A big win for the organic food industry

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The University of California in Santa Cruz has a full story (online at UCSC here) about Jacobs Farm founders Larry Jacobs and his wife Sandra Belin. After an unfortunate experience with pesticides, Jacobs converted to integrated pest management and organic growing.

Founded in 1980, Jacobs Farm is the largest producer of culinary organic herbs in the U.S. Jacobs has won a couple of important lawsuits in 2008 and last week, against producers that spray pesticides that can drift onto his fields.

Christmas morning walk - Carmel River
His problem came to light when a health food store chain refused to accept his dill, saying that it had pesticides on it.

Reported in the Oakland Tribune, Jacobs said, "It didn't take more than half an hour to find several papers on the movement of these materials and their volatilization."

It took Jacobs and his significant resources 4 years to win the case; the tainted dill was discovered in 2006.

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