Beloved in Germany, asparagus and strawberries carry high human cost

BERLIN (CN) — It’s asparagus season in Germany, an occasion the country takes incredibly seriously. From spring to early summer, as Germans chow down on the stuff, many cities and regions elect annual asparagus queens. 

Often served with boiled potatoes and Hollandaise sauce, asparagus is so popular in Germany that current finance minister Christian Lindner deemed the country to be “the world’s asparagus nation.” That came after a tongue-in-cheek column in Der Spiegel dared to suggest the vegetable might be overrated. Germany grows roughly 110,000 tons of asparagus every year, including its famous white asparagus — the most of any country in Europe by far. 

In the great German produce rivalry, only strawberries come close to challenging asparagus’ dominance. 

The country is Europe's biggest market for strawberries. Every summer, strawberry-shaped huts pop up nationwide, hawking locally grown berries by the kilogram.

Together, the two crops play an important economic and cultural role in German society. "When looking at sales, asparagus is the most important vegetable,” Benjamin Luig, a policy expert for the German agricultural and industrial union IG BAU, told Courthouse News. “Strawberry is the most important fruit.”

But there’s a darker side to Germany’s asparagus and strawberry obsession — namely, the working conditions of those who actually grow and harvest them.

Both products invoke romantic images in Germany of quaint local farmers. In fact, the work can be grueling, and many of the farmhands who actually do it are low-paid seasonal laborers from outside Germany.

Asparagus and strawberries “are portrayed as being part of Germany's culinary culture,” Luig said. “But if you look back a decade or so, especially with asparagus, production really exploded in part because it was cheap to grow due to low wages.”

“On the one hand, these products are traditionally important and culturally relevant,” Luig continued. On the other, he says the products are now marketed as quintessentially German in part because they’re so cheap to grow.

Seasonal workers make up roughly one-third of Germany's agricultural workforce, with many hailing from Eastern Europe. "The German agricultural sector couldn't cope without the labor of migrant workers," said Kateryna Danilova, a regional coordinator for the European Migrant Workers Union and Fair Mobility, a German organization providing counseling and support to migrant laborers.

Unlike other crops, mechanized harvesting of asparagus and strawberries remains largely impossible — leaving large farms in particular to rely on vast numbers of seasonal workers. “Though hand-picking harvests strikes some consumers as romantic, it's done under incredible time pressure and is backbreaking work,” Luig said. 

“Even when done under normal conditions, planting asparagus means 10 or 12 hour shifts and then getting paid by the bundle, which creates pressure to produce as much as possible,” Luig added. “No one in Germany is really ready to do this physical labor anymore.”

Long and grueling hours aren’t the only challenge facing the workers. Those on short-term contracts, which are capped at three months and account for nearly half of all seasonal agricultural labor, aren't eligible for state insurance and other benefits.

Though short-term seasonal workers are entitled to Germany's minimum wage of €12.41 or around $13.47 an hour, these wages aren’t guaranteed in practice. Because workers are often paid by the bundle, it's possible for them to fall short of the minimum wage if they don't harvest enough. 

Living costs further eat into wages — even if the standards of living for these seasonal workers leave much to be desired.

"Costs for accommodations are very high,” Danilova said. “A small room — which you might share with anything from two to six people — and one hot meal will cost €20 a day. That's €600 or €700 a month taken directly from your wages.”

For many migrant laborers, a few months of plucking so-called "white gold" asparagus and berries could be their only income all year. 

Making ends meet has only gotten harder. "We've met seasonal workers who have complained about not being able to rely only on this type of work anymore,” Danilova said. “Sometimes they come in a couple times per year. And sometimes they are staying longer, even if it's not allowed and not quite legal.”

According to Danilova, about 80% of migrant seasonal workers in Germany's agricultural sector come from Romania. Poles make up the second biggest group. 

While the union IG BAU has roughly 200,000 members throughout Germany's agricultural and construction industries, the group has struggled to unionize these seasonal migrant workers. "They are often only here for short stretches [and] rarely speak German,” Luig said, adding that “other European countries often have significantly different traditions and systems of unions.”

That’s on top of the usual challenges of unionizing agricultural workers, who are often spread out over far-flung fields rather than crammed together in a factory. "It's a lot easier to organize a plant like Tesla, where all 9,000 workers are in one place,” Luig said. “Agriculture has really fragmented workplaces, which makes it tough to reach people.”

Although life as a seasonal harvest laborer remains precarious and difficult, Luig says these workers have recently seen some small victories, especially in the wake of the pandemic. Health insurance for farmers has improved, while the portion of seasonal workers with official employment and benefits has risen. 

German agencies have also become more stringent about enforcing labor laws. After taking power in 2021, the country’s governing coalition has raised the minimum wage and has discussed raising it further, to €15 an hour. "The pandemic years helped to establish a visibility for seasonal labor,” as Luig put it. “It was suddenly clear that if these workers are gone, we have a problem here in Germany.”

Still, advocates like Luig say more can still be done to improve the lives of those harvesting Germany’s most beloved crops. Industry groups have come out strong against further minimum-wage increases, with Joachim Rukwied, president of the German Farmers Association, warning it would be "catastrophic" for German agriculture.

Even with more take-home pay, Luig says the brutal conditions of seasonal agricultural work make it a hard sell for many workers. Luckily for Germany’s many asparagus and strawberry lovers, some are willing to do it.

Migrant workers may be out of mind when German officials extoll the near-holy properties of asparagus, but Luig would like to see them get more attention. After all, he points out, these migrant laborers aren’t just working on farms.

"People work here while their families remain in Romania,” he said. “They're essentially commuting but still work much of their careers here. This is a central element of the labor market in the EU. That means millions of people, not just in the agricultural sector but all facets of the economy.”

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