With strawberry season in full bloom and prices at their lowest, it's a good time to start buying organic. Organic farmers grow fruit and vegetables without using chemical fertilizers, pesticides or weed-killers. Instead, they rely on a variety of nontoxic alternative techniques such as crop rotation, use of cover crops, altering planting time and biological pest management. When you buy organic produce, you're making a decision that's better for yourself and your family, plus the farmworkers, their communities and even the global ecosystem.
Strawberries are a true California crop.
Our state supplies more than 80 percent of the strawberries sold in the United States. But strawberry farming accounts for 25 percent of California's use of methyl bromide - an odorless, colorless gas that is both highly toxic at ground level and a significant destroyer of the stratospheric ozone layer. Farmers and agricultural merchants use methyl bromide to fumigate soil, to treat crops after harvest and to fumigate warehouses and ships. Pest-control companies also use this gas to fumigate houses and other buildings, chiefly in Southern California. California farmers use 17.5 million pounds of the poison per year, mainly to fumigate soil devoted to the growth of strawberries, wine grapes, almonds and other crops.