"Pierson, Fla., calls itself the fern capital of the world, because of its many vast ferneries, where the feathery greens that end up tucked into bouquets of roses are grown. Those ferns are cut by workers like Severa and Felipa Cruz, sisters from Mexico. It is strenuous and increasingly hot work — so hot it can be life-threatening.
The fern sprays grow to waist height, and to harvest them, workers must stoop, hunching their way through fields covered in black tarps. The tarps shield the ferns from the weather, but they do the opposite for the workers, trapping and amplifying the Floridian heat, which can easily rise past 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
In the past, Severa would push herself to work faster, through sweat and thirst to exhaustion, even a feeling of suffocation, because the heat exacerbates her asthma. She knew working so hard in the heat made her feel ill, but if she wasn’t cutting, she wasn’t earning money. Fern cutters are generally paid by the bunch, not by the hour — Cruz gets 45 cents per bunch, 20 fern sprays to a bunch."
Sarah DiGregorio reports for the Washington Post July 5, 2023.
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