Students at Ohlone Elementary, Pajaro Middle and Hall District Elementary schools in the Pajaro Valley continue to face toxic fumigants drifting from nearby fields, despite years of lawsuits and mounting evidence of cancer risks, writes activist Woody Rehanek.
Woody Rehanek
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Driscoll’s has the resources and know-how to shift to organics around schools – so why doesn’t it?
Local pesticide activist Woody Rehanek wants Driscoll’s to stop applying pesticides in Santa Cruz County. Driscoll’s, he writes, owns two-thirds of the U.S. organic berry market, yet applies large quantities of carcinogenic fumigants near its world headquarters and close to Pajaro Valley schools.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Ag commissioner David Sanford’s mission to protect public health should include discussions of alternatives to toxic chemicals and pesticides
Watsonville resident and environmental justice activist Woody Rehanek believes Santa Cruz County Agricultural Commissioner David Sanford is not doing enough to inform the public about toxic chemicals used on crops in Watsonville. He points to a recent response Sanford made to a grand jury report as evidence and makes a plea for more transparency from the California Department of Pesticide Regulation and from Sanford. Santa Cruz County, Rehanek writes, “has the highest percentage of fumigants by weight of overall pesticide used of counties in the state.”
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
It’s time for Driscoll’s to take responsibility for farmworker health and well-being in Watsonville and Pajaro
Watsonville resident and former farmworker Woody Rehanek is tired of berry giant Driscoll’s lack of accountability. He says the $3 billion company operates like oil and mining companies of the past – mistreating its workers, endangering their health and only making piddling community donations. He calls on the company to go organic near schools and to financially bolster Assembly Bill 3035, which seeks to build more affordable housing for farmworkers.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Santa Cruz County could do more to fight climate change by promoting carbon sequestration through organic soil
Climate and anti-pesticide activist Woody Rehanek remembers Santa Cruz of the 1960s and 1970s, when our county was on the cutting edge of agricultural innovation. He implores us to return to that mindset and to embrace using healthy, organic soils to cut greenhouse gasses via carbon sequestration. Other counties are doing it, he writes. Why not us?
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
California’s pesticide advisers live off a system of kickbacks and conflicts of interest. That has to change.
Watsonville activist Woody Rehanek wants the California Department of Pesticide Regulation to change how pesticides are dispensed. The majority of pest control advisers are, he says, employed by pesticide distributors and receive kickbacks for prescribing their in-house chemicals for crops. This conflict of interest – in place since the 1950s – is causing farmers to use an unnecessary amount of pesticides locally, he writes: “Think of how Big Pharma operated in the 1980s, when pharmaceutical companies paid doctors to prescribe their products. Now we have Big Chem paying pesticide prescribers.”
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
We have to do more to tighten pesticide regulation in Santa Cruz County
Santa Cruz County holds an unwanted and embarrassing title, says organic agriculture activist Woody Rehanek: “No other county in California has such a high proportion of fumigant gases to overall pesticides applied.” In short, we continue to use far too many pesticides, he writes. And the state Department of Pesticide Regulation’s draft plan for the use of pesticides for 2024-28 falls short of what we need to protect farmworkers and ourselves.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Let’s hold our state accountable for pesticide regulation: Urge Gov. Newsom to sign AB 652
California likes to brag about its robust environmental laws, writes local activist Woody Rehanek, but it rarely talks about the troubling pattern of pesticide use and public health. A September “People’s Tribunal on Pesticide Use and Civil Rights in California” helped illuminate disparities in exposure. It also highlights problems in our state’s decentralized regulatory system, which allows county agricultural commissioners to wield unchecked power. A proposed solution, Assembly Bill 652, aims to establish stronger rules to hold the Department of Pesticide Regulation accountable for these practices.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Healthy soil, healthy people, carbon storage … the reasons to ditch pesticides are endless
Pesticide application needs to stop in the Pajaro Valley. It’s not only harming people, it is also damaging our soil and preventing natural carbon emissions from occurring, argues Watsonville resident and former farmworker and teacher Woody Rehanek. Carbon storage in healthy organic soils, he writes, is a plausible, workable method of addressing climate change and could help Watsonville achieve zero emissions in the next decade.