Appreciating the distinction between work and labor

I think about my relationship with food. By the time it reaches my mouth, it has passed through an unknown number of hands, traveled across biomes to be cleaned and processed, packed, cooked, and spiced. I chew the leaf and marvel at the women efficiently packing their sacks.

In some cases, I am told, these laborers can trace their family tree back to this land for dozens of generations. The farm relies on their agricultural knowledge, which I suspect is akin to intuition for them. It's a concept that I struggle to comprehend. The job of the farmers in the greenhouse is to sustain metabolism. They are the inheritors of a labor that exists as a function of time itself. My job is to project an abstraction. I'm suddenly uncertain that the potential longevity of my work holds up against permanence.

How might I tell their story in a way that inspires empathy? I can describe their conditions and efforts, and my descriptions can achieve a passable level of plausibility if I spend the day with them and practice their deeds. Ultimately, I will fall short of knowing them, and so too will my audience.

And yet, I am a product of their labor. I am only able to take my relationship with food for granted because they work until their backs ache, and their fingernails are packed with dirt. If I can't identify with them, perhaps appreciation will do for now.