Faced with the potential use of a dangerous pesticide methyl iodide to spray crops in their backyards, a group of Californian teenagers decided to stand up to the might of industrial agribusiness. Rosie Spinks reports It's a short walk - about five or six steps - from the neat and cosy kitchen of Carolina Rios's family home to the edge of the strawberry fields that serve as her backyard. On a calm Monday evening in April, Carolina's father, Sabino (both pictured below), stands between two rows, his crisp white sweatshirt blending with the mist hanging over the farm.
Faced with the potential use of a dangerous pesticide methyl iodide to spray crops in their backyards, a group of Californian teenagers decided to stand up to the might of industrial agribusiness. Rosie Spinks reports
It's a short walk - about five or six steps - from the neat and cosy kitchen of Carolina Rios's family home to the edge of the strawberry fields that serve as her backyard. On a calm Monday evening in April, Carolina's father, Sabino (both pictured below), stands between two rows, his crisp white sweatshirt blending with the mist hanging over the farm.
!ADVERTISEMENT!
Bending down, he places a ripe berry between two fingers and, with a flick of the wrist and a firm yank, plucks it from the plant. That's the best way to pick a strawberry, he says. Sabino would know. He and his wife have been piscadores, or strawberry pickers, for 20 years, since emigrating here to Watsonville, California, from Mexico.
The berry that Sabino has picked in his demonstration is of a certain type: fresas chiquititas, he calls them. Small strawberries. They're small because the fields in which they grow are too close to the family's home to be treated with certain pesticides.
For further information: http://www.theecologist.org/how_to_make_a_difference/food_and_gardening/1079330/toxic_fallout_as_activists_challenge_strawberry_industrys_pesticide_use.html
