Growing berries on the Central Coast, and in California for that matter, uses a lot of plastic.  A lot of it used to be just thrown away, now some of its recycled, but still not a lot and so it just goes into the landfill or worse like having pieces left in the field or ending up in the ocean.

As a person whose charge it is in many ways to look into the future, I've signed on to a large grant from the USDA with several colleagues from Washington state to start to look at alternatives, in particular biodegradables.  I've done some work over the years with these within my own program of research, and can assure you there's quite a bit of runway to go before these become mainstream.  Nevertheless, it's something that we in the research community should be looking at closer and in a more organized manner.

Since most of the team from the Washington side will be here anyway for the big annual strawberry production meeting the following day (Salinas Sports Complex, Feb 5, be there!), we decided to put on a morning meet up to not only share information, but get input from growers and professionals about where this work can go.

Meeting will be at my office, starts at 8 am and goes until noon.  Agenda posted below.