The Tomato Commodity

The Tomato Commodity and the Tomato Supply Chain



Politics of the Plate:

US tomatoes are largely grown in Florida and California,and 90% of domestic tomatoes are grown in one Florida town. The tomatoes are picked hard green, tossed in a truck, boxed in a warehouse, sprayed with a fixative of some sort, and then shipped by plane, truck, or train to the entire country and overseas. Mexico is another big importer, but most Mexican tomatoes go to a processing plant, which turns them into other products and sends them into the market.

The average tomato now travels thirteen hundred and sixty nine miles in the peak of winter. Other top tomato producers are China, Turkey, Italy, and India. Italy’s tomatoes are processed and sent to the USA, in the gourmet-approved form of San Marzano’s. Chinese, Indian, and Turkish tomatoes are also sent all over the world. Despite its equatorial location, South America does not grow many tomatoes.

Farm Politics in the USA:

Tomatoes are picked largely by immigrant workers, generally Hispanic, who are hired for day labor. They can at most make 50 dollars a day, and get 45 cents a bushel. The reason tomatoes are so cheap is that the labor source is not consistent, and that turnover is extreme. The tomato labor issue is a good example of a flaw in the industrial food chain. People live in squalor while working on these farms, and are underpaid to boot. The ACLU has brought up many lawsuit cases against big US tomato producers, due to exploitative labor practices. Producers often use "coyotes" to lure workers into the USA illegally, then refuse to pay them. The immigrants have no legal recourse and are helpless. The migrant workers are kept in essence as modern slaves.

The tomato supply chain is similar to that of coffee in a perverse way. Shippers and packers actually own the tomato farms. This is the exploitation of farm-direct as shippers, packers, and retailers own the farms and dictate prices to commodity setters. There is no action for the workers. People who are retailers, shippers, and packers can do whatever they want on the farms since they own them.

Tomatoes are often injected with tomato flavoring since they are not ripe enough. Whole Foods is the only organization that agrees not to use tomatoes grown using exploitative processes in Florida. Buying on the vine is better since it indicates they are grown using hydroponics. Small tomato producers do play a part in grocery stores. You can’t ship tomatoes all the way from China. Only six kinds of tomatoes are marketed in the USA. You can buy different kinds of plants from other people.

Looking at the same production chain in another country, like in Mexico, we see additional features that tell us about what globalization of the system does. How do you ship tomatoes from one place to another?

90% of the tomatoes people eat come from Mexico. To ship them, you have to freeze them. Prior to putting them on the truck they diminish the fruit's temperature, then take them back to room temperature. This allows the tomatoes to keep longer. Due to the distance, the truckers have four to four days and a half to sell them. This means you had better arrive at the Canadian border within three days, or else. These truckers drive very fast since they can’t stop for anything. If you look at production in Mexico, you will also find that the managers are men and the lower people on the totem pole are women. There is a clear gender division which corresponds to a wage difference. The mechanical movement is driven by men. They have the cars, but they don’t work harder then the women.

The people who do coffee separation, do the harvesting, which is done by hand. Women often do this, and are considered unskilled labor. They are paid less then the (probable) man, who drives the trucks. The separation of products does require some attention, but you as an unskilled employee are given less value. So if you’re doing this kind of work, for Western markets with high standards, you do add value for the person in charge of the entire chain, but are not payed for the value you add. Women are preferred in these "unskilled" tasks as they require dexterity, skill of movement, delicacy and so forth.

People are often sprayed by chemicals in this line of work. Even if they get cancer, they have no way to protest or defend themselves.



By the late 70's Mexico was not self supporting. Mexican farms do not use Mexican ground. The soil is usually imported from elsewhere. The people's detachment from the land is extreme, and the labor is more industrial in nature then agricultural. When greenhouses were used just for supplementing usual crops, the job was done by women. When greenhouses became a typical part of the process and higher wages came with that task, the job was taken by men.

GMO'S like "Flavor Saver" tomatoes are used to change the product instead of the process. You can take a seed and transform the flavor without bothering to inject. Flavor Saver is also climate resistant, and is grown mostly in China by Calgen.



Campbell’s has a web-page on sustainable agriculture practices. They claim they try whenever possible to source ingredients from farmers located within a 100 miles of processing facilies in the USA and Mexico. They do not list specific processing facilities on the website, which seems very suspect. They also claim they use fresh ingredients and eliminate shipping/support, but the products are, evidently, shipped around the world - it's hard to keep a Chinese tomato fresh and tasty on the journey to the USA. If you keep reading, you see they say that their approach begins with growers who use disease resistant seeds. That's not so local and natural. The general public, however, would probably be convinced by the slick looking and convincing sounding website.