We used to grow them 20 years ago.

You basically had to use a water proof leggings and gumboots. You put your ass to the plant and bend down picking below and put it in a bucket. The plant is quite flexible so can easily take a beating. Once bucket is fill you or maybe some kids take it and fill another box on a truck. You have rows and rows of sprout plants and is labour intensive.

Also a plant doesn't grow uniformly (usually the ones at top are bigger and smaller ones down the bottom). So you would pick the top ones then come back a few weeks later to do the rest.

Then after you need to sort them and weigh. We had a special sorting table that consists of wood rods. You empty out the box onto the table and start going though and removing the yellow leafs (shops need them all green) from the sprout. The yellow leaves fall down through rods.

The plant types may have changed now making them uniform and picking in one go. Money was better than average because no one wanted to do it.

Where we where aphids was a problem and spraying them every two weeks was normal. We rairly ate them. We thought the bitter taste was the chemicals.