Sitting before a panel of legislators, a Santa Cruz area farmer recently compared the potential fate of California’s strawberry industry to the current state of American automakers. He argued that if agriculture doesn’t innovate, it faces a bumpy road ahead. And, he argued, that the decisions of regulators today will create the roadmap for the future of farming. It’s no easy task–the direction of the state’s agriculture system is at stake. One set of choices sets us down the road of producing food that continues to poison humans and contaminate our soil, water and air; the other turns a corner to widespread adoption of methods that, though they are more sophisticated and foreign to most conventional growers, produce safe and healthy food for all.
