Tomatoland (29 page)

Regulations actually prohibit:
Federal Marketing Order No. 966 sets standards for tomatoes exported from most of Florida during the colder months.

To get a successful crop:
Stephen M. Olson and Bielinski Santos. eds.,
Vegetable Production Handbook for Florida 2010–2011
, University of Florida (2010): pp. 295–316.

Not all the chemicals stay behind:
The source is the Environmental Working Group, which compiled statistics from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Pesticide Data Program and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Pesticide Monitoring Database.

The industry was nearly dealt:
For salmonella losses, see Mickie Anderson, “UF Research Finds Salmonella Responds Differently to Varieties, Ripeness,”
University of Florida News
, September 21, 2010. For freeze losses see Laura Layden, “Florida Tomato Growers Eye Rebound from 2009–2010 Freeze-Ravaged Season,”
Naples Daily News
, October 3, 2010. For the effects of glut, see Liam Pleven and Carolyn Cui, “Dying on the Vine: Tomato Prices—Tomatoes Go from Shortage to Glut in a Matter of Weeks,”
Wall Street Journal
, June 17, 2010.

This has put a steady downward pressure:
Source for wage statistics is the Coalition of Immokalee Workers,
http://www.ciw-online.org/Resources/10FactsFigures.pdf
.

The owners had crop insurance:
Michael Peltier, “The Other Side of the Freeze,”
Naples Daily News
, February 8, 2010.

And conditions are even worse:
See “From the Hands of a Slave” in this book.

Labor protections for workers predate the Great Depression:
Farmworkers were specifically exempted from the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, a key component of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.

ROOTS

A Chilean soldier was guarding:
A January 7, 2010, interview with Roger Chetelat in his office at the University of California Davis provided much of the information on the Atacama Desert expedition and tomato genetics. For a more scientific description, see Roger T. Chetelat, Ricardo A Pertuzé, Luis Faúndez, Elaine B. Graham, and Carl M. Jones, “Distribution, Ecology and Reproductive Biology of Wild Tomatoes and Related Nightshades from the Atacama Desert Region of Northern Chile,”
Euphytica
vol. 166 (December 25, 2008): pp. 77–93.

The Atacama Desert makes up:
See Yuling Bai and Pim Lindhout, “Domestication and Breeding of Tomatoes: What Have We Gained and What Can We Gain in the Future?,”
Annals of Botany
vol. 100, issue 5 (August 23, 2007): pp. 1085–1094.

one of our favorite vegetables:
Hayley Boriss and Henrich Brunke, “Commodity Profile: Tomatoes Fresh Market,” University of California, Agricultural Marketing Resource Center (October 2005).

When Hernán Cortés conquered:
For the history of the tomato, I drew on Andrew F. Smith,
The Tomato in America: Early History, Culture, and Cookery
(Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1994); and Arthur Allen,
Ripe: The Search for the Perfect Tomato
(Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2010).

Tomatoes’ near-universal popularity:
A. W. Livingston,
Livingston and the Tomato
, forward and appendix by Andrew F. Smith (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1998). The autobiography of the great early plant breeder benefits enormously from Smith’s writing and scholarship.

“Well do I remember”:
ibid p. 19

Florida was a late comer:
For reference to Parry, Wilson, and Blund, see S. Bloem and R. F. Mizell, “Tomato IPM in Florida,” University of Florida, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences Extension, Publication no. ENY706/IN178,
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/in178
. For Hendrix, see Benjamin Bahk and Mark Kehoe, “A Survey of Outflow Water Quality from Detention Ponds in Agriculture,” Southwest Florida Water Management District (1977) and
http://floridahistory.org/palmetto.htm
.

That was around the time:
See E. F. Kohman, “Ethylene Treatment of Tomatoes,”
Industrial and Engineering Chemistry
(October 1931): pp. 1112–13.

The person most responsible:
Statistics from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Economics, Statistics, and Market Information System, Table 016,
http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/MannUsda/viewDocumentInfo.do?documentID=1210
.

Max Lipman:
See Carlene A. Thissen,
Immokalee’s Fields of Hope
(New York: iUniverse, 2004); also the Web site of Six L’s Packing Company,
http://www.sixls.com
.

Born in Reading:
I am deeply in debt for information about Charles Rick from Arthur Allen,
Ripe: The Search for the Perfect Tomato
(Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2010), which contains an excellent minibiography of the legendary plant science professor. I also drew on an interview and profile written by Craig Canine, “A Matter of Taste: Who Killed the Flavor in America’s Supermarket Tomatoes?”
Eating Well
(January/February 1991): pp. 40–55.

A TOMATO GROWS IN FLORIDA

When I met Monica Ozores-Hampton:
Details about commercial tomato horticulture in Florida in this chapter came from an interview with Ozores-Hampton on June 2, 2010. Any errors are my own. Information about the possible health effects about pesticides was taken from reports of the Pesticide Action Network and in no way reflects Ozores-Hampton’s opinions.

If those roots:
The Pesticide Action Network’s database on methyl bromide can be accessed at
http://www.pesticideinfo.org/Detail_Chemical.jsp?Rec_Id=PC32864
.

more than one hundred chemicals:
See Stephen M. Olson and Bielinski Santos, eds.,
Vegetable Production Handbook for Florida 2010–2011
, University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (2010), pp. 295–316.

