Last weekend, as promised, I "researched" strawberries. I drove to
Harmony Valley Farm in Viroqua, WI to participate in their Pick Your Own Strawberries event. I got there late because I optimistically decided the drive would only take an hour. Probably because I only wanted to drive for an hour. But, at my grandma-like fuel-efficient pace, the drive took two and a half hours.
Before I arrived, all of the other CSA members had gathered in a barn, drinking strawberry lemonade and making strawberry shortcakes. Shortly before I got there, everyone piled into large wagons pulled by tractors and left on a tour.
I was in no shape for strawberry lemonade or tours when I got out of the car. I waddled over to the barn, found someone I recognized from the weekly Madison farmer's market, and asked for a bathroom.
With my potty emergency taken care of, I was able to walk (not waddle) back to the barn and find a ride to catch up with the tour. At last, VMD research that was not done on the internet!
Harmony Valley started their CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) in the early 1990s. I am a new member this year, but as we drove around for the tour (taking frequent breaks to taste the sugar snap peas or pick the garlic scapes), I met several people who had been members for over a decade. Each member household receives a box of organic veggies every week, and you can also sign up for fruit, salad, and beef.
I probably would not have appreciated the tour quite so much, had I not been in the middle of reading the strawberry chapter of Eric Schlosser's Reefer Madness. The landscape surrounding the farm was beautiful, but should it seem so remarkable that all of the crops were growing in the ground without pesticides, herbicides, and chemical fertilizers?
Strawberry Picking
The tour came to an end in the strawberry fields. After picking a box or two of strawberries, I sat down with two men who worked on the farm. We chatted about the strawberries as we watched children walk past us, their faces and fingers dripping with sweet, red juice.
They planted the strawberries in 2004, the guys said. After this year, they would till them under. They were too diseased. Last year they covered them; this year they didn't. This year they sprayed them with copper at the beginning of the season. They said everything so casually. Even though they told me they worked long hours, it was hard to believe their lifestyle was ever anything but relaxed.
One of the two guys grew up in Arlington, VA. While working at a school in Iowa that had a large garden, he fell in love with farming. The other had a lot in common with me - he found farming when he became a vegetarian and grew interested in sustainable living. Both guys laughed as they recalled the rigorous interviews each underwent to get the job. They told me the wages weren't great, but they had a place to live so they didn't need to pay any rent or mortgage. Harmony Valley was trying to work something out for their healthcare, like a health savings account. I stiffened at the use of that word, but they reminded me that HSAs are better than nothing.
Before leaving, I returned to the barn to grab a glass of cold brewed ice coffee. The CSA will offer fair trade organic artisan-roasted coffees next year, so the suppliers stopped by the event to offer free samples.
Conventional Strawberries
When you pick up a box of strawberries in the grocery store, you'd like to think they came from a farm like Harmony Valley. Unfortunately, most likely, they do not.
Friday of Yearly Kos, I had some conventional strawberries with my oatmeal. Sunday I flew home and read the strawberries chapter of Reefer Madness on the plane. Those strawberries I ate in Vegas are officially the last conventionally grown strawberries I am ever eating.
Here's the passage that did it for me:
Strawberries now begin and end in plastic. Before planting, an entire strawberry field is sealed with plastic sheeting and injected with methyl bromide, a chemical brew that kills harmful microbes and nematodes. Then the sheeting is removed and workers install drip irrigation hoses in the beds, cover the beds with new, clear plastic, and insert the plants through the plastic by hand. This plastic helps retain heat, keep the soil moist, and prevents erosion. At the end of the harvest, the workers rip the plants from the ground and throw them away, along with the plastic and the drip irrigation hoses. Second-year plants tend to produce smaller berries. - Reefer Madness, p. 80
I'm no chemist and I'm no farmer, so I had to find a bit more information on methyl bromide:
Methyl bromide--(bromomethane)
A broad spectrum soil fumigant sold as a liquified gas under pressure. The active ingredient is colorless and odorless under ambient conditions and thus is packaged with at least a 2% chloropicrin (tear gas) component for safety purposes. Used as a preplant, injected soil fumigant to control fungi, nematodes, insects and weed seeds under a polyethylene tarp seal. This is a "Restricted Use" pesticide requiring a license to buy and apply. Product broadly labelled for preplant use.
