Strawberries got their name from farmers covering the plants with straw in Autumn, to hold moisture in the soil and protect the berries from weeds in Spring and dirt in Summer. If Driscoll’s covers the ground with plastic instead of straw, shouldn’t we call their produce plasticberries?
In the United States, Driscoll’s growing operations don’t deserve to be called “farms”. The ground is covered with plastic and the plants are in plastic pots. In Mexico, it’s the same, but worse. Instead of ruining farmland that was already poisoned with toxic pesticides and fertilizers, they’re clearing virgin forests and stealing water from the few remaining real farms, siphoning water from streams and illegally drilling deep wells where the aquifers are nearly dry.
We wish we could tell you that their USDA Organic and Fair Trade berries were different, but for years they got away with clearing land for their plastic operations with Monsanto’s carcinogenic glyphosate-based Roundup weedkiller just weeks before getting certified organic! This isn’t allowed anymore, but there were no consequences for past violations. They even lobbied the National Organic Standards Board to change the rules so they could grow berries in containers without soil!
Same with their atrocious labor practices. In 2015, some of their U.S. and Mexican workers went on strike to form unions, but the Mexican workers never got contracts, so their “Fair Trade” certification is meaningless for the vast majority of their slave-wage, no-benefits, poorly-treated workers, drawn from the 4.9 million family farmers who got pushed off their land after the North American Free Trade Agreement let companies like Driscoll’s colonize Mexico.
Driscoll’s business model is so bad for people, farming and the environment that it just shouldn’t exist.
TAKE ACTION: Tell Driscoll’s you won’t be eating their plasticberries!
In Michoacán, the surface water available for irrigation is limited and contaminated, but the cultivation of berries for export requires irrigation with clean water, so Driscoll’s digs wells illegally—leaving its neighbors without water.
In 2024, before it rained a bit on May 28, the area around Michoacán’s Lake Pátzcuaro, the most famous lake in Mexico, had gone 92 days without rain.
Without water, picturesque Lake Pátzcuaro turns into a desert and you can almost walk to the iconic island of Janitzio, as you can see in this viral video by the YouTuber El Purépeche.
(The Lake Pátzcuaro basin is home to the Purépecha people and the heartland of the Tarascan state, which rivaled the Aztec Empire before the Spanish conquest.)
The farmers around Lake Pátzcuaro blame the water scarcity on Driscoll’s and former Michoacán governor Silvano Aureoles who they say illegally gave Driscoll’s government machinery to clear the land and drill the wells. The farmers claim that Aureoles profited personally from deals he made with Driscoll’s.
Governor Aureoles promised special security to the berry producers and legal certainty so that they would continue their production. Today, all the land where the strawberries are grown is protected by heavily armed people.
"White guards, they call them, they bring large-caliber weapons, they have intimidated many of us, they have tried to uproot us," a farmer quoted in 2021 by El Sol De Morelia said.
The farmers who protested Aureoles were hopeful that the new governor, Alfredo Ramírez Bedolla, would stand up for his people against the multinational, but just like Aureoles, he has facilitated Driscoll’s expansion.
In 2022, Bedolla helped Driscoll’s open its 15th refrigerated warehouse and packing plant in Mexico.
In 2024, Driscoll’s invested $1.7 million in an expanded strawberry nursery in Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco, Mexico. Check out the photos from their launch. Does it look anything like a farm to you? A plastic farm maybe.
Driscoll changed the USDA Organic rules so it could grow organic berries like this, too, in plastic with no soil!
Driscoll’s photos show how their strawberries are grown in Michoacán… in containers. This Driscoll’s berry nursery doesn’t have a blade of grass growing on it! There used to be forests and farms here. Now it might as well be a parking lot. This type of agriculture shouldn’t exist at all, but it’s better suited to a city than the countryside.
All of this started with the North American Free Trade Agreement. Before Driscoll’s could move in, 4.9 million family farmers had to be shoved off their land. Not only did this open up farmland in ideal climates, it created a steady flow of landless peasants available for farm work. The Center for Economic and Policy Research found that from 1991 to 2007 some 4.9 million family farmers were displaced. Some found work with big exporting agricultural companies like Driscoll’s, but there was still a net loss of 1.9 million jobs.
The Mexico Solidarity Project warns against buying Driscoll’s berries, even if they’re certified Fair Trade. In 2015, tens of thousands of Driscoll’s farm workers went on strike for three months. They did win some demands, but conditions quickly reverted to “normal.” Later that year, SINDJA (Sindicato Independiente Nacional Democrática de Jornaleros Agrícolas) was formed. A groundbreaking “Boycott Driscoll” campaign stretched across borders, from San Quintín to Washington state. Farmworkers in Washington state won a historic contract on a farm selling to Driscoll’s, but SINDJA remains without a contract. It was after that strike that Driscoll sought a partnership with Fair Trade U.S.A. to repair its public image and prevent future disruptions to its operations.
TAKE ACTION: Tell Driscoll’s to stop growing plasticberries on deforested land with sweated labor and stolen water!
Personal Information
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I am writing with concerns about what I have learned about Driscoll’s business practices.
First of all, strawberries got their name because farmers mulched their plants with straw. Driscoll’s covers their “farms” with plastic, grows berries in plastic containers, and even uses the world’s largest indoor “farm” to grow “strawberries” under completely artificial, soilless, hydroponic conditions.
It really makes me sad that Driscoll’s has driven real strawberries off the market. Even at the height of strawberry season, we only see the same year-round plasticberries in the supermarkets.
Driscoll’s has paved California’s best farmland with plastic and it’s doing the same in Mexico, only more brutally, deforesting beautiful Michoacán (the winter home of the monarch butterfly) and draining Lake Pátzcuaro’s iconic watershed.
I’d buy Driscoll’s organic berries, but they’re farmed the same way, minus the pesticides. And, for years, Driscoll’s got away with clearing land for their plastic farms with Monsanto’s Roundup, just weeks before organic certification!
It’s the same with Driscoll’s Fair Trade berries. Its workers endure horrible working conditions, which forced a binational strike in 2015, but since then, while a few workers in the U.S. got a union contract, things are back to “normal” for the rest.
Driscoll’s business model is so bad for people, farming and the environment that it just shouldn’t exist.
No more of Driscoll’s plasticberries for me!
Thank you for your attention to this urgent matter.
[Your Name]