This semester, I have researched many fruits and vegetables to discover what I can about the healthy foods that I am eating. It surprised me that many come with stories of horror and tragedy. Many exotic fruits — think bananas and pineapples — are positively infamous for past brutalities. It’s scary when you start to see just how deep the rabbit hole goes. I planned on writing an article on United Fruit Company this week and quickly realized that it would take more than 500 words just to summarize the company’s history, much less discuss the implications of that history.
Instead, I discovered during my research that problematic produce is not only the problem of third world countries on far-off shores, but in the U.S. as well. You can’t just fault the lack of infrastructure and rule of law as the cause of exploitation. No, the separation cannot be made so starkly. It is a worldwide phenomenon, and we can even see its effects in our backyard. I’m talking, of course, about tomatoes.
Regardless of whether you call them fruits or vegetables, tomatoes have become essential to the American diet. We put them in our salads and on our sandwiches, and they are instrumental to sauces and salsas that encompass a diverse cultural palate. However, this importance in the American diet has led to the tomato industry in the U.S. having its own instances of exploitation. At its lightest, the industry is exploiting consumers by providing a tasteless, pesticide-covered and artificially colored product, and at its darkest has created a culture of modern-day slavery.
For years, the focus on tomato growers has been to grow as many tomatoes as possible. The fruit's ability to be harvested, packed, shipped and artificially colored with gas became more important than taste. Most tomatoes that are grown and shipped to the grocery store are not the red or orange color you are used to. They usually are green. The industry fully lives the mantra of quantity over quality. The mass production of the tomato puts tasteless tomatoes on our shelf and inferior ingredients in our recipes.
The true exploitation, however, lies on the opposite end of the supply chain. The pickers of the tomatoes are the actual losers in this economic exchange. In fact many of these workers, documented even as recently as 2008 in the U.S. and 2013 Mexico, have worked as slaves.
I have always heard that slavery is still present in the world, but I never imagined that you could still find it in the U.S. And though the situation for these workers has improved over the years, most are still far away from being considered decently compensated for their work. Hearing that problems that plague produce around the world also make it to our shores disheartens me. This should not be an acceptable practice anywhere and it is ridiculous that we should have slavery and slavery-like conditions when it is completely within our control as a country to change it.
The tomato industry needs to change for the better. No pasta dish or salsa-covered chip is worth destroying American lives.