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Source
I first heard about methyl bromide on Eco-Talk, when they did an episode on it several months ago. You can listen to the 9 minute segment on methyl bromide here. I went back and I found some information on methyl bromide from the Organic Consumers:
On July 1, 2005 a dozen nations agreed under the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer to reduce exemptions for "critical use" of methyl bromide by 20% in 2006. Methyl bromide is a powerful ozone depleting chemical, 50 times more destructive to the ozone layer than chlorine from CFCs (chloroflurocarbons), the other major class of chemicals targeted by the treaty. In 1987, sixteen industrial nations, including the U.S., agreed under the Protocol to end all use of methyl bromide by 2005, and developing countries agreed to end use in 2015. Instead, use of methyl bromide as a soil fumigant pesticide has increased in the U.S.
With more looking around, I found some information about alternatives to methyl bromide:
Methyl bromide use in California shrank by about half between 1993 and 2003, the most recent year that statewide data is available. But during the same period, farmers more than doubled their application of two main alternatives - metam sodium and 1,3-Dichloropropene.
Overall, use of those three chemicals in California swelled by 28 percent during that time. A similar but less-dramatic trend played out in San Diego County from 2000 through 2004.
"Although the ozone layer will be protected by methyl bromide elimination ... there will continue to be ongoing health and environmental damage from the other fumigants," said Susan Kegley, a senior scientist at Pesticide Action Network North America, an anti-chemical advocacy group based in San Francisco.
Metam sodium breaks down into products that are acutely toxic to humans, while 1,3-Dichloropropene is a major carcinogen that California temporarily suspended its use in the mid-1990s before levying new restrictions.
We humans are weighing the choices, looking for the most profitable way to kill ourselves.
According to Reefer Madness, strawberries are an incredibly risky crop. Growers incur costs of $12,000 to $30,000 per acre and they reap profits of $10,000 to $20,000 per acre (p. 82). The price of strawberries fluctuates between $3 and $15 a box. Growers in California produce strawberries throughout most of the year; compare that with the strawberries in Wisconsin that grow for a few weeks a year in June.
Methyl bromide is expensive - $2000 per acre - so it is only used on high value crops (mainly strawberries and tomatoes). The most elastic price in conventionally growing strawberries is labor, much of which is done by illegal immigrants. In other words, while growers can't control the prices of the supplies they need, or the weather and other environmental factors that determine their yield, or the market price of strawberries, they can control what they pay their workers. The less the wages, the higher the profits.
There is much more that can be said about conventional strawberries, but mostly it comes down to human greed. Consumers want big, red, cheap strawberries year round. Growers want profits. The current practices for growing strawberries lets both parties win, and the agricultural workers and the ozone layer are the casualties.
I'd like strawberries year round too, but I only want to have them on my terms. I want them to be grown organically and locally by workers who are compensated fairly for their labor. And I'd like a pony.
We compromise a lot with our demand for every food available cheap all year round. The conventional strawberries from the grocery store do not taste like the strawberries I picked on the farm. They look like strawberries - big, red, and fresh - but to me they taste like poor imitations of the real thing. Based on the size of the industry in California, I doubt most people know the difference.
I think it comes down to a question of values. I know what mine are but I can't dictate values for anyone else. Given the facts, I choose to buy local, organic strawberries in season and freeze enough to last me the year. Obviously most people choose differently. More than likely, they have no idea what goes into growing their strawberries. I didn't until recently either, so who am I to judge others?
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Recipes
This week, the farmer's market was wonderful! I can't even name all of the fruits and vegetables that are in season now. My CSA box came with beets, squash, kohlrabi, strawberries, snow peas, sugarsnap peas, and more. As a berry fanatic, I was happy to see mulberries, red raspberries, and wild black raspberries in addition to strawberries this week.
I bought 4 quarts of organic strawberries (for a total of $10!) to freeze for the year and 3 pints of cherry tomatoes to take with me on a business trip to Michigan. I also picked up some spun honey for my trip, to go with the peanut butter and wheat bread I've got.
Frozen Strawberries
It's not quite a recipe, but it's instructions...
Do not wash the strawberries. Cut or twist the stems off the strawberries, and spread them out on a cookie sheet. Freeze them on the cookie sheet before transferring them into a plastic ziploc bag (or whichever container you plan to freeze them in). This way they will not all stick together.
Freeze them at the peak of their freshness and use them all year round for smoothies, sorbets, yogurt, oatmeal, pies, dessert breads, whatever.
Homemade Whipped Cream
If you're going to make strawberry shortcake, don't use whipped cream from a can! Making your own is just too easy and it tastes infinitely better. You can do this with a whisk but I strongly recommend using an electric mixer.
Ingredients
1 container heavy whipping cream
1 tsp. vanilla (or to taste)
Powdered sugar, to taste
Pour the whipping cream into a mixing bowl and mix it until it thickens. Mix in vanilla and powdered sugar. I promise, you will never buy whipped cream in a can again.