Farmers Seek to Raise Standards for Berries (original) (raw)
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The Bay Citizen
Organic strawberries at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market. Some growers are pushing for stricter rules for organic farming.Credit...Adithya Sambamurthy/The Bay Citizen
- Sept. 23, 2011
Organic-produce buyers who think they are striking a blow against a chemical-heavy industrial food system may be surprised when it comes to one of California’s signature fruits: those “organic” strawberries that overflow from baskets at local farmers’ markets are not nearly as organic as they may think.
In a letter sent to the United States Department of Agriculture last month, an advocacy group in San Francisco and a triad of local growers demanded an end to what they say are vague federal regulations that allow millions of pounds of toxic chemicals to be used to grow plants that eventually produce strawberries labeled as organic.
“Seeds and plant stock widely used in organic agriculture are grown with prohibited materials ... that violate existing regulations and that jeopardize the credibility of the organic label,” the letter reads. Signed by three growers and the Pesticide Action Network, it added that officials with the National Organic Program at the department “must act with some urgency” to support production of a berry that is sustainable from start to finish.
Berries — including blackberries, blueberries, raspberries and strawberries — present a unique challenge to growers of organic crops. They all go through at least one rotation as non-fruiting nursery plants, and during that stage are fumigated with chemicals including methyl bromide, a soil sterilizer and pesticide known to be depleting the ozone layer.
The letter singles out strawberries, a particularly pest-prone crop and the jewel of California’s fruit basket. The state pumps out crates of the berries by the millions, shipping them across the country and internationally. It also produces the majority of the world’s strawberry nursery plants.
What it lacks is a single organic nursery.
In 1984, California produced the nation’s first commercially farmed organic strawberry, sold out of the back of a truck in Santa Cruz. The owner of that truck, Jim Cochran, who now manages a 20-acre organic berry farm, Swanton Berry Farm, in Davenport on the coast north of Santa Cruz, is one of the letter’s signers.
National regulations require that organic produce be grown for three years without synthetic pesticides. Strawberries in California are grown over a five-year cycle, often starting as nursery plants in the fields of Southern California before being transplanted to the sandy soils of Northern California.
Before they begin bearing fruit, virtually all plants — whether they will go on to produce conventional berries or organic ones — are treated with fumigants and other synthetic pesticides.
The National Organic Program is in the process of reviewing its standards for seeds and planting stock. The standards have not been updated since they were created in 2002, and they allow conventional stock to be used wherever organic stock is not “commercially available.”
Officials in the program say an updated version of the standards will clarify that using organic planting stock is mandatory. Yet clearer language will not solve the problem, said James Rickert, another farmer who signed the letter, because organic certifiers will be hard-pressed to define “commercially available.”
Therefore, the farmers say, most fruit growers will still interpret the rule as an excuse not to seek out organic stock, which they consider to be at higher risk for pests and disease.
The loophole has been a personal source of bitterness for Mr. Rickert. From 2005 to 2009, he was the state’s first and only commercial grower of organic nursery plants, before being driven out of the business in 2010 because too few fruit growers were willing to buy from him.
Mr. Rickert, 31, said that he was “extremely frustrated” by the experience — and that consumers should be, too.
“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.
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Credit...Adithya Sambamurthy/The Bay Citizen
“You bring sick plants from the nursery, I mean, you might as well keep your money in the bank,” said Carlos Vasquez, who grows 24 acres of organic strawberries in Monterey for Driscoll Strawberry Associates, the largest berry distributor in the world.
Most of Mr. Vasquez’s starter plants, or starts, come from the large, fumigated commercial nurseries adjacent to Mr. Rickert’s ranch.
Mr. Rickert and his supporters, Mr. Cochran and Larry Jacobs of Del Cabo Farms, argue in their letter to the Department of Agriculture that the National Organic Program should institute new regulations that offer an incentive for growers like Mr. Vasquez to buy organic stock — or, better yet, create a federal mandate that would require them to do so.
“Without clear direction from the N.O.P., small organic growers who choose to source organic strawberry starts grown without fumigants are unfairly punished,” the letter says.
Many organic growers say the issue is semantic. Once the plants bear fruit, they are not treated with synthetic chemicals, so the berries themselves can logically be considered pesticide-free.
But eco-conscious consumers may be expecting something more.
“Consumers are under the impression that workers and communities are being respected in the process of growing organic strawberries,” said Paul Towers, a spokesman for the Pesticide Action Network who initiated the letter.
More than a million pounds of methyl bromide was applied to strawberry nursery fields around the world in 2011, according to Environmental Protection Agency reports. Despite a worldwide phase-out, the fumigant continues to be used on crops in the United States including peppers and tomatoes, to prevent a “significant market disruption.” (The Pesticide Action Network is worried that methyl bromide will ultimately be replaced with methyl iodide, which is toxic, too.)
Mr. Rickert, who grew up surrounded by sprawling conventional fields, thought there must be a better way to grow strawberries. After graduating from college with a degree in plant science in 2002, he decided to start an organic nursery. “I saw a huge potential industry forming in front of my eyes,” he said.
Mr. Rickert lost his first crop to the soil fungus verticillium. But he soon developed a working system, rotating two million plants on eight acres grazed by organically-raised cattle. He thought he could easily sell the plants for 100perthousand,or100 per thousand, or 100perthousand,or8 more than the price of conventional plants.
But the market never materialized. Some of the growers he approached took his plants on a trial basis; some said no thanks. Almost no one ultimately made a purchase. Mr. Cochran was an exception, buying almost all his nursery crop from Mr. Rickert in 2009. The plants “were always excellent quality,” he said.
Two million plants is a lot of plants, however, and Mr. Cochran’s purchase had barely made a dent. Mr. Rickert complained about the situation to the California Certified Organic Farmers, the state’s largest organic certifying group, whose president had hailed his venture as “the start of a new era for organic strawberries” in 2005. Yet due to the looseness of the organic standards, they had no way to force growers to buy organic.
In 2009, desperate, Mr. Rickert slashed his prices. Still no takers. Finally, in February 2010, he stopped taking growers’ requests.
“It was a tough decision,” he said, leaning against a cattle pen. “But I felt I was not being supported by my fellow organic farmers.”
In fact, the only support Mr. Rickert got came after he had closed. In March 2010, the California Department of Pesticide Regulation chose to honor him for the organic methods he had applied to his nursery.
It was too late. For the next few months, he watched hundreds of thousands of his plants — and along with them, his hopes of becoming the state’s first large-scale organic nursery grower — waste away in the cooler.
Now, with the National Organic Program re-evaluating its standards, both farmers see an opportunity.
“I want them to know that I existed,” Mr. Rickert said. “That an organic strawberry is possible.”
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