Displays in supermarkets that offer fresh, flawless fruit and vegetables all year round are one side of the coin. On the other hand, these foods are grown and harvested by people under mostly miserable conditions. Labels such as "Fairtrade" or similar only exist for distant countries. Exploitation and lawlessness prevail in Europe.

"The Pickers" is a journey beyond the sea of plastic cultivation tents to the people who toil there. The author Elke Sasse follows the Pakistani Naveed, who illegally picked olives in Greece for 8 years, or the Malian Seydou, who toils without a contract in an orange grove in southern Italy and is not paid an hourly wage, but per crate that he delivers.

Pape, a Senegalese man who also produces fair trade oranges in southern Italy and fights for fair working conditions in the industry, shows that it is possible to do so without exploitation and humiliation: "We don't want to be seen as revolutionaries. We want this to be the new normal."