Agricultural employment is at a peak right now in Ventura County, driven to a large degree by the strawberry harvest, an extraordinarily labor-intensive process that is in full swing this month. If you pay close attention as you drive across the Oxnard Plain past the berry fields, you'll notice there are two distinct harvesting methods being employed.

There are some shared characteristics. In both methods, the pickers crouch in knee-deep furrows that separate each bed of plants from the next. Each bed has four parallel rows of plants, each plant bearing fruit at various stages of maturity, from just-fertilized flowers to bright red berries. Each picker pushes a small wire cart supporting a cardboard carton filled with clear plastic clamshell containers.

Typically wearing thin gloves, the pickers run their hands through the plants, brushing back the leaves to uncover the fruit. All the ripe berries must be picked, even those that are too small, weirdly shaped or otherwise defective; left on the plant they eventually will decay and spread rot to other berries. Pickers toss unwanted fruit into the furrow and place those berries they judge acceptable directly into the plastic containers. What this means is that the pickers are not just evaluating and picking fruit; they also are packing and preparing the berries for display on supermarket shelves.

After all the plastic boxes in the carton are filled, the two harvesting methods diverge considerably.

In the older method, still in wide use, the pickers must carry each filled carton to a waiting trailer on a road at the end of the field, which can be a distance of 150 or more feet. They generally run, balancing the cartons on their shoulders. Then, having deposited the full cartons, they run to a second location to pick up empty ones. and then run back to the row to resume picking. A picker might run 2 miles a day this way, researchers have calculated.

All that motion means a chance for twisted ankles, back sprains or worse, which can translate into lost earnings for the picker and higher insurance costs for the grower. It also means the picker is spending a third of the work day running instead of picking. During the peak of the season, when they're mainly getting paid by the piece, that's time when they aren't making any money.

The newer harvest method, pioneered in Ventura County and slowly spreading throughout the state, is intended to eliminate much of that inefficiency. It involves the use of a machine that rolls through the field just ahead of the pickers. In the center is a covered platform holding the driver of the rig, two box handlers, a supply of empty cartons, and pallets on which to stack the full ones. A long boom sticks out to each side, supporting conveyor belts that move full cartons back to the center. Pickers need move only a few feet to deliver a filled carton to the conveyor and pick up an empty one.

The machines can boost the productivity of a picking crew by 25 to 30 percent, enabling the grower to hire fewer workers.

Pickers on a machine crew can earn more if they're being paid by the tray, as is common during the peak season. But they're generally paid an hourly wage early or late in the season, when there's not as much ripe fruit. Under those conditions, the machines greatly reduce the grower's hourly labor costs. But they also can mean pickers work harder and faster for the same wages.

The machines cost around $125,000 each. But with labor accounting for about 40 percent of the nearly $30,000 it costs per acre to produce and harvest strawberries in Ventura County, they soon pay for themselves.

So far, no one has developed an effective method to fully mechanize harvesting berries for the fresh market -- a reflection of the amount of skill and good judgment pickers must possess.