Yes, unfortunately, it is true! The certified organic strawberries that you carefully choose aren’t organic for real!

Apparently, the organic strawberries that you purchase for 50% to 100% more than ordinary berries, are being disinfected with harmful toxic chemicals at the early stages of their life, such as methyl bromide.

It is sprayed on the strawberry fruit in order to sterilize the soil, before it is planted. Hence, it literally destroys everything it touches. Yet, there have been created numerous hybridized kinds of seed which are able to grow in sterile soil only.

“The soil is, as a matter of fact, full of live organisms. It is essential to conceive of it as something pulsating with life, not as a dead or inert mass.”

– Albert Howard, The Soil and Health, 1947

“For most of agriculture’s 10,000-year history, farmers have succeeded or failed based on their ability to nurture life within the soil. The microorganisms and earthworms that thrive in healthy soil metabolize nutrients and make them available for crops.

They also convert animal and vegetable waste into humus, thus regenerating their own habitat and maintaining that thin layer of topsoil on which all terrestrial life depends.

In modern agriculture, however, soil operates as a medium, not a habitat: It exists to transfer synthetic, pre-metabolized nutrients from factories to crops. In this regime, any life form found in soil is at best innocuous — and at worst a threat. When a vast field is planted in the same crop year after year, its pests concentrate in the soil, waiting to strike.”

Therefore, we can conclude that all strawberries are chemically treated with these harmful products and pesticides, no matter if they will be organically or conventionally grown afterwards.

These berries are prone to pests, so in order to raise the production, as well as to increase the profits, they are subjected to many toxic chemicals in the monocrop strawberry farms in which they are grown.

Moreover, you may also be interested in these figures:

The biggest strawberry producer in the world is the U.S., particularly California, which exports around 75 % of the fresh and processed strawberries.

So, around 90 percent of the fresh strawberries in theU.S. have been grown in California. Also, it is the location of most of the world’s strawberry nursery plants. Yet, there is no organic nursery located there.

In order to really grow organic strawberries, one needs to rotate them with other crops, such as  broccoli or an appropriate cover crop. Broccoli can effectively protect strawberries as it acts as a natural fungicide as well.

The multiplication of pathogens is prevented by rotating crops.  “Most fungi attack in summer, survive the winter as spores in the soil or plant litter, then attack again in the next growing season. So planting the same crops in the same fields year after year allow pathogens to build their populations.”

Moreover, methyl bromide has also been linked to the farm workers’ raised risk of prostate cancer. Its commercial use has been banned in 2010, by the U.S. agreement to the Montreal Protocol. commercial use was supposedly banned. Yet, this ban does not apply to the strawberry field fumigation and some other common agriculture applications.

Namely, over  9.5 million pounds of pesticides, among which over 3 million pounds of methyl bromide, are used to kill pests in strawberries every year.

Also, Methyl Iodide as a replacement is not much better.

In California in 2010, it was approved by the FDA for restricted use, but numerous experts and scientists, including five Nobel laureates, warn about its harmful environmental effects and devastating health impact.

Over 50 scientists joined with the aim to prevent its approval by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and in a joint letter stated that  “As chemists and physicians familiar with the effects of this chemical … we urge you to do whatever is possible to prevent this chemical from ever becoming a registered pesticide.”

Furthermore, Ted Schettler, MD, MPH, science director at Science and Environmental Health Network explains that:

“Everyone agrees, without exception, that methyl iodide is a very toxic compound. It’s very reactive. That means it interacts with living tissue in very toxic ways, causing cell damage and damage to cell structures, DNA, or chromosomes,”  “The upshot is it can cause a lot of health effects, including cancer and damage to tissues that are developing.

In animal studies, it killed the fetuses of developing animals exposed by inhalation; fetuses were killed at relatively low doses. Nobody doubts it’s a nasty chemical.”

On the other hand, Jim Cochran was a real organic farmer and he grew organic strawberries on his 75-acre farm in Davenport, without using any pesticide for three decades.

Namely, in California, he was the first to grow organic strawberries. Yet, he purchases the starter plants from a nursery in northern California which uses toxic fumigants in the pre – fruit stage. Therefore, he stated that “There’s a gray area in the rules.”

So, organic farmers are actually allowed to buy a non- organic started material by the Federal and state organic regulations, and still sell their products as organic.

California “doesn’t have a single organic berry nursery—hence the practice of relying on plants that grew on fumigant-using nurseries.”-was stated in the NY Times.

Yet, crop rotation and organic methods are more expensive and in general, the yields are  a little lower. Cochran adds “The multi-crop organic farm is vastly more complex than the single-crop chemical strawberry farm.

It requires much more management.It’s not easy. What we’re up against is people who use chemicals and produce strawberries at $2.50 a basket and can still be quite profitable.What we are trying to do is have it be organic from the very beginning, but it’s going to take some time to get to that point.”

Therefore, if you are interested in growing your own strawberries, you should not use seeds from the strawberries purchased at the market.

Moreover, a popular kind of strawberries is the Everbearing. It actually gives fruits during the entire growing season, from early spring, throughout the entire summer, and until early fall.

Use a garden tower when you need to transplant the seedlings. Note that the best conditions for growing strawberries include loamy and well- drained soil and lots of sun.

The video above will not indicate that organic strawberry starter plants which can be bought at local nurseries are far from organic, it does say that even organic strawberries are often sprayed with a copper fungicide after fruiting.

Source: www.realfarmacy.com
Author: Paul Fassa
Paul Fassa is a contributing staff writer for REALfarmacy.com. Paul’s valiant contributions to the health movement and global paradigm shift are world renowned. Follow him on Twitter here and visit his blog by following this link.

Other included sources linked in Real Farmacy’s article:
grist.org
preventdisease.com
civileats.com
www.motherjones.com
scienceblogs.com