Cash Incentive : Strawberry Pickers Race to Save Fruit

Aspring hot spell and a change in pay method set strawberry pickers to dashing through the fields Monday.

Pickers raced through berry fields in Chatsworth, trying to make more money for themselves and save the fruit for its destiny, a date with shortcake and whipped cream.

The pickers, who until last week made $4 an hour, were put on a piecework basis by the growers, the Kotake Brothers farming company. On Monday they began receiving $1.20 per 12-pint box, said Cliff Kotake, a manager of the company, giving them “an incentive to run.”

“The really fast ones can pick 10 boxes an hour, and the average is around eight boxes an hour,” Kotake said. Provisions of the federal minimum wage law provide at least $3.35 an hour for the slower pickers.

The strawberries are sold throughout the nation by a Camarillo co-operative for about $5.50 per 12-pint box, he said.

The growers wanted to see the strawberries harvested as soon as possible because hot weather over the weekend matured many strawberries to the picking point.

“The temperature was about 100 Saturday and then around 90 Sunday, and that’s very warm for berries,” said Harold Miller, the county agricultural agent for the San Fernando Valley. “The berries that were coming along matured very rapidly, and they have to get them off the vines or they just melt.”

“The fruit won’t spoil if we keep on top of it, but if it sits on the vine for more than three days, it gets overripe,” Kotake said. “The crop was about two weeks behind, because it’s been too cool this year, but now it’s catching up.”

The Kotake company, based in Cerritos, grows strawberries on 280 acres spread through Orange, Los Angeles and Ventura counties, including a 45-acre strawberry plot leased from the Southern Pacific Railroad off Winnetka Avenue.