Sierra Magazine: Explore, enjoy and protect the planet.

Refusing to Bend

Threatened by pesticides in the fields outside their homes, the children of Central California farmworkers have launched a ground-level battle against agribusiness

Text by Rosie J. Spinks | Photos by Rowan Byers

Update: This week, Arysta Life Science, one of the largest pesticide companies in the world, announced it was pulling the product methyl iodide (MeI) off the U.S. market. Read more.

It's a short walk—about five or six steps—from the neat and cozy kitchen of Carolina Rios's family home to the edge of the strawberry fields that serve as her backyard. On a calm Monday evening in April, Carolina's father, Sabino, stands between two rows, his crisp white sweatshirt blending with the mist hanging over the farm.



Sabino points to other fields visible from where he stands.

"Fresas más grande pero más peligroso," he says. "Bigger strawberries, but more dangerous."


"When I came home from school and told them about it, it was the first time they had heard of methyl iodide," 17-year-old Carolina explains. Her parents nod in agreement.




"My house is literally surrounded by the fields," Carolina says frankly. "We're doing this to protect our homes and our families."

* * *




Methyl iodide is that alternative. The Environmental Protection Agency gave it federal approval in 2007, but the State of California required a separate review process. The DPR approved it late last year after what the agency called the "most extensive evaluation [of a chemical] in the department's history," imposing regulations much stricter than the EPA's.


Airborne transmission, groundwater accumulation, developmental effects, thyroid disruption, cancer—these are some of the potential consequences that led an independent scientific review committee, commissioned by the DPR prior to its approval of methyl iodide, to conclude that "there is little doubt that the compound possesses significant toxicity" and would thus result in an "adverse impact on the public health." Committee chair John Froines went even further, saying there is "no safe level of release" for the chemical.

Arysta LifeScience says that no incidences of methyl iodide-caused illness have been reported in the handful of states where the chemical is currently being used. Devika Ghai of Pesticide Action Network says that claim is misleading. The most damaging health effects, Ghai notes, will likely surface years from now, after prolonged exposure to low doses. "It's all very well to say 'no negative health effects reported,' but 'no data' does not mean no effects," she says. "The truth is more complex and, unfortunately, more ugly."

To date, the opposition to DPR's registration of the chemical has been enough to warrant reconsiderations at both the federal and state level. The EPA opened a second public comment period, and California governor Jerry Brown resolved to take "a fresh look" at registration of the chemical. Permits to apply methyl iodide are currently available, though only one grower has used the chemical in California. However, activists across the state are trying to persuade the governor, via lawsuits and grassroots efforts, to reverse the DPR's approval.

* * *

Sitting at their lunch table at Watsonville's Renaissance High School on a bright Tuesday morning, Carolina and her close friend Joanna "Jojo" Magdalena talk about things you would expect to hear from high school seniors—homework deadlines, graduation, summer jobs. While both girls seem shy, their actions over the past few months have been anything but.


The girls pick disapprovingly at lifeless hamburgers wrapped in foil, a product of the subsidized free-lunch program, which most students at the school dislike and, of course, are trying to change.



And then there's the political activism, at the center of which is an English teacher named Jenn Laskin, who invokes the phrase "sí, se puede" ("yes, you can") with unrelenting frequency. Laskin's ability to motivate young people appears innate as she walks through campus casually conversing with students at lunchtime.

"Be the lawyer in the boardroom who is suing Monsanto," she tells young activists, "not the hippie in the street who's protesting against it."

Jenn, as her students call her, hates it when Watsonville youths end up in the prison system for minor offenses. She hates it when her students get caught in the "linguistic middle ground" of no Spanish at school and no English at home. And she hates that eight schools in the district are surrounded by agricultural land that's regularly doused with pesticides.

At the lunch table, Carolina and Jojo explain that their first awareness of methyl iodide came from an extra-credit opportunity offered by Laskin: They attended a community forum about the chemical sponsored by the Watsonville Brown Berets, an activist group whose members fight for the "liberation and amelioration of [their] barrios."

"At this meeting we got mad and decided this was a serious problem, so we formed a school club," says Jojo, whose mother works in the strawberry industry.



Carolina and Jojo were well on their way to embodying Laskin's bold style of activism when they learned a hard lesson. On December 1, the day after the girls' triumphant presentation to the Watsonville City Council, the DPR announced its approval of methyl iodide.

