Good Food is Everybody's Business
While organic crops are grown without conventional pesticides and other chemicals, berry “starts” are treated as non-fruiting nursery plants and they can be treated with chemicals at that stage and still be considered organic once they are moved organic land and grown to fruiting stage.
OK folks, I’ll admit it; I certainly thought the shiny red tomatoes and strawberries in the plastic clam shell boxes seemed to taste less and less like those I remember as a kid. I thought it was just the idealistic glow around childhood memories. But no; it turns out that our conventional fruits and vegetables really are losing some of their nutritive value.
Every spring we’re seduced into buying one – just one – box of strawberries at the market. They always look so beautiful: large berries, bright red, the leaves still attached and fresh… Open the plastic clam shell that displays those berries in all their voluptuousness; like Botticelli’s Venus on the seashell. Hold that little beauty in your palm – OK, stop salivating! Make that first slice right through the center…
Strawberries have been grown in Puget Sound since the early 20th century, primarily in Bellevue (directly across Lake Washington from central Seattle) and on Bainbridge Island, located in Puget Sound. It was Japanese-American immigrants that pioneered the first strawberry farms.
There is a long list of people asking the California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR), “What part of ‘NO’ don’t you understand?” So why has the California DPR approved the use of methyl iodide in strawberry fields?
