Land access and costs may drive strawberry growers’ increased use of fumigation

methyl bromide for use in strawberry production. By year’s end, many of the pessimistic predictions about the California strawberry industry’s future had not come to pass. Consumer costs had not increased to cover expected higher production costs (e.g., Carpenter et al. 2000; Norman 2005), nor had production substantially moved to Mexico, which, per Montreal Protocol rules, initially was granted a longer phaseout period than the United States (Carter et al. 2005; Goodhue et al. 2005). Indeed, both the overall production of strawberries and the rates of productivity continued to increase in California throughout the phaseout period, and prices for berries declined rather than rose (Mayfield and Norman 2012). Even in the last years of the phaseout, acres planted in strawberries held relatively steady — 37,732 acres were planted in 2012 and 36,039 were planted in 2016, with little variation in between those years (California Strawberry Commission 2016). RESEARCH ARTICLE