Enthusiasm for the cause lulled at school, Jojo says, as some students felt that all of their work was for nothing. Still, Carolina and Jojo maintained their resolve. "The thing about being an activist," Jojo says, "is that when you get mad, you don't go out there and fight with violence; you go out there and organize."





"This is a community that is most punished by environmental degradation," says Javier Sierra, a Spanish-language columnist for the Sierra Club. "Poor and minority communities are always burdened with the most undesirable places to live because it's much cheaper to set up shop there."

The average salary for a U.S. agricultural worker is roughly $13,000 per year, according to Department of Labor statistics. Strawberry pickers like Sabino receive an hourly wage of about $5—well below the minimum wage—plus $1 for every 8- to 12-pound tray they fill. Both Carolina and Jojo see the harsh economic realities of an agricultural livelihood firsthand. Although Jojo realizes that her mom supports her activism, she also realizes that such support can only go so far.

"Knowing how the financial situation is around here, it's really hard for someone like my mom to acknowledge what's really going on," Jojo says. "On one side, we're trying to take care of our health and safety. But on the other side, we're trying to survive financially."

* * *

With words like "carcinogen" and "neurotoxin" trailing nearly every mention of methyl iodide, you'd think its manufacturer Arysta LifeScience wouldn't be so eager to talk about its product. However, Jeff Tweedy, Arysta's head of business development, seems to be waging a public relations offensive on behalf of the company.

Read a favorable mention of methyl iodide—either in a letter to the editor or in the comments section of an online article—and it's likely been written by Tweedy. Seeking out interviews with journalists, Tweedy combats unfavorable claims of the company's product by citing the chemical's other manifestations.

"Do you know who the largest manufacturer of methyl iodide is?" Tweedy asks in a February interview. "The ocean. . . . It's a naturally occurring substance. Iodide is part of the daily diet. We need it or our thyroid won't function properly."

Tweedy explains that in agricultural use, methyl iodide is combined with water and then applied via drip irrigation. After application, the field is covered with a tarp and, according to the DPR, the chemical "is then allowed to degrade to low levels safe for crop growth," usually for about two weeks.

Tweedy insists that these precautions, along with the DPR restrictions, are sufficient. "We've got stringent stewardship, and we work very hard to make sure people are trained properly," he says. "I believe that if the product is applied per directions, it can be applied safely and we can maintain that urban balance with agriculture."




"I hate just going somewhere, wearing my hoodie, and then picking up my little niece when I get home, and then suddenly I'm thinking, 'Did I make her sick?'"


"In terms of toxicity, would I want to walk into Room A with methyl bromide or Room B with methyl iodide?" Loechler asks. "I'd walk into the methyl bromide room. Methyl iodide is just more reactive."

The factors that make methyl iodide so effective are the same that make it unsafe, contends Anne Katten, staff scientist with the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation and a trained industrial hygienist. "There's a double-edge sword with all fumigants," she says. "They need to be highly volatile and toxic to work and are applied at high concentrations, compared to other pesticides. But that also makes them harder to control, with more immediate and long-term health effects."

Loechler dismisses Tweedy's comparison of methyl iodide to naturally occurring iodide, which can be found in table salt. "That's not even apples to oranges—it's apples to swing sets," Loechler says. It ignores the obvious fact that "a little bit of something is a good thing, but too much is a bad thing."

Arysta's data is sound, Loechler says; it's the interpretation that's skewed. "A lot of the science Arysta did was well done, and so I don't want to be critical of the data itself," he says. "[But], if a graduate student came to me and interpreted the science the way the Arysta scientists did, I would send them back to third grade."



"The grower and consumer are so separated, they're both being exploited," Gliessman says. "We need to put the 'culture' back into agriculture."

* * *

After a long day at work, Sabino sits with his family at the kitchen table, the smell of the evening's finished dinner still lingering in the air. His three-year-old daughter hangs from his neck with that look of adoration that little girls only have for their dads.



Sabino does this hard work so his children won't have to. "I really don't want my kids to work bent over all day," Sabino says in Spanish. "They have to study so they won't have to pick berries."


In Spanish, the verb agachar, "to bend over," has two meanings: to physically lower oneself to the ground, and to lower oneself before power. So far, much to her parents' delight, Carolina has done neither.

ROSIE J. SPINKS is a freelance writer from Southern California whose work focuses on environmental topics.

