Tomatoland is more than the sad tale of one fruit's decline from juicy summer treat to bland obligation. It is an indictment of our modern agricultural system…in the tradition of the best muckraking journalism, from Upton Sinclair's The Jungle to Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation.
The Washington Post
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Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit
Narrated by Pete Larkin
Barry EstabrookUnabridged — 7 hours, 12 minutes
![Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit](http://img.images-bn.com/static/redesign/srcs/images/grey-box.png?v11.9.4)
Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit
Narrated by Pete Larkin
Barry EstabrookUnabridged — 7 hours, 12 minutes
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Overview
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 trying to develop varieties that can withstand the rigors of agribusiness and still taste like a garden tomato, and then moves on to commercial growers who operate on tens of thousands of acres, and eventually to a hillside field in Pennsylvania, where he meets an obsessed farmer who produces delectable tomatoes for the nation's top restaurants.
Throughout Tomatoland, Estabrook presents a who's who cast of characters in the tomato industry: the avuncular octogenarian whose conglomerate grows one out of every eight tomatoes eaten in the United States; the ex-Marine who heads the group that dictates the size, color, and shape of every tomato shipped out of Florida; the U.S. attorney who has doggedly prosecuted human traffickers for the past decade; and the Guatemalan peasant who came north to earn money for his parents' medical bills and found himself enslaved for two years.
Tomatoland reads like a suspenseful whodunit as well as an exposé of today's agribusiness systems and the price we pay as a society when we take taste and thought out of our food purchases.
Editorial Reviews
In this eye-opening exposé, Vermont journalist Estabrook traces the sad, tasteless life of the mass-produced tomato, from its chemical-saturated beginnings in south Florida to far-flung supermarkets. Expanding on his 2010 James Beard Award–winning article in Gourmet magazine, Estabrook first looks at the tomato's ancestors in Peru, grown naturally in coastal deserts and Andean foothills, with fruit the size of large peas. Crossbreeding produced bigger, juicier varieties, and by the late 19th century, Florida had muscled in on the U.S. market, later benefiting from the embargo on Cuban tomatoes; the Sunshine State now produces one-third of the fresh tomatoes in this country. To combat sandy soil devoid of nutrients, and weather that breeds at least 27 insect species and 29 diseases that prey on the plants, Florida growers bombard tomato plants with a dizzying cocktail of herbicides and pesticides, then gas the "mature greens" (fruit plucked so early from the vines that they bounce without a scratch) with ethylene. Behind the scenes, moreover, there exists a horrendous culture of exploitation of Hispanic laborers in places like Immokalee, where pesticide exposure has led to birth defects and long-term medical ailments. Estabrook concludes this thought-provoking book with some ideas from innovators trying to build a better tomato. (July)
"[A] thought-provoking book." ---Publishers Weekly
Barry Estabrook’s exposé of the winter-tomato industry peels back the skin on a tasteless fruit, bathed in chemicals, gassed with ethylene to look ripe, and picked by modern-day slaves. Pete Larkin’s narration is straightforward and engaging. It’s clear that the treatment of migrant workers in Florida is inexcusable in a first-world democratic country, but Larkin lets the inhumanity speak for itself and wisely doesn’t amp up the outrage. Estabrook interviews many scientists, lawyers, growers, and tomato pickers involved in the Florida winter-tomato industry, and Larkin clearly distinguishes between quotations and narrative without resorting to inauthentic accents. It’s an unblemished performance. Don’t buy winter tomatoes; grow them in your yard, shop at farmers’ markets, and buy canned tomatoes (from California) instead. A.B. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine
Product Details
BN ID: | 2940170664108 |
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Publisher: | Tantor Audio |
Publication date: | 09/30/2011 |
Edition description: | Unabridged |
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