A second lesson was that candidates for the pickle harvest must be screened carefully for physical fitness. Some of the workers recruited this year simply lacked the physical stamina to put in a reasonable days work. A third lesson .is that increased efforts should be made to fit the pickle harvest into the flow patterns of the regular migrant labor stream. The few farmers who reported on labor difficulties in 1965 were those who had long been established in that flow pattern. almost without exception because they had other crops such as cherries which permitted them to offer a longer working season than is possible from the cucumber crop alone. We recognize that not many farmers can hope to achieve this result solely by their own efforts. among other difficulties. most pickle growers in Michigan today produce no other crops which require substantial numbers of harvest workers.
Identified stereotypes
Migrant workers lack physical stamina.