Jim Cochran is an

organic Organic may refer to: * Organic, of or relating to an organism, a living entity * Organic, of or relating to an anatomical organ Chemistry * Organic matter, matter that has come from a once-living organism, is capable of decay or is the product ...

strawberry The garden strawberry (or simply strawberry; ''Fragaria × ananassa'') is a widely grown hybrid species of the genus '' Fragaria'', collectively known as the strawberries, which are cultivated worldwide for their fruit. The fruit is widely ap ...

farmer, who was the first person to grow strawberries organically on a commercial scale in California.

Early life

Cochran was born in

Carlsbad, California Carlsbad is a coastal city in the North County region of San Diego County, California, United States. The city is south of downtown Los Angeles and north of downtown San Diego. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 114,746. ...

in 1947.

Education

Cochran studied child development and European intellectual history at the University of California, Santa Cruz in the late 1960s, where he became interested in alternative farming methods.

Career

Cochran began his commercial farming career growing strawberries using conventional methods, but switched to organic farming methods after he was nearly poisoned by pesticides and, as a result of this experience, questioned the effect that the chemicals had on his workers. In 1983, he started Swanton Berry Farm, located North of Santa Cruz, California, in

Davenport, California Davenport is a census-designated place (CDP) in Santa Cruz County, California. Davenport sits at an elevation of . The 2020 United States census reported Davenport's population was 388. Situation Davenport lies along the coast of the Pacific Ocea ...

. In 1987, his farm became the first CCOF-certified organic strawberry farm in the State of California. He subsequently developed a wide range of new methods, which include crop rotations, such as broccoli and brussels sprouts, trap crops such as mustard and

alfalfa Alfalfa () (''Medicago sativa''), also called lucerne, is a perennial flowering plant in the legume family Fabaceae. It is cultivated as an important forage crop in many countries around the world. It is used for grazing, hay, and silage, as w ...

, and the use of natural predators, to control strawberry specific pests and diseases. His mostly intuitively developed methods were later verified scientifically in a series of studies by University of California, Davis plant pathologist Krishna Subbarao and his collaborators. Cochran originally found it difficult to get funding for his experiments from the

California Strawberry Commission The California Strawberry Commission, is a state-chartered agency of the California Department of Food and Agriculture. Established by the California State Legislature in 1993, the commission replaced the California Strawberry Advisory Board. T ...

, stating that "The industry blockaded our efforts to get money to research alternatives, and spent a lot of money in Washington making sure our proposals didn't get funded." Cochran's methods have been credited for making a large-scale commercial organic strawberry industry possible in California. Cochran was also the first, and still one of the few, California organic farmers to have a contract with the United Farm Workers.

Early life

Education

Career

References

Further reading