Corralitos / Freedom

Former farmworker, teacher and local activist Woody Rehanek is stunned when he looks out at the Pajaro Valley and considers the miles of plastic blanketing lush local farmland. He dubs our age “the Plasticene,” for the millions of pounds of farm plastics in use. Recycling, he writes, lags far behind the scale of the problem. Here, he traces how modern agriculture fuels a growing tide of local pollution and then points to a different future, one rooted in soil health, organic practices, and change underway at a few forward-looking companies.