Six of the recommended herbicides:
The Pesticide Action Network’s database for agricultural chemicals can be found at
http://www.pesticideinfo.org/Search_Chemicals.jsp#ChemSearch
.

A distressing number:
The Environmental Working Group compiled statistics from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Pesticide Data Program and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Pesticide Monitoring Database. See also Thomas J. Stevens III and Richard L. Kilmer, “A Descriptive and Comparative Analysis of Pesticide Residues Found in Florida Tomatoes and Strawberries,” University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, 1999.

Joseph Procacci agreed to take me:
The Procacci interview took place on March 2, 2005.

To see the next phase:
Steven A. Sargent, Jeffrey K. Brecht, and Teresa Olczyk, “Handling Florida Vegetables Series: Round and Roma Tomato Types,” University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, 1989, gives a good overview of postharvest tomato packing.

rise to 110 degrees:
Jeffrey K. Brecht, a postharvest physiologist at the University of Florida Research Center, made this statement at a workshop for packinghouse managers in 2006:
http://www.gladescropcare.com/GCC_TPHMW.pdf
.

Despite such sanitation:
See
Program Information Manual: Retail Food Protection Storage and Handling of Tomatoes
, U.S. Food and Drug Administration (June 10, 2010),
http://www.fda.gov/food/foodsafety/retailfoodprotection/industryandregulatoryassistanceandtrainingresources/ucm113843.htm
; and Martha Roberts, Florida Tomato Committee (in an address to the 2006 Florida Tomato Institute,
http://www.gladescropcare.com/GCC_TPHMW.pdf
).

CHEMICAL WARFARE

Tower Cabins is a labor camp:
“Why Was Carlitos Born This Way?”—the story of the birth defects in Immokalee—was broken on March 13, 2005, in the
Palm Beach Post
by reporter John Lantigua. I am in debt to Lantigua and his colleagues Christine Stapleton and Christine Evans for many of the details of this tragedy, which might never have come to light had it not been for their doggedness and insightfulness.

But in the lives of tomato workers:
Geoffrey M. Calvert, Walter A. Alarcon, Ann Chelminski, Mark S. Crowley, Rosanna Barrett, Adolfo Correa, Sheila Higgins, Hugo L. Leon, Jane Correia, Alan Becker, Ruth M. Allen, and Elizabeth Evans, “Case Report: Three Farmworkers Give Birth to Infants with Birth Defects Closely Grouped in Time and Place—Florida and North Carolina, 2004–2005,”
Environmental Health Perspectives
vol. 115, no. 5 (May 2007): pp. 787–91.

Many of them were rated “highly toxic”:
The Pesticide Action Network’s database for agricultural chemicals is
http://www.pesticideinfo.org/Search_Chemicals.jsp#ChemSearch
.

“restricted entry intervals”:
For a list of pesticides used on tomatoes in Florida and their restricted entry intervals, see “Florida Crop/Pest Management Profiles: Tomatoes,” University of Florida, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (March 2009).
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/pi039
.

Although regulations require:
These regulations vary depending on which pesticide is used. For the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Worker Protection Standard for Agricultural Pesticides, see
http://www.epa.gov/oecaagct/twor.html
.

As soon as I met him:
Much of the background material in this chapter came from a June 2, 2010, interview with Andrew Yaffa.

In terms of raw quantities:
“Agricultural Chemical Usage 2006 Vegetable Summary,” U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistics Service (July 2007).

Employing only about fifty inspectors:
“Abundance of Poisons, Shortage of Monitoring,”
Palm Beach Post
, May, 1, 2005.

workforce of roughly 400,000:
“National Agricultural Workers Survey,” U.S. Department of Labor Employment and Training Administration, October 5, 2010 (Washington, D.C.).

Together for Agricultural Safety:
See Joan Flocks, Leslie Clarke, Stan Albrecht, Carol Bryant, Paul Monaghan, and Holly Baker, “Implementing a Community-Based Social Marketing Project to Improve Agricultural Worker Health,”
Environmental Health Perspectives Supplements
vol. 109, no. S3 (June 2001): pp. 461–688.

less than 8 percent:
John Lantigua, “Why Was Carlitos Born This Way?”
Palm Beach Post
, March 13, 2005.

leveled eighty-eight counts:
Laura Layden, “Judge: Drop Most Violations against Ag-Mart,”
Naples Daily News
, March 23, 2007.

A scathing portrait:
Shelly Davis and Rebecca Schleifer, “Indifference to Safety: Florida’s Investigation into Pesticide Poisoning of Farmworkers,” Farmworker Justice (1998), Washington, DC,
http://www.farmworkerjustice.org/pesticides/173-indifference-to-safety
.

agricultural workers are more likely to be poisoned:
See
Worker Health Chartbook, 2004
, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institution for Occupational Safety and Health, p. 138.
http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/2004-146/pdfs/2004-146.pdf
.

Guadalupe Gonzales III:
This information came from “Pesticide Use Inspection Report,” file no. 101-266-4076, “Gonzales III, Guadalupe,” acquired through a public records request to the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Affairs.

virtually no hard scientific research:
See “Improvements Needed to Ensure the Safety of Farmworkers and Their Children,” U.S. General Accounting Office (March 2000),
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/rc00040.pdf
.