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Growers await chemical decision

Posted by: Maven on March 7, 2010 at 8:00 am

strawberriesFrom the Sacramento Bee:

“In a fourth floor state office overlooking Sacramento City Hall, Mary-Ann Warmerdam must make a contentious choice about how farmers grow one of America’s favorite foods – the strawberry.

In classic California fashion, her decision as head of the Department of Pesticide Regulation, or DPR, represents an environmental showdown being watched nationally, even globally.

Warmerdam, chief farm chemical regulator in a state that grows nearly 90 percent of U.S. strawberries, will decide in weeks whether growers can use a soil fumigant known as methyl iodide.

That’s the controversial new substitute for methyl bromide, an effective but notorious soil sterilizer being phased out across the globe for depleting the ozone layer. Long employed by California strawberry growers to rid soil of insects and pests, the use of methyl bromide has dwindled to less than half the state’s 37,000 strawberry acres, and none in the capital region, industry sources say.

But strawberry and nursery stock growers are hankering for a replacement, and what’s being proposed – methyl iodide – may be just as bad or worse, environmentalists and some scientists now contend. They say methyl iodide will potentially contaminate groundwater even as it removes a threat to Earth’s ozone layer. … “

Continue reading this article from the Sacramento Bee by clicking here.

Photo of strawberries by flickr photographer Anushruti RK (Creative Commons).

March 7, 2010 · Filed Under Agriculture

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