Stanford student raises awareness for farmworker wages after getting $7 for picking 2 gallons of blueberries

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Incoming Stanford medical student, Gianna Nino, is raising awareness for farmworkers through her own experience picking in the fields in a tweet that has gone viral.

Gianna got her masters in epidemiology and before her fall semester started, wanted to apply for a summer job doing contact tracing.

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Unsuccessful in the job hunt and also unable to secure a position working in retail, she followed in her family's footsteps and started picking blueberries at farms around the Bay Area.

In the tweet, Gianna wrote "I'm about to finish up my time in the fields, and wanted everyone to know that we (farmworkers) are paid $7 for two gallons of blueberries. How much do you pay for your blueberries?"

The tweet went viral with more than a quarter-million likes.

Dion Lim, an anchor for ABC7 News in Northern California, asked Gianna what her goal was with the tweet.

She responded that it was for others to "become aware of the hands that feed you... humanizing the people behind that. It's so easy to serve your fruit not knowing where those blueberries come from. There's a workforce with people with dreams and hope behind every food you eat."

Gianna's sister graduated this past spring from Brown University, one of her brothers is an incoming junior at Bowdoin College and her youngest brother is an incoming freshman at the University of Washington.

A group of immigrant women have been working around the clock to make much-needed face masks to protect farmworkers and other low-paid essential workers from the novel coronavirus in San Mateo County.

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Among the essential workers still on the job are farmworkers who pick and process fruits and vegetables. They're at work and often face challenges in going to a doctor, so a team of local doctors is going to them.