came before that moment. I had no reason to. The food was simply there.
One of my earliest memories was visiting a strawberry operation on the Central Coast. The landscape was beautiful, with rows and rows of strawberries stretching across the field. But what really caught my attention were the people harvesting them. I watched as they moved quickly down the rows, selecting berries and packing them directly into the same type of clamshell I had picked through countless times at the grocery store. Each package looked carefully arranged. Watching from the outside, I knew it was physical work. But I’ll admit that a thought crossed my mind: How hard can packing strawberries really be? Then they let us try. We got our boots into the field and attempted to fill the clamshells ourselves. Except you couldn’t just throw strawberries into a container. They had to be selected and arranged properly, all while moving at a pace that made our attempts look painfully slow. Suddenly, that perfectly packed clamshell looked different. I thought about shoppers like me standing in a grocery store, passing over one package because a berry looked a little funny or another package looked slightly better. Meanwhile, someone had worked quickly and skillfully to harvest that fruit and pack it by hand. It was one of those seemingly small experiences that sticks with you. And there have been many of them since. I’ve spoken with farmworkers whose specialized knowledge follows the harvest. During a watermelon harvest, I learned about crews who begin in the Coachella Valley around May and work their way north, eventually reaching Los Banos, Calif., as the season continues into October.
36 Western Grower & Shipper | www.wga.com October – December 2026
Made with FlippingBook Annual report maker