Harvest Of Hypocrisy

When I was in grade school, along with the omnipresent air-raid drills (‘Now Johnny, hide under your desk, head down, and maybe the wood will protect you from nuclear vaporization’) I distinctly remember in social studies class being shown the 1960 black-and-white film ‘Harvest of Shame’, which depicted the life of migrant farm workers & was the last documentary that distinguished CBS journalist Edward R. Murrow ever produced. It has been said that when it broadcast, this important program galvanized reform in farm worker law.

Fast forward nearly fifty years. In the March 2009 issue of Gourmet magazine, writer Barry Estabrook pens an article entitled “Politics Of The Plate: The Price Of Tomatoes”.

http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2009/03/politics-of-the-plate-the-price-of-tomatoes

It relates the plight of pickers/workers in Immokalee, Florida, which is one of the tomato-growing centers in the state. Estabrook sets the tone of the piece:


“Through the scruffy palmettos, you glimpse flat, sandy tomato fields shimmering in the broiling sun. Rounding a long curve, you enter Immokalee. The heart of town is a nine-block grid of dusty, potholed streets lined by boarded-up bars and bodegas, peeling shacks, and sagging, mildew-streaked house trailers. Mongrel dogs snooze in the shade, scrawny chickens peck in yards. Just off the main drag, vultures squabble over roadkill.”


Dang, that sure doesn’t sound much like Estabrook’s home in New York City or his 30 acres in Vermont, where he raises ‘heritage turkeys’.

It definitely is a sad article, showing horrible living conditions for one small group of workers that were scared out of their minds & controlled by a sadistic compadre. But I spoke with an Immokalee-based grower/shipper who vehemently denies that the situation is anything other than the extreme exception, adding that the Immokalee growers abhor any type of slave-like conditions & that the workers are there & remain there of their own volition & free will.

Certainly, Immokalee ain’t West Palm Beach, but I’ve been visiting there for close to 30 years & the town works. No doubt it’s a hard life for the tomato pickers, but it just rubs me wrong that the magazine that supposedly champions this cause is also a proponent of foie gras, the duck or goose pate that is accomplished by gavage, which is the force-feeding of the birds to fatten them up before slaughter. Of course, this is not to compare human to fowl, but cruelty is cruelty any way you slice it.

And, I don’t suppose that a little negative publicity about commercially-grown field tomatoes would hurt the boutique-style heirloom tomato sheds that are attempting to gain market share and an esteemed spot in Gourmet magazine either.

Later,

Jay