Stanford student raises awareness for farmworker wages after getting $7 for picking 2 gallons of blueberries

"It's so easy to serve your fruit not knowing where those blueberries come from," she said. "There's a workforce with people with dreams and hope behind every food you eat."

ByDion Lim KGO logo

Monday, August 3, 2020

Stanford student raises awareness for farm worker wages after getting $7 for picking 2 gallons of blueberries

A Stanford student took a part-time, summer job on a blueberry farm, and is going viral after exposing how much the workers get paid.

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Incoming Stanford medical student, Gianna Nino, is raising awareness for farmworkers through her own experience picking in the fields in a tweet that has gone viral.

Gianna got her masters in epidemiology and before her fall semester started, wanted to apply for a summer job doing contact tracing.

The "Comeup Collective" podcast from Stanford seniors gives a raw, uncensored take on what it's like to be a Black, first generation college student on an elite campus.

Unsuccessful in the job hunt and also unable to secure a position working in retail, she followed in her family's footsteps and started picking blueberries at farms around the Bay Area.

In the tweet, Gianna wrote "I'm about to finish up my time in the fields, and wanted everyone to know that we (farmworkers) are paid $7 for two gallons of blueberries. How much do you pay for your blueberries?"

The tweet went viral with more than a quarter-million likes.

Dion Lim, an anchor for ABC7 News in Northern California, asked Gianna what her goal was with the tweet.

She responded that it was for others to "become aware of the hands that feed you... humanizing the people behind that. It's so easy to serve your fruit not knowing where those blueberries come from. There's a workforce with people with dreams and hope behind every food you eat."

Gianna's sister graduated this past spring from Brown University, one of her brothers is an incoming junior at Bowdoin College and her youngest brother is an incoming freshman at the University of Washington.

A group of immigrant women have been working around the clock to make much-needed face masks to protect farmworkers and other low-paid essential workers from the novel coronavirus in San Mateo County.

A pandemic relief fund has been set up to help keep field workers' families healthy as they work to put food on our table amid the coronavirus crisis.

Among the essential workers still on the job are farmworkers who pick and process fruits and vegetables. They're at work and often face challenges in going to a doctor, so a team of local doctors is going to them.

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