WHAT’S A LOCAVORE?
Stop and think about everything that had to happen to get that tomato to your plate.
This tomato started out on land acquired by the U.S. based Jolly Green Giant Company in partnership with the Mexican Development Corporation. The land was previously an ejido which is land used by farmers for publically owned cooperative farms. The tomato seed, a hybrid developed from an original Mexican strain, is now patented and owned by Calgene Inc., who bought the research from the University of California Davis. They developed the hybrid from a research grant paid for by U.S. tax dollars. The land was fumigated with methyl bromide, an ozone depleter 120 times more potent than chlorofluorocarbon-111. It was also treated with herbicides, and pesticides developed, manufactured, and distributed by the Monsanto corporation, one of the U.S’s largest polluters. Production waste was shipped to the world’s larges hazardous waste landfill in Emelle, Alabama, a predominantly poor African American community. The Mexican farm workers were given no protection from the pesticides: no gloves, masks, or safety precautions. They make approximately $2.50 a day and have no access to real health care. Once harvested, the tomato was placed with others in a plastic tray, covered in plastic wrap, then put in a cardboard box. The plastic is manufactured with chlorine produced by the Formosa company of Point Comfort, Texas. Workers and citizens of Point Comfort face significant risk of cancer and immune-suppression due to exposure to dioxin, a by-product of chlorine production. The cardboard box from British Columbia’s 300 year old trees, which are processed in Great Lakes region pulp mills, where the residents are warned against eating dioxin contaminated fish. The box is then shipped by United Trucking Company to Latin American farms. The boxed tomatoes are reddened by ether ( a tasteless gas with no nutritional value) are sent via refrigerated trucks throughout N. America. Both trucks and distribution centers are equipped with CFC cooling equipment made by Dupont of Wimington Delaware. Once the tomato arrived at its destination in Toronto the plastic packaging was thrown away, picked up, shipped back to the US and burned in an incinerator in Detroit Michigan. Throughout the process, fossil fuels drove the tomato around. These were drilled from the Gulf of Comache, Mexico , extracted by Chevron and processed by Pemex, the Mexican oil company. The fuel was shipped via tanker dodging 3800 existing oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, to refineries on the U.S. gulf coast.
And still somehow they manage to make a profit off that 75cent tomato. How do you suppose that happened?
Do something radical to fight for the environment and food justice: GROW A TOMATO!!! Your body will thank you for it and so will your planet.
