Luis Alejandro Barrera demonstrates his idea to add cushioning to the harness worn when picking cherries Aug. 9, 2023, during the Semillero de Ideas cherry innovation challenge awards ceremony in Pasco.

PASCO — When Luis Alejandro Barrera picked cherries, the straps on the harness holding the bucket would cut into his shoulders after a few hours.

The same type of straps are used in picking apples, he said.

Barrera has been picking cherries for five years in Mattawa, Washington. His fellow farmworkers would add cloth to the strap, or wear heavier clothes, or even a jacket, he said.

He came up with the idea to add cushioning to the straps.

“It can carry the weight easily and it’s much more comfortable,” Berrera said, with translation from Semillero de Ideas executive director Erik Nicholson.

Barrera received $1,000 from the nonprofit organization for its first cherry innovation challenge.

Semillero de Ideas — roughly translated to “nursery of ideas” — invited Yakima Valley and Columbia Basin farmworkers to submit ideas to improve cherry picking.

Responses ranged from orchard redesigns to new ladder designs and protective clothing.

The ideas represented “real depth of knowledge and experience, which is exactly what we believed was the case,” Nicholson said.

Nicholson previously worked at United Farmworkers of America for 18 years and Oregon farmworker union Pineros Y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste — known as PCUN — for 14 years.

He’s now an independent consultant working in agriculture. He has non-disclosure agreements with several clients, and others include the Equitable Food Initiative, nonprofit fair labor civil society organization Verite and Polaris Project, which works to prevent sex and labor trafficking in North America.

He has not asked for formal endorsements from UFW and PCUN for the nonprofit.

The organization is approaching its first anniversary.

“We’d frequently be talking to workers and they’d have an abundance of ideas about how things could be better at a given place of employment, yet frequently are frustrated or shut down,” he said. “Very rarely do those ideas come out.”

“We knew that farmworkers are and will always be experts of innovation in ag,” board president Saul Martinez said.

The nonprofit aims to provide workers with a safe place to share ideas, and education and tools to come up with further solutions to “improve the dignity of work in the fields, and help growers have more productive, efficient farms,” Nicholson said.

The organization received nearly 40 entries.

The panel of judges included a farmworker with 18 years of cherry-picking experience, a Washington tree fruit grower and an organizational design consultant. The judges unanimously chose Barrera as the winner, Nicholson said.

“He came up with a solution to the straps and how they burn our shoulders, and oftentimes we’ll be bleeding,” said judge Ana Cruz, the longtime farmworker, with Nicholson translating. “That really caught my attention.”

The hope is that Barrera’s idea will be implemented by cherry orchard owners, Cruz said.

The nonprofit intends to work with farmers, Nicholson said, “because the degree to which farmworkers come up with innovative ideas, the way they’re going to be impactful is the degree to which growers adopt them.”

The nonprofit is working with Barrera to secure a patent, to ensure he is the beneficiary of the idea, and working with area growers and workers to further refine the design and bring it to market, Nicholson said.

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