Major Strawberry Grower Profits from Organic

This is a great story about aleading Californiastrawberry grower who successfully converted over to organic methods thirtyyears ago and is now the most successful operator out there.  The first take home is that it is certainlypossible.

The second practical lesson isthat it requires a three year conversion period of some belt tightening whichis no serious problem if the farm is paid for but trickier otherwise.  Once that initial investment is made, organicmethods soon generate yield and quality improvements.

A third comment that I would liketo make, is that all such operations also need to implement biochar productionlines to add biochar to the seed hills or rows to stabilize the nutrientloading.  That can eliminate much of theongoing need to fertilize.

The big story is that conversiontakes three years and productivity will match or supersede the industrialprotocol.

We are also entering a market inwhich the consumer will simply demand organic and buy inferior stock so long asit is organic.  The grower can not affordto be a last resort supplier as supply chains get better at differentiating thetwo products.  Very soon, I suspect non organic will be known as poor people's food as was the case long ago.

Strawberry grower shows how to make a profit without poisons 

Jim Cochran on the farm in 2004.Photo: Swanton Berry Farm

This story was written by Laura Fraser.

http://www.grist.org/organic-food/2011-04-26-strawberry-grower-shows-how-to-make-a-profit-without-poisons

Along California's rugged coastalHighway One, just north of Santa Cruz,a yellow vintage pick-up truck and tidy rows of strawberries mark the entranceto the Swanton Berry Farm. Inside the cheerful farm stand, decorated with oldphotos of the region and fluttering United Farm Worker flags, locals gather atblue picnic tables, sipping coffee, eating strawberry shortcake, and chattingwith JimCochran, the owner.

The air is scented with the first berries of the season. They're freshand sweet, intensely red and fragrant, and firm -- not pumped up with nitrogenlike most commercial strawberries. Cochran, 63, a silver-haired man with aneasy manner and quietly fierce intelligence, takes evident pride in watching avisitor savor one. He was California'sfirst organic strawberry grower, harvesting his initial crop more than 25 yearsago.

"From the start, everyone said it was impossible to grow acommercial crop of strawberries without chemicals," Cochran says.

Over the years, he has proven them wrong, showing the $2 billion California strawberry industry -- which accounts for 88percent of U.S.strawberry production, and 20 percent worldwide -- that it is economicallyviable to grow strawberries on a large scale without using toxic fumigants andpesticides. Cochran's success flies in the face of industry claims that farmersneed to use harmful chemicals on strawberries in order to stay in business.Environmentalists and public health experts are trying to stop California fromallowing farmers to apply a known carcinogen to their fields (as a replacementfor another chemical that damages the ozone layer), and Cochran's big flats ofbeautiful berries -- and his healthy balance sheet -- are proving crucial tothat fight.

Cochran says that he initially grew strawberries just like everyoneelse: using pesticides and fumigants. Then, in 1981, he was poisoned. One earlymorning he was standing in a field wondering if the cropduster had sprayedpesticides overnight. When the sun came up, he found out in the worst way: theheat and light activated the chemical, turning it into a cloud of tear gas. Thenext year, he was doused by methyl bromide -- as, he says, are most of theworkers who lay and pull up tarps that enclose the gas in the soil. Thoseepisodes left him feeling sick and shaky, with temporary respiratory problems.They faded after about a month, he says, and he never went to the doctor orreported them to the health authorities -- it was just considered a hazard ofworking in the fields. But he didn't want to permanently damage his health, sohe decided to try farming organically.

"This was when it was becoming obvious that pesticides were waymore harmful than people had been led to believe," he says. At the time,Cochran was working for a co-op that didn't want to take the financial risk oftrying to grow berries organically; the owners said that without fumigants,they'd likely lose the whole crop. Strawberries are far more expensive to growper acre than most crops -- about six times what broccoli costs, for example --and they're very finicky, prone to soil diseases, mold, and other maladies. SoCochran and a partner decided to start their own strawberry farm, but hedgedtheir bets by planting half the crop using conventional pesticides andfumigants and half without them.

At first, the organic crops didn't do as well, but it was no disaster.Cochran and his partner saw a decreased yield of about 20 percent in theorganic crop, he says. They sold those berries at a 20 percent premium, butbecause of other costs involved in organic growing, such as rotating crops andusing more labor-intensive techniques to control weeds and pests, they werebarely breaking even.

Cochran's partner left, but he continued the experiment. He was singleand could afford to live cheaply, building a small cabin by hand, in order tosave money for his crops. He tried various methods of increasing yields, usingdifferent composts, planting methods, and organic fertilizers, pesticides, andfungicides. He discovered that rotating broccoli and cauliflower withstrawberry crops improved the health of the soil, and he found that plantingstrawberries in single rows, instead of the usual multiples, allowed more airto circulate, thus decreasing mold.

