Tomatoland author on the radio Tues. 6/28

[habitat_gardener]

I heard that investigative journalist Barry Estabrook, author of Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit , will be interviewed on the radio program Fresh Air tomorrow, June 28. His website is http://politicsoftheplate.com/

[cleo88]

Can listen to it here if you missed it:

http://www.npr.org/templates/rundown...ate=06-28-2011

[habitat_gardener]

He mentiOned that tomatoes have 15-20 aromatic compounds, none of which says "tomato" in isolation (they need to be combined to smell anything like a tomato). By contrast, bananas have one.

[cleo88]

I only got to listen to half of it, but what stuck in my mind is how California and Florida grow the same amount of market tomatoes, but Florida uses EIGHT TIMES AS MUCH pesticide/fungicide, because the climate is so humid and basically inhospitable to growing tomatoes plus they have so many bugs and no sustained frost to reduce the insect population. Makes you think about looking at the signs in the supermarket to see where those tomatoes are coming from (in those horrible months where you can't pick one from your own garden).