Do the blueberries in my grocery store come from farms where workers were injured?

Over the past year, I have reported on crimes committed against farmworkers who came legally to the United States from Mexico and Central America. I couldn’t stop thinking about how they suffered. Their wages were stolen, guns were pointed in their faces, and one woman I met was held captive, raped, and almost killed.

As I wrote These stories, there was something else I couldn’t stop thinking about – something I continue to think about: Every time I go to the grocery store, I don’t have an easy way to know if the fruits and vegetables I put in my cart are part of the problem I documented.

I eat a lot of blueberries, which happen to be the most widely grown fruit in the state I live in, Georgia, and in the state where I followed this abuse. During the long trips back and forth from my home in Atlanta to my reporting in the rural South, I’ve had a lot of time to think about how little we know about the farms that feed us.

I struggled to understand the disconnect between the problems on American farms and the limited awareness of these problems in most American households. I felt this disconnect in my own kitchen, every time I reached for the berries in my refrigerator.

I wanted to know: If I dug hard enough, would it be possible to determine if the blueberries I’m buying come from farms with a history of worker abuse?

Federal regulators do not require Blueberry brands must disclose any information on their packaging about the individual farms they purchase from. So I had to spend some time – a plot of time – trying to figure this out.

I started by looking at the labels on pints of blueberries in my grocery stores.

I took photos. I looked up the brands. I have read the government files.

Max Blau/ProPublica

If you look closely, you’ll see that pints often indicate the state where the berries are grown or the city from which they are distributed. But not the farm itself.

It turns out that the pints sold by a specific brand don’t always come from a single farm. To meet demand and help keep prices low, brands buy berries from many farms and sell them under one label.

This makes it even more difficult to know if the berries you buy come from farms where workers have been injured.

I was able to trace a brand’s berries from my grocery store to an individual farm. However, I am not going to name this brand, because its practices are not unique. Sure enough, I discovered that the brand was buying berries from a farm that had hired a contractor, and that contractor was responsible for some of the abuses in one of the largest labor trafficking lawsuits in the United States.

This case, which I spoke at lengthrevealed that thousands of foreign farmworkers were illegally charged fees by subcontractors to work in the United States. Some were forced to harvest crops for little or no pay in what prosecutors described as a form of modern slavery.

This was not the first case of abuse against farmworkers by contractors. Or the last one. Many of these harms could have been avoided if workers had benefited from the protections promised by the U.S. government. Nor have there been any substantial reforms to address these abuses.

The reason contractors exist in the first place is because farmers have a hard time finding workers in the United States.

Many farmers only speak English. So they end up hiring contractors to bring foreign workers to the United States and supervise their work.

This outsourcing can protect farmers from responsibility – or even conscience – for harm caused to their workers.

Labor regulators have repeatedly failed to ensure that contractors do what the government asks them to do: ensure the safety of workers and pay them what they are promised.

Many farmers, brands and grocers were reluctant to talk to me about these abuses. I spoke with experts to see if there are ways consumers can tell if the people picking their blueberries are being mistreated.

These experts, who study agricultural working conditions and food supply chains, said the benchmark for preventing abuse against workers is the Fair Food Program. Under the program, supermarkets and other corporate buyers agree to pay a little more for produce — a cost so negligible, at just pennies per pound, that one expert said it shouldn’t drive up prices.

For those few cents, grocers get crops from farms that offer their workers stronger protections.

Fruits and vegetables from these farms are labeled with a green sticker depicting a woman holding a basket of tomatoes. The stickers give consumers like me a clear indication that the workers who picked these products were treated fairly.

When I found these tomatoes in my grocery stores, they didn’t cost much more than others without a label.

Dozens of farms have joined the Fair Food programand participation in this project has been shown to prevent abuse in the fields.

But only a few small blueberry farms participate in the program.

Until this or something else changes, consumers will know virtually nothing about the farms where their blueberries come from. And they won’t be able to make choices that could make a difference in the lives of the people who choose them.