SANTA CRUZ SENTINEL

December 1, 2005

Looking for methyl bromide alternatives: P.V. strawberry growers say pesticide is essential to production

By TOM RAGAN
SENTINEL STAFF WRITER

WATSONVILLE — Methyl bromide is to strawberries what fuel is to cars or water is to plants, growers say.

Without it, the strawberry crops in the Pajaro Valley wouldn't come in like they do — plentiful and perfect-looking — they say.

"Without it, we just wouldn't be able to operate," says Elia Vazquez, who farms 50 acres in Elkhorn. "We'd have weeds, and lots of them, and then we'd have to hire more farmworkers to pick them — and where are we going to get that sort of labor?"

Without the pesticide, Vazquez said, strawberry farmers would have a hard time "breaking even" because production would drop significantly and the berries wouldn't look nearly as ripe.

Yet strawberry growers across the country are going to have to strike the pesticide from their arsenal by 2008 under the Montreal Protocol, a pact that seeks to eliminate a litany of ozone-depleting substances.

Methyl bromide has been a contentious issue since it emerged in the 1960s. When injected into the soil, the odorless pesticide helps keep weeds and fungus at bay.

But it is a highly toxic chemical that many scientists believe has contributed to the depletion of the ozone layer.

U.S. officials are heading to a Montreal Protocol meeting in Senegal, Africa, on Wednesday to begin negotiations on exemptions for 2007 and are preparing requests for 2008.

The protocol has forced Pajaro Valley strawberry farmers to search for alternatives, says Teresa Thorne of the California Strawberry Commission.

"And they're leaving no stone unturned," said Thorne, "whether it's crop rotation, using softer chemistries and pesticides or coming up with new varieties of strawberries that are more disease-resistant."

But ultimately, Thorne says, the controversy surrounding methyl bromide is competitive, not environmental — at least as it concerns strawberry growers. Developing countries can use the substance until 2015 — including China and Mexico, which have undercut the fresh produce markets in the United States because they have cheaper labor and fewer governmental restrictions.

"But that's the world we're living in," she said. "But I don't know of any growers who aren't taking some part of their acreage and using alternatives."

Already a third of Santa Cruz County's strawberry fields are void of the substance, she said.

And strawberries can be grown without pesticides, says Jake Lewin, director of marketing for the Santa Cruz-based California Certified Organic Farmers.

"We've got 60 growers who don't use it," he said. "And another thousand growers who produce other crops without it. The bottom line is small and large growers have successfully produced strawberries without pesticides."

But a good deal of the organic industry's success is rotating crops — growing different crops during different years.

"Crop rotation is difficult," said Lewin, "because there's limited land, and some don't want to change their productions practices at all. But it's clear they're going to have to change."

Tom Jones, a strawberry farmer in Salinas with 200 acres of strawberries, said he's dropped the use of methyl bromide on 40 percent of his land.

These days, he uses telone and chloropicrin, pesticides that aren't as harmful to the ozone and are approved by the federal government.