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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Even Organic Strawberries Are Grown With Toxic Fumigants
  • Date: Wed, 28 Sep 2011 10:41:27 -0600


"Organic code stipulates that farmers must use organically produced seeds
and plants whenever they are "commercially available," meaning they can
resort to non-organic ones otherwise"

Even Organic Strawberries Are Grown With Toxic Fumigants
http://motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2011/09/organic-strawberries-not-always-grown-without-toxic-fumigants

Conventionally grown strawberries are hard orbs, bred to endure long-haul
travel and leisurely stints on supermarket shelves, not to taste good.

Aesthetics aside, their real scandal is chemical. It takes a lot of
pesticides to keep them healthy and growing in vast monocrops, including some
of the very most toxic ones available in the US: fumigants that sterilize the
soil and imperil farm workers.

For years, I've been urging consumers to denounce the use of such poisons by
buying only organic strawberries. But it turns out, in California at least,
most organic strawberries have a dirty secret: they come from plants that
spend time on nurseries that use "millions of pounds of toxic chemicals,"
including methyl bromide, before being transplanted to organically managed
fields, The New York Times reports.

To be clear, dramatically fewer toxic chemicals are used in the production of
organic strawberries, because such poisons are banned in the fields where the
fruit is actually grown. But to me and no doubt to many others, the fact that
they're used at all is jarring news.

The Times points to a letter signed by three California organic farmers and
the Pesticide Action Network urging the USDA's National Organic Program to
clarify rules around organic seed and plant stock. Organic code stipulates
that farmers must use organically produced seeds and plants whenever they are
"commercially available," meaning they can resort to non-organic ones
otherwise. Consumers have shown they want an alternative to fumigant-grown
strawberries. It's time for the USDA to step up.

According to the Times, the state doesn't have a single organic berry
industry—hence the the practice of relying on plants that grew on
fumigant-using nurseries.

But here's the kicker: From 2005 to 2009, the Times reports, the state did
have a commercial-scale organic nursery, run by farmer James Rickert of
Prather Ranch, one of the letter's signees. But Rickert's plant-starting
operation languished and went out of business because farmers were wary of
paying a premium for organically grown plants that they feared they might
carry disease, Rickert told the Times:

"The reality is that a lot of the organic growers want nothing to do with
organic plants" because it scares them, said Mr. Rickert, who has since gone
back to herding organically fed cattle at his ranch in Butte Valley. Indeed,
for many organic strawberry growers, using organic stock amounts to taking a
big financial risk with little chance of reward.

But the problem evidently wasn't the quality of Rickert's products or some
inherent difficulty in raising strawberry plants organically. Indeed,
pioneering California organic strawberry grower Jim Cochran of Swanton Berry
Farm (briefly profiled on Mother Jones here), who also signed the letter,
used Rickerts' plants extensively and found them "always of excellent
quality," he told the Times.

The problem was that lax enforcement of the "commercially available" rule,
combined with the risk-averse nature of most farmers, allowed most organic
farmers to avoid trying Rickert's products. As the whistle-blowing farmers'
letter to the USDA puts it, "Without clear enforcement we fail to create the
marketplace for new technologies, especially alternatives to chemical
fumigation."

If the USDA had enforced the rule in the first place, Rickert's business
would likely have succeeded—and drawn more organic nurseries into the market.
And Rickert himself told Pesticide Action Network that he would "jump-start"
his nursery business as soon as the USDA shows it's serious about enforcement.





  • [Livingontheland] Even Organic Strawberries Are Grown With Toxic Fumigants, Tradingpost, 09/28/2011

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