Tomatoland

The Sac Bee published some excerpts from a recent book by Barry Estabrook on the tomato industry. We all know how crappy your typical supermarket tomato is, but I was unaware of just what's involved in getting these nasty things to market. This looks like an interesting book...

Link to Bee article.

Wow! Thanks Mike. A chilling story, sort of a microcosm of much of what's wrong with the world today. Though I doubt any of the enlightened community here buy winter super market tomatoes, I've never understood why ANYONE does. What's the point? The author was on "Fresh Air" today, though I missed the show.

[Jenise]

Wow! Thanks Mike. A chilling story, sort of a microcosm of much of what's wrong with the world today. Though I doubt any of the enlightened community here buy winter super market tomatoes, I've never understood why ANYONE does. What's the point? The author was on "Fresh Air" today, though I missed the show.

I'm one who buys winter supermarket tomatoes. Are they great? No. At best, just barely okay compared to a fresh summer tomato and not suited to all the same uses. But if you're a tomato addict like me, a bad tom is better than no tom at all. And there are some tomatoes coming up from the southern hemisphere, like the Kumato bruno rosso's that Trader Joe's sells all winter long, that give one hope.

In the off season we mainly get cherry or grape tomatoes. Sometimes when we need something bigger we'll go for the greenhouse raised cluster ones. Never touch the Florida monsters.

[Robin Garr]

My attitude about regular winter tomatoes is Just Say No, although similar-only-different to Carl's approach, I find that plum (not cherry or grape) tomatoes tend to have a more natural quality than the rest. On the whole, though, I'll give up BLTs and dressed burgers and capreses from November through June but take full advantage of sauce made from the garden bounty and frozen in two-cup containers for winter use. Red Gold canned tomatoes, a regional brand from Northern Indiana (which is much better tomato country than Florida) is also more than decent for winter recipes, although obviously not for salads and such. I'd probably be a Muir Glen fanboy if I didn't have access to Red Gold.

Something we've done in the past for winter sauces is to freeze whole, ripe summer tomatoes. When December comes 'round and we need something that tastes like real tomatoes, we pull a few frozen ones out and run them under warm water for a few seconds. The skin slips right off and they're ready for further thawing, chopping, incorporation into a tasty ragu. Unfortunately, our freezer space is limited, so we don't get away with a lot of this.

I'm with those who mostly buy cherry or grape tomatoes in the winter, which do actually seem to have flavor. I have also been amazed at what happens to those winter tomatoes when you roast them. Somehow their flavor essence comes through in spite of all their cardboardy hardness. I also like to roast, and then freeze, good farmers market tomatoes when they are in season. I have one vendor who sells me #2's which have bruises or other flaws for half price. I guess I've never tried just freezing them without roasting them first.

What I found particularly troubling in the story though, was the discussion of the labor situation in the fields and the virtual slavery of the workers.

[Robin Garr]

What I found particularly troubling in the story though, was the discussion of the labor situation in the fields and the virtual slavery of the workers.

There's been a lot of citizen advocacy around that, though, particularly via pressure put on giant buyers like Taco Bell and KFC to lean on their vendors, supposedly resulting in significant change. I doubt that a migrant tomato-picker's live is a good one, but there have been changes.

With the weather we've had so far, my tomato plants are NOT very happy!

I hope I don't have to rely on 'plastic' super market tomatoes this summer!

There's been a lot of citizen advocacy around that, though, particularly via pressure put on giant buyers like Taco Bell and KFC to lean on their vendors, supposedly resulting in significant change. I doubt that a migrant tomato-picker's live is a good one, but there have been changes.

Interesting - I didn't know that there'd been much action to try to improve the working conditions.

Here's a little info:
"In May 2004 at its annual meeting Yum! Announced a proposal to work with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers if they cancelled their 3-year boycott of the company's Taco Bell stores. The Coalition represents tomato workers in the Immokalee region of Florida who work for a number of tomato grower companies, some of which supply Taco Bell. The Coalition has been demanding that Taco Bell force its suppliers to pay workers an additional penny per pound of tomatoes picked. Yum!'s CEO David Novak stated "if the CIW ended its boycott, the company is prepared to support an industry-wide solution, such as a penny a pound surcharge applied to all purchasers of Florida tomatoes, not just Taco Bell."
"In March 2005 Taco Bell announced it will pay an extra penny for each pound of tomatoes it buys under an agreement with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a group of mostly Latino laborers from the tomato-growing region around Immokalee, Fla. that had been protesting the fast food chain for three years....The extra penny added per pound picked will boost the pay of the roughly 1,000 farm workers employed by Taco Bell suppliers. "It would mean almost reaching the poverty level," the spokesperson said.
I took these quotes from: http://www.knowmore.org/wiki/index.php?title=KFC