For related articles and more information, please visit OCA’s All about Organics page, Environment and Climate Resource page, and our California News page.

Along California’s rugged coastal Highway One, just north of Santa Cruz, a yellow vintage pick-up truck and tidy rows of strawberries mark the entrance to the Swanton Berry Farm. Inside the cheerful farm stand, decorated with old photos of the region and fluttering United Farm Worker flags, locals gather at blue picnic tables, sipping coffee, eating strawberry shortcake, and chatting with Jim Cochran, the owner.

The air is scented with the first berries of the season. They’re fresh and sweet, intensely red and fragrant, and firm — not pumped up with nitrogen like most commercial strawberries. Cochran, 63, a silver-haired man with an easy manner and quietly fierce intelligence, takes evident pride in watching a visitor savor one. He was California’s first organic strawberry grower, harvesting his initial crop more than 25 years ago.

“From the start, everyone said it was impossible to grow a commercial crop of strawberries without chemicals,” Cochran says.