Real sad story about winter tomatos and the workers.

Have you ever wondered why winter tomatoes taste like card board?  Read about how they end up at your supermarket and the very sad story about the workers who plant them, pick them and suffer inhumane conditions.
 
 http://eatocracy.cnn.com/2011/09/08/how-the-modern-day-tomato-came-to-be/?
Paul E. Smith
Knoxville, TN
hpt=hp_t2

The book's been out a while and I have read it. We had long ago stopped buying winter tomatoes - not even the comparatively good ones  from hot houses. 
 
We enjoy eating lots of excellent locally grown (some from as far south as New Jersey and Delaware) tomatoes for a precious few weeks in the summer - the rest of the year we do without. We do spend about 6 weeks every year in the St Petersburg area and sometimes we find a good tomato at a farmer's market - but the super markets in Florida sell the same crap you can find all winter up here in the frozen north. 
 
Cheers, John 

Grainger county tomatoes are about gone and very soon, all we will have is greenhouse type that have almost no taste.
 
Paul E. Smith
Knoxville, TN
 
 

Thanks Paul. That was a fascinating article. I often shop at a Puerto Rican green grocer and in the winter he sometimes has Chilean grown tomatoes on the the vine that offer some real tomato taste. I've pretty much switched to mangos for my fruit of choice as I find it almost impossible to find a tasty peach, plum or nectarine any time of the year.

Our local growers have been providing great luscious peaches( especially the white variety), prune plums, apricots, nectarines, and now the apples are coming on the market, and soon we'll have Bartlett pears. The pears and apples will remain excellent all Winter, but the rest of the fruits are purely seasonal for us.
 
btw: Our local corn, tomato,  pumpkin, squash, and fall greens crops were severely damaged in the flooding last week - as much of those crops are grown on flood prone bottom land. It is a sad sight to see hundreds of acres of crops just coming into maturity drowned in mud and unsalvageable. 
 
Cheers, John 

Our local growers have been providing great luscious peaches( especially the white variety), prune plums, apricots, nectarines, and now the apples are coming on the market, and soon we'll have Bartlett pears. The pears and apples will remain excellent all Winter, but the rest of the fruits are purely seasonal for us.
 
btw: Our local corn, tomato,  pumpkin, squash, and fall greens crops were severely damaged in the flooding last week - as much of those crops are grown on flood prone bottom land. It is a sad sight to see hundreds of acres of crops just coming into maturity drowned in mud and unsalvageable. 
 
Cheers, John