Triggering Passages:

“Again, pesticide poisoning was the cause. But while the research money flowed into looking in to the causes of reptile and bird illnesses, not a nickel was spent on examining the laborers who spent their lives working, eating, and sleeping on the contaminated land” (Estabrook 49).

“One is that law enforcement officials are reluctant to charge potential human traffickers unless the case is solid…Second, in a slavery case involving undocumented workers, there are added hurdles…prosecutors often have to base their cases entirely on the testimony of the slaves themselves” (Estabrook 80).

“The official reason given was that, in those days, farmers kept at most only one or two hired men and that households had only a few domestic servants, so unions and collective bargaining were not an issue. But in the 1930s, most domestics and farmworkers in this country were African American, and Roosevelt needed the support of southern Democratic legislators to get his New Deal legislation through Congress” (Estabrook 98).

“The bright sweet pop of taste was followed by a lingering, pleasant tartness—that essential balance that defines a great tomato” (Estabrook 187).

“From the moment of its birth two decades ago, when a handful of migrant workers gathered in a church meeting room in Immokalee, through its early efforts to stop beatings in the fields and collect wages owed by recalcitrant crew bosses, to demonstrations, hunger strikes, boycotts, shareholder actions, pray-ins, petitions, letter-writing campaigns, undercover operations to free enslaved comrades, and testimony before the Senate, stopping is the one thing that the CIW has never done” (Estabrook 197).

“White folks act like they gonna die cause the price of food is steadily rising. They would starve for sure if they had a welfare budget to eat off. And it is true that the supermarkets raise the prices on the days that the checks arrive. And the slop that they sell to the poor black neighborhoods is a sin on their souls” (Smart-Grosvenor 72).

“He stopped at Second Street and my grandmother got in. He said, “Who do you people think you are?” and I said, “We are.”” (Smart-Grosvenor 87).

“White folks act like they would starve for sure if they couldn’t have a hunk of meat. Eating neck bones don’t bother me” (Smart-Grosvenor 144).

Discussion:

I came away from reading Tomatoland unable to look at a tomato the same way ever again. This is not a bad thing. The horrors migrant workers face every day to feed us is an image I will never forget. Slavery, chemical warfare, low wages, poverty, beatings, health issues, and the absence of compassion from most of the industry; these are all subjects Barry Estabrook brought to the center stage of the tomato industry. As we commodified the tomato we lost our sense of humanity. As the tomato became a hard-tasteless shell of its former self, so too did the growers/consumers. There are some hard truths in this book. It forces you to come face to face with your choices as a consumer. Our tomatoes are suffering from capitalism, but even worse the migrant workers are trapped in a capitalist system which regards the health of birds higher than human lives.

I often hear and see people complain about the rising cost of food prices. Especially growing up in a predominantly white middle class area, they always have something to say about the price of milk. But they never had anything to say about those who have been shoved into a welfare system, a system that gives little to help the burdens placed on them by higher classes. Vertamae’s comment about how white folks (middle class as there are white folks on welfare as well) would struggle if forced to buy food on a welfare check is a very accurate portrayal of how we see the price of food. Even those white folks who complain about the price of milk increasing a few cents to a whole dollar, will never really think twice about purchasing the milk. Where those who rely on welfare to bridge the gap of incomes, could see that increase and realize that milk is not an option this month.