Thursday, California’s first organic strawberry grower Jim Cochran, a health right defender, was awarded the Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC) Growing Green Award by showing it is both possible and profitable to raise succulent berries with no cancer-causing chemicals.
Laura Fraser for NRDC stated, "Now if the rest of the industry would just follow his lead."
Strawberries usually carcinogenic
Non-organic strawberry growers spray crops with highly toxic and carcinogenic fungicides according to Dr. Gina Solomon.
Cochran said, "From the start, everyone said it was impossible to grow a commercial crop of strawberries without chemicals."
Over the years, he has proven them wrong.
Cochran has proven to the $2 billion California strawberry industry that accounts for 88% of U.S. strawberry production, and 20% worldwide, it is economically viable to grow strawberries on a large scale without using toxic fumigants and pesticides.
"Cochran acknowledges that it will probably take a generational shift for 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 and more consumers will understand the risks posed by conventional berries." NRDC
In 2002, Cochran was awarded EPA’s Stratospheric Ozone Protection Award for his techniques.
Thursday, the NRDC honored him with the Growing Green Award.
Chemicals collect in the hundreds of pits around each strawberry seed.
"To scrub off the toxic chemicals on a conventional strawberry," she says, "you’d have to scrub until there was no strawberry left."
Learn more: Watch the embedded video on this page left.
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