It’s the end of May and the road leading to Manolada, a small village about 180 miles southwest of Athens in Greece’s Peloponnese region, is adorned with the pink bloom of oleanders. The sun is shining, and it’s 95 degrees Fahrenheit. The air is rich with the smell of the village’s prized fruit. Manolada’s strawberries are world-famous, and signs on both sides of the road boast of this fact.
In 2019, Greece ranked as the world’s eighth-largest exporter of strawberries and the third fastest-growing exporter since 2015. Revenue amounted to $62 million in 2019 alone. Ninety percent of the country’s strawberries are produced in Manolada, and about 90% of the men harvesting them are migrants.
Home to 2,000 permanent residents, Manolada stands out from the rest of the Greek countryside. Among its traditional Greek grocery stores, bakeries and tavernas, you see many shops with signs in Bengali. Driving through Manolada and the nearby villages, you come across many groups of Bangladeshi men, most of them farmhands who work the strawberry fields.
