A new North Carolina State University study examining the availability and content of commercial stock farmworker photos—images often used in health- and safety-education materials for farmworkers—shows a dearth of useful depictions of the people who work on farms and the tasks they perform. The study's recommendations could lead to more relevant education materials that gain more attention and engagement from farm workers. The research is published in the Journal of Agromedicine .
"I was really interested in how farmworkers were represented in stock-photo libraries," said Catherine LePrevost, agromedicine extension specialist and associate extension professor in NC State's Department of Applied Ecology. "A lot of my work is with farmworkers and creating interventions, including health-education interventions. Right now, we're doing a lot of work with digital inclusion with farmworkers.
My suspicion was that we would find a lot of stock photos that didn't represent the people who are actually working in agriculture." The study confirmed that suspicion. The researchers—including a team from East Carolina University—scoured commercial stock-image libraries online to find photos of farmworkers.
They found 127 photos of "farmworkers" or "women farmworkers." Two of the five photo libraries queried had no relevant images at the time of the search. Only 66 of the 104 photos that included a person showed the person's face; 23 photos did not include a person at all.
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