Wilted: Pathogens, Chemicals, and the Fragile Future of the Strawberry Industry

Critical Environments: Nature, Science, and Politics

by Julie Guthman

Strawberries are big business in California. They are the sixth‑highest‑grossing crop in the state, which produces 88 percent of the nation’s favorite berry. Yet the industry is often criticized for its backbreaking labor conditions and dependence on highly toxic soil fumigants used to control fungal pathogens and other soilborne pests.

In Wilted , Julie Guthman tells the story of how the strawberry industry came to rely on soil fumigants, and how that reliance reverberated throughout the rest of the fruit’s production system. The particular conditions of plants, soils, chemicals, climate, and laboring bodies that once made strawberry production so lucrative in the Golden State have now changed and become a set of related threats that jeopardize the future of the industry.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science

322 pages, Paperback

Published August 20, 2019

Reviews

[Iris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading for Ethnography of Chemistry class. Pretty interesting. I learned a lot about how strawberries are grown and the assemblages of labor, chemicals, plants, land, and pests that create the contemporary strawberry landscapes so that you can buy strawberries all year long in all parts of the country. Unsure if I would’ve read all of it if not for class but enjoyed it nonetheless.

[Julia Frayne · Rating 2 out of 5]

could have been a paper…….. too long

[Jocelyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

_Wilted_ is my favorite food book in at least fifteen years, and I read a lot of them. This is for your friends into food and for the sort of person who loves to dissect complex systems or take a deep look at how the world came to be the way it is. It focuses on the phaseout of methyl bromide as a soil fumigant in the California strawberry industry - I know that sounds incredibly dull and pedantic, stay with me - but Guthman shows how the early decision to use methyl bromide affected everything from plant breeding to undocumented migration to real estate. She takes us down an incredible series of rabbit holes, showing how everything is connected and how completely unintended effects shape the world in enormous ways. She does all this with lucid explanations and pleasant prose. It’s a truly remarkable book, and for readers who don’t have a background in agriculture, it will leave them with a sort of x-ray view of the complexity of the food-growing system.