California Regulators Tighten Restrictions on Strawberry Fumigant; Activists Say New Rules Aren’t Enough.

The taste difference is subtle, but a group of visitors agree the sweetest berries on Miguel Ramos’ Watsonville farm are in a test plot where he’s running the irrigation system from a laptop in a shed.

Besides being computerized, these strawberries are growing not in soil, but in ground-up coconut. This might be the future of farming on the Central Coast – though Ramos isn’t quite ready to go full-bore just yet.

“We’re still in the diaper stage here,” Ramos says. “We’re learning.”

In the meantime, he and the California Strawberry Commission want to ensure the industry can keep using pesticides it relies on to grow nearly $1 billion in berries in Monterey County.

That means weighing in as the California Department of Pesticide Regulation considers tightening restrictions for chloropicrin.

It’s often blended with other fumigants both as a fungicide and also as a warning agent – chloropicrin can causes symptoms like watery eyes and itchy throats.

It’s traditionally been mixed with methyl bromide, which is being phased out per an international treaty. As methyl bromide availability decreases, growers have been upping the proportion of chemicals like chloropicrin.

DPR released a proposal on May 15 to curb potential exposure to chloropicrin. “We want to make sure people can make money growing strawberries, and live in harmony with their neighbors as well,” DPR spokesperson Charlotte Fadipe says.

Meanwhile, Monterey County’s anti-pesticide Safe Strawberry Working Group is planning to hold community meetings to strategize around chloropicrin.

“The proposed conditions don’t go far enough,” Pesticide Action Network spokesperson Paul Towers says. “We need to move swiftly to take chloropicrin off the market.”