Tomatoland, 3rd Edition: From Despair to Deliverance - The Story of America's Tomato Industry

julia h: Horrifying and fascinating; we need people like Barry Esterbrook to stick their noses in and find what's behind the pretty shelf produce. Very accessibly written, too.

United Kingdom on Nov 20, 2018

Robert Fisher: Who knew slavery was still alive and well in the United States in the 20th and 21st centuries? Read this book and you'll find out how/why.

I love tomatoes. But I love good tomatoes. What we buy in the grocery store aren't good tomatoes. I produced a film on food and farming in 2015 and one of the things I covered was tomatoes. There are a lot of reasons why grocery store tomatoes aren't good. Mostly it comes down to scientists and laboratories.

The conditions described of the Florida farm workers is horrendous. If you watched the 3rd season of American Crime and think that may have been overhyped, or overdone, in terms of the conditions, you'd be wrong. It undersold the problems/issues. This book goes into much more detail.

The writing is a bit dry and matter-of-fact in places, but it's a very informative read and it does outline how conditions have been improving through the hard work of farm workers who were willing to stand up to the farm owners and demand improvements in pay, benefits and working conditions.

Canada on Sep 08, 2017

J. Canestrino: In 1904 Upton Sinclair went undercover in Chicago's Meat Packing District to expose the abuse and mistreatment of immigrant workers. Originally published in 1905 as a series of newspaper articles, Sinclair developed his findings into a novel he first self-published in 1906. Instead, `The Jungle' did more to raise peoples' concerns about poor sanitation in the meat industry and the adulteration of food products. `The Jungle' led directly to the passage of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906; later giving rise to the Food and Drug Administration in 1930. In `Tomatoland', author Barry Estabrook set out to answer two primary questions: 1) "Why can't (or won't) modern agribusiness deliver a decent tasting tomato?" 2) "And, why can't it grow one with a similar nutritional profile to the tomatoes available to any housewife during the Kennedy Administration?" Instead, the author found a story about the neglect and abuse of migrant field laborers on the large tomato growing farms of Florida. He found debt peonage, human trafficking, rape, assault, murder, extortion, the harboring and transporting of illegal aliens; nothing short of slavery.
Estabrook, an...

United States on Jan 23, 2012

L Steiner: "Tomatoland" is one of the very best investigative books I have read in many years. The topic is 21st Century slavery and related abuses in the tomato fields of Florida, in locations not far from Disney's Magic Kingdom and Naples, one of the wealthiest communities in the US. I really respect and appreciate Barry Estabrook's obvious compassion and empathy for the migrant workers whose tragic stories he includes in this very well-written, thoroughly documented and truly compelling book.
Barry is a highly regarded journalist and was for many years a contributing editor for the late Gourmet magazine. His writing has been featured in the Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post and other publications. He was the founding editor of Eating Well magazine. Barry recently received a James Beard Award for his blog: [...]
Florida produces about one-third of the fresh tomatoes grown in the US and sold to supermarkets and big box stores such as Wal-Mart. This is where "winter tomatoes", that can be purchased in January in Chicago for example, most likely originate. In addition, these tomatoes from Florida are used by fast-food operations such as McDonald's, Burger King,...

United States on Jun 19, 2011