ABSTRACT

Seasonal workers in Mediterranean agriculture: the social costs of eating fresh has been a project to challenge the imaginary that fresh fruit and vegetables, nicely arranged on our supermarket shelves, are just food, commodities from ‘nowhere’ without a history. 1 Our encounters with fruit and vegetables in supermarkets are predominately brief, smooth, uncomplicated and full of anticipated joy; they ultimately end by paying a monetary equivalent for our produce, an allegedly just price. Once paid, the largely unknown journeys in particular commodity and value chains reach an end — almost. Yet, two interactions are still unfolding. First, the fruit and vegetables we bought still have to be consumed to become a constitutive part of our social reproduction. Second, the money we have paid is expected to trickle back along the very same trajectories to reimburse those who were engaged in refilling and arranging the shelves, those who worked in marketing and distribution, those who were occupied with packing, cleaning and transporting, as well as to those who produced and harvested the fruit. In short, we are paying back the added labour. Even further down this invisible line, family members of labourers who are monetarily remunerated in the agri-food chain are also expected to participate in the price we pay, as they invested in (unpaid) domestic work and are thereby helping to reproduce the labour power of, for example, seasonal workers. When agreeing to pay a certain price we implicitly agree to the conditions under which this price has been produced without, however, necessarily comprehending its details. Offering ‘food from nowhere’, supermarkets employ exchange processes beyond our knowledge, awareness or even concern. Collectively, our routinized shopping practices are constantly furthering our ignorance and the idea that what we do not see does not exist. Simultaneously, the symbolic force of an appealing freshness constitutes a structural precondition of our consumer society that aims to buy happiness. 2 But although hidden, freshness and human labour are inextricably linked. Together, the chapters of this volume uncover their articulations, disclose the ‘invisible stories of origin’ and the social life of fresh food. This epilogue starts with the central themes of the book. We will then reframe ‘Mediterranean fresh’ by looking at a historical comparison and lastly explore the costs inscribed into the Mediterranean agri-food system.