Letters: Water issues still plague us maderatribune.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from maderatribune.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Amigo Bob Cantisano, a ninth-generation Californian, put his life’s work into the state’s very soil beginning, fittingly enough, on the first Earth Day in 1970.
At an event at San Francisco State he listened to a speaker decry what pesticides introduced after World War II were doing to the environment, farmworkers and food.
His course was set. Cantisano, a Bay Area native, joined a generation of largely urban youth who moved back to the land and began farming as a way to reform the food industry.
“He was the godfather of California organic farming,” said Tom Willey, a Madera farmer and another elder of the organic movement. “He had such knowledge and authority that he was responsible for taking organics beyond small farmers like ourselves. He was determined to remove as much toxins as he could.”