A young woman is getting a crash course on how to pick raspberries on a Ventura County farm. She’s not a farmworker. She’s a college student.
Thousands of students drive through farm fields every week to get to Cal State Channel Islands, in Camarillo. But most, like Alma Andrade, know nothing about what’s happening around them.
"I pass by this ranch almost every day when I go to school, and never did I think this was specifically for raspberries," said Andrade. "I always knew there was farms back here, but I always did ask where the raspberries were."
Today, she's hard at work picking them.
The university teamed up with groups involved with the Ventura County agricultural industry to create what’s known as the Farmworker Immersion Project. It’s a one-day crash course for college students on what life is like as a farmworker in the county.
Jennifer Raymond is CSUCI’s Community Partnership Lead.
"Our university is surrounded by fields," said Raymond. "Everyone who goes to Channel Islands...they see this...but they don't necessarily know what goes into it. This is just an effort to give them (the students) an idea of why farmworkers are so important."
But, what makes the experience especially powerful for some of the 20 CSUCI students here at the Lennox Ranch in Oxnard is that they come from farmworker families, and their parents worked in the fields.
Karla Diaz is one of them.
"I decided to come here to learn the experience of what it's like being a farmworker, as I come from parents who are immigrants and family who worked in agricultural fields back in Fresno...I thought it would be really interesting to experience it," said Diaz.
Jesus Avila is a CSUCI senior, who wants to work in marketing, but today, he is one of the fieldworkers harvesting raspberries. "My family comes from the world of farm work, but I have had the luxury of not having to do it myself."
Scott Mickelson is a Production Manager for Reiter Affiliated Companies, which manages harvesting at the ranch. He started as a fieldworker. Mickelson said they are glad to be able to share understanding about our food chain, which they think many of us take for granted.
The students also learned about farmworker life outside of the fields. They visited a farmworker housing project built by the Cabrillo Economic Development Corporation. Then met some farmworker families, and learned about the ongoing issue of housing from the House Farm Workers! organization.
Back on the ranch, Jorge Reyes, with the berry production company, checks on some of the students who are discovering picking raspberries can be very, very hard work.
"What do you guys think so far?" Reyes asked the students as they worked.
"It's giving me a whole new appreciation for what farmworkers do," said one of the students.
