How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit"

[ensho]

http://avaxhome.ws/ebooks/economics_finances/1449401090Tomatoland.html


"Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit"


this is a new book by Barry Estabrook


Supermarket produce sections bulging with a year-round supply of perfectly round, bright red-orange tomatoes have become all but a national birthright. But in Tomatoland, which is based on his James Beard Award-winning article, "The Price of Tomatoes," investigative food journalist Barry Estabrook reveals the huge human and environmental cost of the $5 billion fresh tomato industry. Fields are sprayed with more than one hundred different herbicides and pesticides. Tomatoes are picked hard and green and artificially gassed until their skins acquire a marketable hue. Modern plant breeding has tripled yields, but has also produced fruits with dramatically reduced amounts of calcium, vitamin A, and vitamin C, and tomatoes that have fourteen times more sodium than the tomatoes our parents enjoyed. The relentless drive for low costs has fostered a thriving modern-day slave trade in the United States. How have we come to this point?

-snip-
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greedy, criminal tomatoe Barons should be sprayed with herbicides and pesticides daily

[LWolf]

1. I love homegrown tomatoes.

Handpicking tomato worms and tossing them to the chickens...it's a sport.

The tomatoes that come from organic, open-pollinated home grown plants have nothing in common with what I find in grocery stores. There is no comparison. Not in flavor, texture, juice, color....

[Greybnk48]

2. I have heirlooms in my garden and they taste amazing.

I suppose I should worry that the seed police will come haul me away. ;)

[gateley]

3. Not just tomatoes - they've fucked up almost everything. There

used to be incredible Red Delicious Apples from Washington State. I even remember preferring them to junk food when I was in high school (and I LOVE junk food!). After they tweaked with them to make more red, profitable, etc., the resulting New! Improved! version was mushy and tasteless and sales dropped. Oops.

Why can't they just let Mother Nature take care of these things -- nobody does it better! :(

[formercia]

4. Most people want perfect Tomatoes

and people are used to the texture of Fast Food Tomatoes.
I spent Years finding a Heirloom variety that was productive, easy to grow and disease resistant and tasted great. My personal favorite is Pruden's Purple. It's actually a shade of pink and ugly as sin, much like the often touted Brandywine, but less acid.
PP is thin-skinned and doesn't keep very well, but for making Sandwiches, it's wonderful. It has almost no seeds and is very meaty with a good flavor and it's relatively early at 72 Days.

[Gormy Cuss]

6. Prudens Purple is a nice tomato.

The fragility of ripe fruit is the main reason they were bypassed in the search for the perfect big ag version. I've never grown a tomato in my yard that had the taste or texture of mass market tomatoes. Homegrown actually have vivid tastes and color.

One of the reasons that I'm a big proponent of farmers' markets is that smaller scale, local farmers can and do raise varieties that don't travel and store well.

[WingDinger]

5. Im certain that the antioxidants are gone in store bought too.

As has been mentioned by even conservative seers of the future, Go, and buy local. Bring back real produce. No wonder kids hate their veggies.

[randr]

7. Guy Clark said it best

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nitgmAInI18

[thelordofhell]

8. I guess if it's not an animal........it's o.k.

Factory farming is a blight just like large meat production

[knitter4democracy]

9. This explains why I just can't eat store-bought tomatoes.

I grow my own, can them, and only can tomatoes bought from people I trust with good tomatoes grown right.

[opihimoimoi]

10. Go with F1 Beef steak tomatoes......good drainage....hydro or not, lottsa moisture and plant food .

wood ashes is fine too

[RaleighNCDUer]

11. I remember loving tomatoes when I was a kid.

I can't remember when the last time was I bought tomatoes at the supermarket. They don't have the taste, the texture, or in any way resemble what I remember.

[Le Taz Hot]

12. Living in an agricultural area,

I couldn't agree more. The good news: Home-grown gardens are multiplying exponentially, there's been a HUGE increase in family farms going organic (it's very profitable for them) and the rise in Certified Farmers' Markets. I literally gag if I have to eat commercially-raised produce. It's such a rush to go out to your back yard with a salt shaker and "graze" lunch -- tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers -- who needs a bowl?

[dbt]

13. Kick & Rec for the noble Mortgage Lifter

Fine old tomato variety from the late 30s/early 40s!

:bounce: