Posted on 05/08/2025 5:58:29 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Prominent farmworker activist and organizer Dolores Huerta joined several other speakers at a public meeting in Watsonville Saturday to raise awareness about the dangers of agricultural pesticide use on farmworkers, children, consumers and residents throughout Santa Cruz County.
Childhood cancer rates in the county are more than 38% above the nationwide childhood cancer rate of 16.3%. This makes the cancer rate for children up to age 14 the second highest of all California counties, according to Dr. Ann López, the director of the Center for Farmworker Families.
The meeting was organized by the Campaign for Organic and Regenerative Agriculture (CORA).
CORA’s website states that more than 1 million pounds of pesticides are used in Santa Cruz County each year. The majority of this usage is concentrated in the Pajaro Valley, often near houses and schools.
López said that “98.5% of the pesticides associated with childhood leukemia and 95.2% of pesticides tied to childhood brain cancer were applied in 2019 in this zip code 95076 alone.”
The ZIP code encompasses all of Watsonville.
Huerta urged the community to stop buying berries grown by Driscoll’s because much of their produce is sprayed with toxic pesticides.
She also said that Driscoll’s won’t let its farm workers unionize, and as a result, they aren’t able to improve their working conditions.
“The one thing about having a union contract is [that] when you sit down at the table to negotiate, you can say to them, ‘We don’t want you to use pesticides.’ You can make that a condition of the work.”
Among the speakers was Marciela Cruz, who was diagnosed with stomach cancer after working in strawberry fields in Salinas. She said she had undergone eight chemotherapy sessions and had to have her entire stomach removed. Her doctor told her the cancer may have been caused by her exposure to toxic pesticides sprayed in the fields.
Mireya Gómez-Contreras, the administrative co-leader of Esperanza Community Farms, interpreted for Cruz.
Regarding the non-organic field behind MacQuiddy Elementary, Gómez-Contreras, on Cruz’s behalf, said that if Cruz could speak to the rancher who owned that farm, she’d tell them “to get rid of the ranch or to turn it organic because the pesticides are affecting all of the farmworkers.”
According to López, Monterey County—compared to every other county in the state—has a higher percentage of schools and students in areas with the greatest pesticide use, affecting 29 schools and 18,525 students.
She said that the lifetime cancer risk at Ohlone Elementary school in Royal Oaks is twice the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment’s threshold.
“In general, Latino schoolchildren are 3.2 times more likely than white students to attend schools with the highest use of the most hazardous pesticides.” López said.
“The disparity is most notable in the Pajaro Valley area. “You would not find this in north [Santa Cruz] county,” she said.
The meeting drew a crowd of over 100 people, who gathered on a dirt road between MacQuiddy Elementary and two agricultural fields. The location reflected the importance of organizations like the Center for Farmworker Families and the United Farm Workers (cofounded by Huerta) as grassroots movements.
At the end of her speech, Huerta led the crowd through her famous “Sí, se puede” chant to encourage them to continue fighting against pesticide use.
The fact is. These freaks have never been on a farm.
Herbicides, fertilizers and pesticides determine the bounty.
Take any of those three away and production will drop.
For years they’ve demanded no till practices. Now that the farmers have switched, if they dont use any of those three...no crop.
Years ago, I printed the Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen lists, taped them onto my refrigerator. Have been following that list. Organic is really not much more $$$.
The tomatoes in the supermarket are bred to maintain form traveling long distances, and to look good, not to taste good or be nutritious. Then they are picked before they are ripe, travel long distances, and are gassed to make them red. To me, they taste terrible.
Ag pesticide, in particularly insecticides, use affects the entire environment. It’s literally wiping out the pollinators, from honey bees to many species of butterflies and many other beneficial insects; parasitic wasps, carnivorous species that feed on pest insects etc. For instance, imadiclorpid, an insecticide that translocates through out the plant and is used extensively in American agriculture and for termite control of residential and commercial buildings. In agriculture, it also concentrates in the flowers and that’s where it affects the pollinators. If there is no direct application contact on the pollinating species, the pollinators come in contact with it when they collect pollen from the flowers and it kills them too. This particular insecticide is active in the plant for up to 15 days. Europe and many other countries have banned its use, they recognized the ruin it was having on non target species. It needs to be banned here in the USA but the big AG Chem industry owns those who could and should ban its use.
I used some killer stuff on carpenter bees today. Dropped ‘em like they’d been pole axed.
Drill holes in my barn? I don’t think so. Every year, they never learn. Stupid bees.
I tried talking to them. Tried plugging the holes.
They only buzzed and kept drilling. I run Bartertown.
I buy organic tomatoes. Hope. they don’t get gassed. Will have to find out. Do you know what kind of gas they use?
Bring back DDT. After running behind mosquito spray trucks in the 1950s I am still doing well at 78 years of age.
I tried growing pesticide free foods. fifty years ago. I had all the Rodale Books on gardening.
I planted corn and had one of the best crops grow I ever had seen in my life! Then the WORMS hit it!
I carefully read the Rodale books and found mineral oil squirted on the ear of corn would stop them. It did not.
I tried a second crop, same problem. BUGS AND WORMS.
I went back and read the Rodale books carefully and found each “how to grow” section was carefully worded so that no where was it said these methods ACTUALLY WORKED, just that OTHER people CLAIMED THEY WORKED.
They did not. I then trashed the Rodale Books and have had decent gardens since.
Exactly.🤔
Is Dolores Huerta any relation to SEIU California’s David Huerta, riot supporter?
No, they mostly lost them to varroa mite infestations.
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