One crop, many hands

Whereas the russet potato is machine planted and dug, the sweet potato is easily bruised and cannot withstand rough handling. Each sweet potato plant is hand-set, hand-sorted in the field, and hand-packed before shipping. Thus, the sweet potato is a labor intensive crop, and skilled labor is essential to the industry. Although we hire a mix of local and migrant labor, the government’s H-2A program of Temporary Agricultural Workers make it possible to bring in the abundance of sweet potatoes centered around Vardaman, Mississippi, where the local population of around 1,300 residents more than doubles during the sweet potato harvest.