Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
handle and a straight 8-inch blade with a crescent-shaped blade welded onto the
end. The crescent end is used to cut the bottom of the head from its roots, and then
the straight blade is used to trim and top the head. Although the research team
anticipated having to do this work themselves on the research sections, they were
a bit wary of it because they were not experienced with harvesting celery. They said
that, although they
could
do it, it would be a lot slower, poorer quality, and they
would be unsure of how to grade the heads. They hoped that they could get the
[harvest] crew boss to assign one of his workers to help them with the harvest of
the research sections.
So [TechA] (who is fl uent in Spanish) and [TechB] went to talk to the crew
foreman, and they persuaded him to send a [worker] to the research sections. . . . The
worker came down and began harvesting the celery with his special knife—just like
the ones recently purchased by the research team. He moved quickly and effi ciently,
cutting, trimming, and topping the heads and then laying them in rows that mir-
rored their pre-harvested position. When all the heads in the section were cut, he
began to place them in boxes that said “Classy Celery” on the side . . . based on the
size and weight of the head. The boxes were [marked for] “24s,” “30s,” or “36s,”
based on the number of heads that could be fi tted into one box. Generally speaking,
the smaller the number, the larger (and higher quality) the heads. This was the part
of the harvest that seemed to intimidate the research crew the most, because they
were unsure of how to make those distinctions. . . .
I drive back to the offi ce and bump into [the advisor] in the parking lot. He says
he doesn't know what's going on with the celery harvest, and I tell him that I just
returned. I tell him that they got a [farmworker] to help them, and so it should go
pretty quickly. He seems happy about that and says, “You know, that's the kind of
thing we could do ourselves, but it would take us about seven or eight times longer
than the people that really know how to do it.”
Although the advisor emphasized the time that the farmworker saved for
the research team, the more crucial factor here is the ability to make dis-
tinctions between different-sized heads of celery while harvesting. The
farmworker made these choices quickly and very accurately.
5
If a techni-
cian were to harvest and grade the celery instead, there is a good chance
he or she would mistake 24s for 30s or make other such errors. These errors
would affect the yield count for a given plot by over- or underestimating
the sizes of the heads.
Further, the farmworker also made on-the-spot decisions about how
much to trim off each head he harvested. A major infl uence on these
choices is any damage to the celery stalks from insects or disease; stalks
that suffer from major insect damage are likely to be chopped off the head
and left in the fi eld. The amount trimmed off each head, of course, affects
