A new kind of strawberry takes root
Date: 22-Apr-03
Country: USA
Author: Samuel Fromartz
While these fields on Swanton Berry Farm appear no different from any of the others that stretch for miles down the California coast, they stand out because they are organic.
The man who runs the farm, Jim Cochran, developed the methods for growing these berries without using pesticides or chemical fertilizers and was the first to do so in the highly capital-intensive industry.
He borrowed $10,000 and started farming on his own in 1983, seeking alternatives to the chemical regime.
"When I first went into the business, I used to ask other growers, 'Why don't you grow without the chemicals?' And they said, 'If you're so damn smart why not do it on your own.'"
He took up the dare.
By 1985, he was growing strawberries organically and became a certified organic farm in 1987.
While he had to figure out the growing methods - which are still evolving - he also had to build the market for the product before organic foods took off in popularity.
Planting strawberries on 15 acres out of the 80 he farms, Cochran is now riding the wave he started.
Production of organic strawberries in California jumped 50 percent last year to 607 acres, though it was still a fraction of the more than 26,000 acres planted overall.
A FICKLE CROP
While strawberries are a hardy crop, they are also prone to fungus, soil diseases and pests. The crop can wither, the fruit can become stunted, and the yield can be sharply reduced.
With costs running more than $30,000 per acre, the risk of financial failure is tremendous.
"The risks are huge, which is why a lot of growers use chemicals," Cochran said.
On conventional farms, fields are readied for planting by sealing them in plastic and pumping a powerful fumigant, methyl bromide, into the soil to kill off diseases and pests.
After the strawberries are planted, farmers rely on an arsenal of regulated chemicals to feed the plants and kill insects, although new methods have reduced the amount applied.
Under an international pact signed in 1991, known as the Montreal Protocal, industrialized countries pledged to stop using methyl bromide by 2005 because it depletes the ozone. Developing countries have until 2015 to phase out its use.
However, U.S. agricultural interests ranging from golf courses to strawberry and flower farms are seeking an exemption.
ROTATIONS AND COVER CROPS
To grow the crop organically, Cochran said, you have to throw out everything you know.
Instead of fumigating the soil, he builds it up with compost and winter cover crops, likes legumes, that add nitrogen to the soil and feed the next crop.
He also rotates his fields, growing vegetables and other cover crops for several years before he puts in a field of strawberries. Then he grows the berries for a year or two at most, before the soil diseases have a chance to return.
Cochran says he can afford to do that because he is at the upper reaches of the strawberry growing region, which stretches from San Diego to Watsonville, about 100 miles south of San Francisco. He is another 20 miles north of Watsonville.
His relatively cheaper land-leasing costs allow him to carry out the rotations without a financial loss. He says that would be difficult for a grower in Watsonville renting land for $2,500 an acre and depending on the higher return the strawberry crop provides.
LABOR INTENSIVE
As an organic farmer, his production costs are higher than conventional farmers, because his crop is more labor intensive.
He also was the first strawberry grower to sign a contract with the United Farm Workers union, further raising his expenses. Cochran signed the labor contract in 1998 because he did not want to sell a product "produced at the cost of workers dignity."
"I felt the organic label was a good thing but only half of the equation," he says. "Labor was the other half."
If consumers were willing to pay for the higher cost of an organic berry, he thought, they would also be willing to
