It was a hot February morning at Wish Farms, a large strawberry-growing operation outside Plant City, Florida. Gary Wishnatzki, the proprietor, met me at one of the farm offices. In the high season, Wish Farms picks, chills, and ships some twenty million berries--all handpicked by a seasonal workforce of six hundred and fifty farm laborers. Wishnatzki is a genial sixty-three-year-old third-generation berry man, who wears a white goatee and speaks softly, with a Southern drawl. His grandfather Harris Wishnatzki was a penniless Russian immigrant who started out peddling fruits and vegetables from a pushcart in New York's Washington Street Market in 1904.

Under the hot Florida sun, hundreds of strawberry pickers dot the rows of Wish Farms. It is back-breaking labor as the pickers fold their bodies to lean over the plants. Their hands skim through the leaves to find the bright ripe strawberries. With a flick of their wrists they pop the berry from the stem, carefully making sure not to tear the plant. A strawberry plant has a ripening cycle that's much different from other fruits; every three days it will give off new ripe fruit.