The strawberry’s unstoppable rise should worry us

I’m still old enough to remember when strawberries were a rare treat.

As a child growing up in the 1980s on the outskirts of London, they appeared for a month or so to herald the arrival of the hottest time of the year. Their air of rare luxury during the brief height of the English summer helps explain their indelible association with the Wimbledon tennis tournament, where more than two million are consumed each year.

How things have changed. My own children are likely to grow up thinking of them the way I think of apples or bananas —…