Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit by Barry Estabrook (Author).Grocery store produce sections bulging with a yr-round provide of perfectly round, vibrant crimson-orange tomatoes have turn out to be all but a national birthright. But in Tomatoland, which is based on his James Beard Award-winning article, "The Worth of Tomatoes," investigative meals journalist Barry Estabrook reveals the large human and environmental cost of the $5 billion contemporary tomato industry. Fields are sprayed with a couple of hundred totally different herbicides and pesticides. Tomatoes are picked hard and inexperienced and artificially gassed till their skins purchase a marketable hue. Fashionable plant breeding has tripled yields, but has also produced fruits with dramatically diminished quantities of calcium, vitamin A, and vitamin C, and tomatoes that have fourteen instances extra sodium than the tomatoes our mother and father enjoyed. The relentless drive for low costs has fostered a thriving modern-day slave trade within the United States. How have we come to this point?
Estabrook traces the supermarket tomato from its birthplace in the deserts of Peru to the impoverished town of Immokalee, Florida, a.k.a. the tomato capital of the United States. He visits the laboratories of seedsmen making an attempt to develop varieties that can withstand the pains of agribusiness and still taste like a backyard tomato, after which strikes on to business growers who function on tens of hundreds of acres, and eventually to a hillside subject in Pennsylvania, the place he meets an obsessed farmer who produces delectable tomatoes for the nation's high restaurants.
All through Tomatoland, Estabrook presents a who's who forged of characters within the tomato business: the avuncular octogenarian whose conglomerate grows one out of every
I will never take a look at a grocery store tomato the identical manner again. Never thoughts that I will by no means eat another one -- ever -- after studying this book. Writer and meals writer Barry Estabrook takes us on a journey to discover why those good-looking tomatoes piled up on grocery store cabinets are so oddly tasteless, and believe me, the reply isn't very appetizing. Flavor, although, is the least of his concerns. The large story here is the human suffering -- proper below our noses -- that we unknowingly perpetuate every time we choose a tomato up and put it in our procuring cart. It took courage to sniff this story out. Estabrook is clearly a professional in his field and deserves a substantial amount of credit. The writing is engrossing and at times hilarious, all of which makes the heartbreak somewhat easier to stomach.
I discovered this to be a really fascinating, nicely-written guide regarding the sorry state of the tomato, ensuing from the industrialization of the development, rising and advertising and marketing processes. The creator explains how the trade has sacrificed taste with the intention to create a wonderfully round, indestructible fruit that can be transported long distances without exhibiting any dents or bruises. The writer additional explains how, in an effort to maximize income, the industry preys on the poorest and weakest parts of society--the immigrant pickers. The author ends on a optimistic observe, however, presenting scientists and farmers attempting to proper the ship,by attempting to revive taste to the tomato, whereas treating employees with the dignity they deserve. Whereas tomatoes might not be the most certainly topic for a ebook, the author reveals that drama will be present in any occasion of human beings mistreating one another within the by no means ending hunt for greed and wealth.
Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit
Barry Estabrook (Author)
240 pages
Andrews McMeel Publishing; First Edition edition (June 7, 2011)
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