The Mission:

This web site is an effort to share the results of a research project titled The Life of a Strawberry that looked at the complex relationship between food production and labor relations from the field to the dinner plate. This research was conducted by a group of students from the University of Oregon together with Professor Dr. Lynn Stephen, and in collaboration with the farm worker union PCUN (Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste). The Wayne Morse Chair of Law and Politics at the University of Oregon funded the research. We interviewed a total of 18 workers, supervisors, and managers from the fields, canneries, frozen storage industry, distributors, food broker, and a dormitory kitchen and cafeteria at the University of Oregon.

There are many people that work long hard hours all along the complicated food industry web. We had the opportunity to meet and interview a number of these people and were fortunate enough to have their stories shared with us. We want to share what we have learned about the path that food takes from the fields all the way to the consumer's table.

We want to share what we have discovered about labor relations and hierarchical and class structures within the food-production chain. We want to provide insights into the ways that Oregon food consumption is linked to the lives of workers, not only in the state but also across the country and around the globe. We want to further educate ourselves as well as the general public about the amount of labor and level of complexity of food production. Additionally, we would like to use this knowledge to create educational materials.

Begin the Journey: The Life of a Strawberry