Cochran also began working with researchers at the University of Californiaat Santa Cruzto perform randomized studies of his organic and fumigated crops. During thelate '80s, he says, it was difficult to get funding for such research from theindustry group, the CaliforniaStrawberry Commission. "The industry blockaded our efforts to getmoney to research alternatives, and spent a lot of money in Washington making sure our proposals didn'tget funded." (The commission began funding such research ten years later).In 1989, Cochran and the Santa Cruzresearchers published a study showing that growing strawberries organically waseconomically viable with the techniques he had developed, since the premium fororganic berries covered most of the increased costs of farming. The studypiqued other farmers' interest.

"They saw that it's possible to grow organic strawberries,"he says. "It's not that it's a hugely amazing technical advance, it's justthat somebody had to go out and do something differently and not get killedfinancially." In 2002, Cochran was awarded the EPA's Stratospheric OzoneProtection Award for his techniques. On Thursday, the NaturalResources Defense Council will honor him with a Growing Green Award.

Still, a quarter century after Cochran harvested his first crop oforganic strawberries, only 4 percent of Californiastrawberries are grown that way. The rest -- some 34,000 acres -- still rely onfumigants and pesticides that are hazardous to the environment and to humanhealth.

Under the 1989 MontrealProtocol, an international treaty designed to save the ozone layer, and anamendment to the 1998 Clean Air Act, the ozone-depleting fumigant methylbromide, which conventional strawberry growers depend on for sterilizing theirsoil to control weeds and diseases, was supposed to have been phased out by2005. It has survived with "critical use" extensions from the EPA,based on industry claims that there are no technically and economicallyfeasible alternatives to the chemical.

Now there is, but while it's better on the ozone layer, it appears tobe even worse on human health. Methyl iodide was approved by the EPA in 2007,under the Bush Administration, despite widespread scientific reports --including studies produced for the EPA and the California Department ofPesticide Regulation -- that it is toxic to humans. California, which has itsown additional review process, approved the fumigant last year under outgoingGov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, though with more stringent regulations than thefederal ones, including greater buffer zones between the crops and humanactivity, and smaller amounts used per acre. The approval bucked the advice ofthe California Department of Pesticide Reform's own scientists and a committeeof independent university experts. New Gov. Jerry Brown's administration hasput the fumigant on hold pending further review.

"Methyl iodide is a very potent mutagen and genotoxicchemical," says Dr. Gina Solomon, a senior scientist and public healthexpert at NRDC. "It damages DNA." If inhaled by farm workers ornearby residents, says Solomon, the gas could cause neurological damage,cancer, and fetal toxicity. Thyroid poisoning could occur if the iodine seepsinto groundwater. "The science is quite clear on this chemical, andthere's a dramatic disconnect between the science and the California policy."

Cochran testified before a committee of the California State Assemblyin 2009, saying that it's perfectly possible to produce strawberries withouteither methyl bromide or methyl iodide and make a profit. "Last year, Iwas probably one of the most profitable [strawberry] companies in the entire United States,"he says.

Other farmers are beginning to listen. The California StrawberryCommission, made up of the state's 500-plus strawberry farmers, is now fundingresearch on alternatives to the two chemicals, says spokeswoman CarolynO'Donnell. "We really are trying to find some solutions here; we're notjust taking the next thing off the shelf." The group has funded studies onalternative fumigation techniques, such as crop rotation, mustard-seed meal,and sterilizing the soil with solar energy. "We're trying to find a mix ofthings -- it isn't one size fits all." O'Donnell says that methyl bromideuse has declined 50 percent in Californiasince the MontrealProtocol, despite the extensions, and that farmers are increasingly looking atalternatives.

But going organic, she says, is expensive and time-consuming. It takesthree years for land to be certified organic, during which time the farmercan't sell the crop at a premium to cover the increased costs of production."So you're taking a loss in yield potentially and unable to recoup it witha higher price," O'Donnell says.

But Cochran has little sympathy for growers cowed by the transitionprocess. "It's surprisingly easier to grow strawberries without chemicalsthan the industry would lead you to believe," he says, adding that thereare "plenty of competent farmers" demonstrating as much. Meanwhile,farmers have known for 25 years that methyl bromide would need to be phased outand are just now playing catch-up. "They're 15 years behind where theyshould be," he says, "and it's their own damn fault."

Cochran acknowledges that it will probably take a generational shiftfor strawberry farmers to fully come around to organics. Most farmers his age,he says, are too comfortable with their methods, and too old to want to change.But he's optimistic that their children will make the shift, and that more andmore consumers will understand the risks posed by conventional berries.

Cochran looks out across his fields, where birds are pecking at fruit,and he scowls at a gopher popping his head up close to the succulent berries.It's true that his strawberries take a lot more work and cost to produce, andthe bottom line is that organic farmers like Cochran can only survive -- andother conventional farmers will only risk a transition -- if consumers arewilling to pay an extra dollar a basket for their product. But biting into oneof Cochran's strawberries, it doesn't seem to matter for a moment that the air inthese fields is clean, and that the berries don't harm the ozone layer orpeople's health. They just taste better.

This article was syndicated withpermission from OnEarth. Read more aboutNRDC's Growing Green Awards and this year's winners.

Jim Cochran was one of Grist's "40People Who Are Redefining Green" in 2010.