My Maddening Quest to Find Out if Blueberries Come From Farms Where Workers Were Harmed

Illustration by Andrew B. Myers for ProPublica

Over the past year, I’ve reported at length about crimes against farmworkers who have come to the U.S. legally from Mexico and Central America.

I haven’t stopped 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 nearly killed.

As I wrote those stories, there was something else I couldn’t stop thinking about — something I keep thinking about: Whenever I go to the grocery store, I have no easy way of knowing if the fruits and vegetables I put in my cart are part of the problem I’ve documented.

Footage from labor contractor Javier Sanchez Mendoza in 2018 on a blueberry farm. Mendoza was charged in a federal indictment and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to engage in forced labor. via Facebook

I eat a lot of blueberries, which happen to be the fruit grown most in the state where I live, Georgia, and the state where I tracked these abuses. During the long drives back and forth between my home in Atlanta and my reporting trips in the rural South, I had a lot of time to consider how little we know about the farms that feed us.

Max Blau/ProPublica

I struggled with the disconnect between the problems on America’s farms and the limited awareness of those problems in most American households. I felt that disconnect in my own kitchen, every time I reached for the berries in my fridge.

I wanted to know: With enough digging, would it be possible to determine if the blueberries I’m buying come from farms with a record of mistreating workers?

Federal regulators don’t require blueberry brands to disclose on their packaging any information about the individual farms they buy from. So I had to spend time — a lot of time — trying to figure that out.

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

I snapped photos. I researched the brands. I read government records.

Max Blau/ProPublica

Max Blau/ProPublica

If you…