Food Chain Radio Show #1104

Michael Olson, Author & Urban Farming Agriculturalist

Strawberries and Pesticides

This Poll is closed!!

Can strawberries be mass produced without pesticides?

Yes

No

Total voters: 14

*

64%

35%

Guest: Professor of Soil Science Carol Shennan Assistant Specialist, Margherita Zavatta University of California, Santa Cruz

They say in the old days strawberry farming was for gypsies.

Michael Olson Food Chain Radio – Strawberries and Pesticides

A farmer could grow the delicious strawberries for a season or two in one place, but then bad little bugs would gather in the soil and eat up the plants’ roots and, well, time to move on.

Then World War II brought pesticides to agriculture, and strawberry farmers learned they could use those pesticides to stay home.

One of those pesticides was methyl bromide, a gas that, when injected into the soil, kills all living things in that soil and turns them into fertilizer.

Methyl bromide, together with many other pesticides, made it possible for the itinerant strawberry industry to settle down and industrialize. Today strawberry farmers can produce berries from their plants for up to nine months.

But what has been good for strawberry farmers, and those who like to eat cheap strawberries, comes with a decided caveat: Each strawberry sold in the United States contains, according to the USDA, 7.7 pesticides.

And that leads us to ask…

Leave a comment below: Can strawberries be mass-produced without pesticides?

Tune in here, for the syndicated Food Chain Radio Show #1104 May 27 , 2017 Saturday 9AM Pacific 

Nationally syndicated Food Chain Radio airs live Saturday mornings 9-10AM Pacific.