How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit
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… Continue reading
Lots of folk love tomatoes since they are favourable in several ways, some love to eat them, some used them in 1 or 2 recipes, and some make a great juice out of it. Tomato juice can help clean the body from toxins. Catsup is rich in Lycopene and other nutriments and antioxidants. If you would like to experience handpicking ripe tomatoes and eating them fresh, then why not learn how to grow tomatoes yourself? If you have allocated a certain space in your residence to be a garden, that can be an ideal spot to plant and grow your own tomatoes. While this is a great idea and can be good fun, growing such fruits does require extensive thought. Maybe you want to learn some handy tips on how to grow tomatoes.
Kinds of Tomatoes:
One of the things which you should learn or consider when understanding details on how to grow tomatoes is that you should identify and pick which tomato types you want to plant. You know you can’t just buy any change of tomato seeds or maybe mix various sorts of those seeds when planting. Knowing how to grow tomatoes effectively starts from decisions like this. If you’re looking forward for private consumption, cherry tomatoes are good for salads and beefsteak tomatoes are typically used for sandwiches. On the other hand, you can grow and maybe sell plum (or paste) tomatoes. They’re sometimes oblong and are used in making tomato sauce and tomato paste.
How to grow tomato plants – Want to learn?
Growing tomatoes is not limited to people who are fortunate enough to have a big plot of ground. You, too, can enjoy full-flavored home grown tomatoes even if you live in a flat or a townhouse in the heart of the big city.
Growing tomato plants is an easy way to use your green thumb and enjoy fresh veggies no matter where you live. Before you dash to the garden center to get pots and seeds, here are a couple tips that you should consider about how to successfully grow tomatoes.
Grow tomatoes in the right pot
Grow tomatoes in a Topsy Turvy planter
The first consideration when you are choosing the pots is the size of your garden. While some crops, like onions and some herbs will thrive well in more shallow containers, most plants including tomatoes will do best in at least a five to six gallon container, that will provide adequate room for the root system. However, you are not limited to the normal flower containers for your container tomato garden. Check out the variety of pails and windowsill containers. Look at recycling pots that you have sitting around the home including wooden packing cases, large pots, half wine barrels and others.
Good things to keep in mind when choosing your container are to select a substance that is not toxic, and will provide sufficient drainage for your plants. If you are using a solid based… Continue reading
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