COURTESY: POLITICS OF THE PLAT
The University of Mississippi will host Barry Estabrook and his book “Tomatoland” at 7 p.m Wednesday in the Ford Center.
“I remember, five years ago, reading his reports on tomatoes in Florida. I have long admired his work as an investigative journalist,” said John T. Edge, director of Southern Foodways Alliance. “If you want to understand how to write and express yourself well, how to make a point and make a change, you ought to hear him speak. If you like tomatoes in the summer, if you eat tomatoes on your BLTs, you need to hear him speak.”
“Tomatoland” focuses on the production of tomatoes in the United States. There is an enormous human and environmental cost to the American food system today, and this debt is revealed in Estabrook’s rendition of everyday trials in the world of tomatoes. Hundreds of pesticides, fourteen times the sodium, laboratories and commercial growers, migrant workers, activists and scientists all feature in this book that the New York Times calls, “delectable and angry.”
“I wanted to write about modern industrial agriculture,” Estabrook said. “It’s a broad topic, so I chose the tomato as its poster child. Everyone can relate to that big red tomato. And no produce item has suffered more in flavor or texture than the tomato.”
But the book doesn’t just focus on vegetables. The humans whose lives revolve around tomato production tell their stories in Tomatoland, too.
“Tremendous progress has been made in five years,” Estabrook said. “The tomato was the most repressive sector, and now, it is the most progressive. There has been a 50 percent raise in wages. The best-treated tomato pickers used to be lucky if they made minimum wage.”
But groups like the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, who feature prominently in the human story of the tomato, have given rise to partnerships with companies like Walmart and Subway. Their efforts have pushed for better working environments and better tomatoes, he said.
“It’s the story of agriculture. It’s a commodity business,” Estabrook said. “Everyone’s producing an identical tomato, so the only way to compete is to make it cheaper, and that change happens through wages. That led to just horrific labor abuse.”
“Tomatoland” isn’t Estabrook’s only foray into books on investigative journalism. His most recent book follows in the same vein.
“‘Pig Tales: A Quest for Sustainable Meat’ is very similar to ‘Tomatoland,’ with very similar goals,” Estabrook said. “It details every step of how commercial pork and small-scale pork production happen and the problems they cause. The pollution’s a huge problem. The quality of the meat is another. You’ve got pigs raised in pastures, eating grass, and then you’ve got pigs crammed into barns all their lives. The president of the Humane Society of the United States spoke about the efforts towards banning the metal cages that are used to house those barn pigs. They’re metal cages exactly as long as the pig, but too small to let the pig turn around. And they live in those all their lives.”
Estabrook pointed out the fact that food system running our country now is not sustainable. He said real change must be made for future generations.
“What’s amazing is the interest that university students have in the food system and in its sustainability or lack thereof,” Estabrook said.
