Tomatoland
How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit
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Narrated by:
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Pete Larkin
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By:
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Barry Estabrook
About this listen
Supermarket produce sections bulging with a year-round supply of perfectly round, bright red-orange tomatoes have become all but a national birthright. But in Tomatoland, which is based on his James Beard Award-winning article, The Price of Tomatoes, investigative food journalist Barry Estabrook reveals the huge human and environmental cost of the $5 billion fresh tomato industry. Fields are sprayed with more than one hundred different herbicides and pesticides. Tomatoes are picked hard and green and artificially gassed until their skins acquire a marketable hue. Modern plant breeding has tripled yields, but has also produced fruits with dramatically reduced amounts of calcium, vitamin A, and vitamin C, and tomatoes that have fourteen times more sodium than the tomatoes our parents enjoyed. The relentless drive for low costs has fostered a thriving modern-day slave trade in the United States. How have we come to this point? 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 epos of today's agribusiness systems and the price we pay as a society when we take taste and thought out of our food purchases.
©2011 Barry Estabrook (P)2011 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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Crystal methamphetamine is widely considered to be the most dangerous drug in the world, and nowhere is that more true than in the small towns of the American heartland. Methland tells the story of Oelwein, Iowa (pop. 6,159), which, like thousands of other small towns across the country, has been left in the dust by the consolidation of the agricultural industry, a depressed local economy, and an out-migration of people.
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Beautifully written, but insubstantial
- By Flavius Krakdaddius on 02-10-10
By: Nick Reding
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The Beekeeper's Lament
- How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America
- By: Hannah Nordhaus
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Award-winning journalist Hannah Nordhaus tells the remarkable story of John Miller, one of America's foremost migratory beekeepers, and the myriad and mysterious epidemics threatening American honeybee populations.
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From a beekeeper
- By Argos on 06-14-17
By: Hannah Nordhaus
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The Meat Racket
- The Secret Takeover of America's Food Business
- By: Christopher Leonard
- Narrated by: John Pruden
- Length: 11 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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How much do you know about the meat on your dinner plate? Journalist Christopher Leonard spent more than a decade covering the country's biggest meat companies, including four years as the national agribusiness reporter for the Associated Press. Now he delivers the first comprehensive look inside the industrial meat system, exposing how a handful of companies executed an audacious corporate takeover of the nation's meat supply.
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Hits the nail on the head.
- By Anonymous 8888 on 02-04-15
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Mercy for Animals
- One Man's Quest to Inspire Compassion and Improve the Lives of Farm Animals
- By: Gene Stone, Nathan Runkle
- Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin
- Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Nathan Runkle would have been a fifth-generation farmer in his small Midwestern town. Instead, he founded our nation's leading nonprofit organization for protecting factory farmed animals. In Mercy for Animals, Nathan brings us into the trenches of his organization's work; from MFA's early days in grassroots activism, to dangerous and dramatic experiences doing undercover investigations, to the organization's current large-scale efforts at making sweeping legislative change to protect factory farmed animals and encourage compassionate food choices.
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Powerful, emotional and inspiring
- By Keegan on 10-27-17
By: Gene Stone, and others
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Humboldt
- Life on America's Marijuana Frontier
- By: Emily Brady
- Narrated by: Dan Woren, Sonny Warner, Erin Bennett, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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In the vein of Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief and Deborah Feldman's Unorthodox, journalist Emily Brady journeys into a secretive subculture - one that marijuana built. Say the words "Humboldt County" to a stranger and you might receive a knowing grin. The name is infamous, and yet the place, and its inhabitants, have been nearly impenetrable. Until now. Humboldt is a narrative exploration of an insular community in Northern California, which for nearly 40 years has existed primarily on the cultivation and sale of marijuana.
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Great book!
- By David on 02-26-15
By: Emily Brady
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Strange Stones
- By: Peter Hessler
- Narrated by: George Backman
- Length: 13 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Full of unforgettable figures and an unrelenting spirit of adventure, Strange Stones is a far-ranging, thought-provoking collection of Peter Hessler’s best reportage - a dazzling display of the powerful storytelling, shrewd cultural insight, and warm sense of humor that are the trademarks of his work. Over the last decade, as a staff writer for The New Yorker and the author of three books, Peter Hessler has lived in Asia and the United States, writing as both native and knowledgeable outsider in these two very different regions.
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funny, entertaining
- By Katherine on 08-02-13
By: Peter Hessler
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Napa
- By: James Conaway
- Narrated by: John Morgan
- Length: 20 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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James Conaway's remarkable bestseller delves into the heart of California's lush and verdant Napa Valley, also known as America's Eden. Long the source of succulent grapes and singular wines, this region is also the setting for the remarkable true saga of the personalities behind the winemaking empires. This is the story of Gallos and Mondavis, of fortunes made and lost, of dynasties and destinies.
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Excellent But Marred by Non-Stop Mispronunciations
- By Robert R. on 08-15-13
By: James Conaway
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Yellow Dirt
- An American Story of a Poisoned Land and a People Betrayed
- By: Judy Pasternak
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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From the 1930s to the 1960s, the United States knowingly used and discarded an entire tribe of people. The Navajo worked unprotected in the uranium mines that fueled the Manhattan Project and the Cold War. Long after these mines were abandoned, Navajos in all four corners of the Reservation (which borders Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona) continued grazing their animals on sagebrush flats riddled with uranium that had been blasted from the ground.
