Quick Take
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. He is tired of Driscoll’s arguments that it can’t take action and insists it has the resources to grow organically but chooses not to, spurred on by weak state regulatory enforcement. But, he says, the community health impacts are real and are affecting his neighbors. He wants the company to stop hiding behind its “independent growers” and lead a full shift to organic farming in Santa Cruz County.
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On May 3, on a dirt road dividing the MacQuiddy Elementary School playground from Driscoll’s berry partner Reiter Affiliated Companies in Watsonville, 100 local people gathered with labor activist Dolores Huerta to promote organic farming near schools.
“Throughout history, people grew food without pesticides,” Huerta said, “so why do we need them now? We need to put Driscoll’s in the bad company column and let the world know that this company is not a company that cares about its workers. It doesn’t care about the community, and it doesn’t care about consumers. … If you’re going to keep using pesticides, we’re not going to buy your products.”
Driscoll’s is the world’s largest berry company, valued at $3 billion, and controls one-third of the global berry market share, with 750 “independent” contract growers in 20 countries. Driscoll’s claims two-thirds of the market share in U.S. organic berries. Its world headquarters is in Watsonville, smack-dab in the middle of Pajaro Valley Unified School District.
Why is the company not growing organically by local homes and schools here in the Pajaro Valley — its world headquarters? Why is organic farming reserved for other communities?
Driscoll’s must do better to protect its workers – and our community – from pesticides.
In response to Huerta’s criticism, a Driscoll’s spokesperson quickly issued a written statement loaded with boilerplate clichés: “Our roots in this community run deep. We care deeply about the health and safety of our families, employees, and neighbors.”
No promises. No real responses.
Driscoll’s output of strawberries, raspberries and blackberries is 15%-20% organic, but the company’s conventional chemical practices ignore crop diversity and rotation and enable it to grow the same crops in the same fields year after year, as long as soil fumigants and synthetic fertilizers are applied.
These methods are profitable for the company’s bottom line, but expensive in terms of human and environmental health. According to a new research tool, pesticideinfo.org’s California People & Pesticides Explorer, which allows you to sort pesticide application by school districts, 393,453 pounds of the fumigant 1,3-dichloropropen[b]e (1,3-D) were applied in Pajaro Valley Unified School District in 2022.
This toxic air contaminant (TAC) and carcinogen is most often combined with chloropicrin, a TAC tear gas, 1,039,582 pounds of which were applied in our district that year.
The purpose of both fumigants is to eliminate soil-borne diseases. Yet acute exposures to TACs put our students at risk for respiratory diseases like asthma. Chronic exposures to 1,3-D are linked to cancer. That’s why 1,3-D has been banned in 40 countries.
It is known to travel for miles, yet it is routinely applied near PVUSD schools.
PESTICIDES IN THE PAJARO VALLEY: Read more Lookout news and Community Voices opinion coverage here
That is why it’s time for Driscoll’s to act.
The state Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment set a “safe” lifetime exposure level for farmworkers at 0.04 parts per billion – a level that has rarely been achieved in the past decade – according to the state’s six air quality monitors for fumigants. In 2022, the most recent data we have, 75% of all pesticides applied in PVUSD were fumigant gases. Of those, 30%, 632,000 pounds, were carcinogens.
These figures are alarming and outrageous.
Farmworker Marciela Cruz contracted stomach cancer after working four years in Salinas strawberry fields. Her doctor told her that toxic pesticides may have caused her cancer. She underwent eight chemotherapy treatments and recently had her entire stomach removed. She has two young children. Only her husband is able to work now.
At the rally, Dr. Katie Gabriel-Cox of Salud Para La Gente emphasized, “There are plenty of studies to show reproductive health harms from specific chemicals like organophosphates which can cause neurological illness and miscarriage.”
The company’s response?
“All of Driscoll’s independent growers are required to follow regulations and the law, working with government agencies to ensure full compliance.”
After years of technical research at local, state and federal levels, multiple scientific experts and panels have found that our byzantine labyrinth of regulations might look good on paper but results in inadequate pesticide protections for farmworkers and their communities, especially due to the cumulative impacts of multiple pesticides over time.
Driscoll’s refuses to take responsibility for the practices of its contract growers, labeling them as “independent,” even though Driscoll’s controls the breeding of the plants its growers use and prescribes the pesticides and fertilizers that they use.
And, as Dolores Huerta pointed out, this private company has a longstanding, well-deserved reputation as being flat-out anti-union.
Instead of shifting blame to its contract growers and to agencies, Driscoll’s should take full responsibility for its entire supply chain and the collateral damage it causes to human, environmental and climate health.
All conventional chemical practices near PVUSD schools need to shift to organic, and soon. Miles Reiter has indicated that a shift to organics near schools by Reiter Affiliated is underway. Good. When will it happen?
Also, all community residents deserve the same protections.
I have at least three neighbors with Parkinson’s disease. We all live in Bay Village, a senior community in northeast Watsonville bordered by 70 acres of conventional chemical raspberries grown for Driscoll’s. Malathion, an organophosphate and carcinogen, is applied on those fields to kill fruit flies. A popular creekside levee trail also borders them. Research links organophosphate exposures to accelerating the progression of Parkinson’s.
As my neighbors gradually lose fine and gross motor skills, including the capacity to speak, I wonder what hidden costs of pesticides to human and environmental health are routinely ignored.
Standing beside Reiter Affiliated/Driscoll’s chemical blackberries, Marciela Cruz said in Spanish, “I would tell the rancher … to get rid of the farm or turn it organic because the pesticides are affecting all of the farmworkers.”
I dream that some day the responsible parties will be held legally and financially accountable for damages to human health and a diminished quality of life due to conventional chemical applications. Driscoll’s has the resources and know-how to shift the narrative to organic production near schools.
May that day come soon.
Woody Rehanek was a farmworker in Washington state for 18 years and a special education teacher in Pajaro Valley Unified School District for 18 years. He is a member of Safe Ag Safe Schools and a founding member of the Campaign for Organic and Regenerative Agriculture. He lives in Watsonville.