A Tomato Daydream

By Erin Krauss, Long term resident of NC, lover of just-food, community social worker, FAN Volunteer

My daydream thoughts: Tomatoes are here. Every Saturday, I stroll down to the community farmers market and walk the circle twice, maybe three times – admiring the colors, the smells and the imagined tastes of all the homegrown vegetables I see. Lately, tomatoes have been available in great supply and will continue to be as long as the heat lasts. In the front yard of my apartment building, tomatoes are also thriving. A raised garden bed and multiple buckets make for prime growing space; I am proud and relieved that I’ve finally found the time and space for urban gardening.

Just as my daydream about tomatoes begins to ripen over weeks of planting, watering, and finally picking, I am reminded of the tomato turmoil that exists in the world we live in. I’m not talking about bugs or deer attacks or salsa gone bad; I’m talking about massive global systems wrapped up in the tomato harvest and the many people whose lives depend on these systems.

Barry Estabrook’s new book, Tomatoland, tells the tale of this tomato turmoil. Estabrook was recently featured on NPR’s Fresh Air. During the interview, the author spoke to all the things in my daydream: a tomato’s color, taste, harvest and even nutritional value. He also told the story about how this crop has evolved to be an out-of-season commodity that large-scale farmers in Florida depend on and often exploit for economic gain. The interview explained how the fruit is pumped with nutrients and pesticides to survive in Florida’s climate (which it turns out is not ideal for tomato growing), then picked while hard and green and gassed to achieve artificially ripe coloring. According to Estabrook, in the 1960’s grocery store tomatoes had about 25% more vitamin C and much more niacin and calcium than they do now.

Estabrook also explored the issue of who does the hard labor of tomato harvest and what the consequences are for the people working the fields, including child-labor, modern day slavery, deplorable conditions, poverty wages. In Estabrook’s words, "Of the legal jobs available, picking tomatoes is at the very bottom of the economic ladder. I came into this book chronicling a case of slavery in southwestern Florida that came to light in 2007 and 2008… These were people who were bought and sold. These were people who were shackled in chains at night or locked in the back of produce trucks with no sanitary facilities all night.” Although seven legal cases have been successfully brought to court in the recent past regarding current day slavery, abysmal conditions still abound.

Many of us are familiar with stories of Florida tomatoes and the Coalition of Immokalee (CIW) Workers, including the gains that CIW has made in their long fight for fair treatment and wages, and the challenges they still face. As I listened to this interview on a popular NPR program, I had to pause. These days food writers, foodies, small-scale farmers, anti-hunger workers and people generally concerned with food are all noticing how the agriculture industry in the US is failing on several fronts. Tastes and nutrients have declined while small-scale farmers are increasingly competing all over the world with industrial-scale farming operations. Despite the massive yield of those operations, roughly 1 out of 4 children under 5 go hungry in North Carolina. So who is winning here? The US agriculture industry is failing the American people – the workers, the consumers, small farm owners and hungry children. It seems clear that this system is so broken it’s not working for anyone except massive corporate interests.

Beyond feeling satisfied with the small mark I’ve made by planting my own tomatoes this year, I am grateful for Fresh Air’s interview about Tomatoland. I am grateful for the reminder that all of us are touched by the food system – those who work in it, and those who consume the fruits of labor. We must work together to make this system function well and treat people with dignity. What would it take for our nation’s tomatoes once again to be rich in vitamin C and other nutrients? What would it take for the workers who pick this fruit to be treated with respect? What would it take for this food to really arrive on the plates of the people who need it the most? These are the questions we must make ourselves think about this season while we enjoy fresh summer tomatoes – whether they’re from the grocery store, the farmers market or from our very own back yards.

Let there be dignity in food.