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Dirty little secret of nuclear development
- By Buretto on 08-13-20
By: Judy Pasternak
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The Idealist
- Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty
- By: Nina Munk
- Narrated by: Susan Nezami
- Length: 7 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Jeffrey Sachs - celebrated economist, special advisor to the Secretary General of the United Nations, and author of the influential best seller The End of Poverty - disagrees. In his view, poverty is a problem that can be solved. With single-minded determination he has attempted to put into practice his theories about ending extreme poverty, to prove that the world's most destitute people can be lifted onto "the ladder of development."
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Sachs tries hard but the system is not there
- By Amazon Customer on 11-13-15
By: Nina Munk
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The Boom
- How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World
- By: Russell Gold
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 11 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Russell Gold, a brilliant and dogged investigative reporter at The Wall Street Journal, has spent more than a decade reporting on one of the biggest stories of our time: the spectacular, world-changing rise of "fracking". Recognized as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and a recipient of the Gerald Loeb Award for his work, Gold has traveled along the pipelines and into the hubs of this country’s energy infrastructure; he has visited frack sites from Texas to North Dakota; and he has conducted thousands of interviews with engineers and wildcatters, CEOs and roughnecks, environmentalists and politicians.
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Somehow the author manages to stay balanced
- By Emily C on 05-28-14
By: Russell Gold
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Poached
- Inside the Dark World of Wildlife Trafficking
- By: Rachel Love Nuwer
- Narrated by: Christina Delaine
- Length: 16 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Our insatiable demand for animals - for jewelry, pets, medicine, meat, trophies, and fur - is driving a worldwide poaching epidemic, threatening the continued existence of countless species. Rachel Nuwer, an award-winning science journalist with a background in ecology, takes listeners on a narrative journey to the front lines of the trade: to killing fields in Africa, traditional medicine black markets in China, and wild meat restaurants in Vietnam. Through exhaustive first-hand reporting that took her to 10 countries, Nuwer explores the forces currently driving the demand.
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Fascinating
- By Annie on 11-30-18
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What listeners say about Tomatoland
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Jeff Rechten
- 12-05-16
lots about workers and not much about the tomatoes
enjoyed learning about migrant worker issues but could have helped me figure out how to buy sustainable and good tasting tomatoes
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- Kindle Customer
- 04-30-12
Do I Really Want to Eat Another Tomatoe Ball?
What made the experience of listening to Tomatoland the most enjoyable?
Great exposure of how our "industrial" tomato might not want to be part of my food intake.
Any additional comments?
Sometimes repetitious on some points. Still kept me glued to the speaker to the very end.
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6 people found this helpful
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- BlueRidge
- 05-06-17
Enjoyable, Informative, and Engaging
As a tomato lover and grower, I really enjoyed this book. Barry did a ton of research for this book. There is a lot of information about tomatoes, but there is also an "Erin Brokovich type" storyline intertwined within, shining the spotlight on the mistreatment of migrant laborers. If you want to know why grocery/restaurant tomatoes have no flavor, this book will give you the whole story.
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- Ray
- 08-04-12
Neat Book
If you're interested in where your food comes from but not in a lot of preachy, unsolicited advice on how you should behave yourself, this is a fantastic read.
I'm pretty well versed on the whole food subject, but I was not aware of how bad the slavery issues in Florida had gotten.
All in all a very good read.
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6 people found this helpful
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- Harry Leyman
- 10-09-19
Great Book !
This is a must read for anyone who cares about their food. I never knew that growing commercial food was so corrupted!
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- joaquin
- 01-31-19
farmers market here i come
decent book, history of the tomato and hiw it has changed. adresses working slave labor conditions, and some glimmers of hope for the tomato industry. leaves the reader wanting to get involved. doesnt really give a solution to the problem and why cost are so high for the seller to create such conditions for its workers.
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- Amazon Customer
- 11-11-19
interesting book- decent content
it wasn't difficult to listen to while driving, but I think reading would have been more difficult. the author does a good job trying to connect the ideals of migrant and immigrant worker inequity with crappy tomatoes due to industry mis-regulation. it was a bit of a stretch to combine the two in the first place.
My opinion is that it should have been two books that went more in depth on each issue.
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- Steve Harper
- 05-28-16
Terrific. Challenging. Eye opening.
I had no idea the complexity of this subject. This book covers abused farm workers, labor struggles, artisanal tomato growers, government regulations and the search for a good tasting tomato with equal detail. It's all fascinating and has me curious about where my food comes from and the impact of how it's harvested. Such a joy to listen to this book.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Jennifer Pressley
- 11-11-18
Only if you really are ready to hear where your food comes from
I listed after visiting Immokalee this past week and having my eyes opened to the source of Florida tomatoes. If you really want to know where your food comes from, listen.
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- Amazon Customer
- 10-07-21
Delicious
Very well done. Mr. Estabrook does a fine job weaving together together all the delicate flavors of the Florida tomato industry. Well worth the time.
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