Tomatoland, Third Edition : From Harvest of Shame to Harvest of Hope

Three-time James Beard Award-winner Barry Estabrook's completely revised third edition of his hard-hitting 2011 expos�, Tomatoland, includes a new foreword by Eric Schlosser and four new chapters with startling updates. Four entirely new chapters take up where the current edition leaves off to tell the story behind what president Bill Clinton calls "the most astonishing thing politically in the world we're living in today." Estabrook reveals how a rag-tag group of migrant tomato pickers in Florida convinced the world's largest restaurant chains and food retailers to join forces to create a model for labor justice, and then took the necessary steps to make sure that the model really works, not only in Florida, but around the world. The book includes a new foreword by journalist and author Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation).

"An indictment of our modern agricultural system... in the tradition of the best muckraking journalism" from the three-time James Beard Award-winner ( The Washington Post ). In Tomatoland, investigative food journalist Barry Estabrook reveals the huge human and environmental cost of the $5 billion fresh tomato industry. He 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 and is "at its most potent and scathing in its portrayal of South Florida's tomato growers and their tactics over the past half-century" ( The New York Times ). "An important and readable book." — The Atlantic

"An indictment of our modern agricultural system . . . in the tradition of the best muckraking journalism" from the three-time James Beard Award-winner ( The Washington Post ). In Tomatoland , investigative food journalist Barry Estabrook reveals the huge human and environmental cost of the $5 billion fresh tomato industry. He 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 and is "at its most potent and scathing in its portrayal of South Florida's tomato growers and their tactics over the past half-century" ( The New York Times ). "An important and readable book." #8212; The Atlantic "Three-time James Beard Award-winner Barry Estabrook's completely revised third edition of his hard-hitting 2011 exposé, Tomatoland, includes a new foreword by Eric Schlosser and four new chapters with startling updates. Four entirely new chapters take up where the current edition leaves off to tell the story behind what president Bill Clinton calls "the most astonishing thing politically in the world we're living in today." Estabrook reveals how a rag-tag group of migrant tomato pickers in Florida convinced the world's largest restaurant chains and food retailers to join forces to create a model for labor justice, and then took the necessary steps to make sure that the model really works, not only in Florida, but around the world."--Amazon.com