At the end of today's class, some people expressed the thought that it would be fun to pick tomatoes. I assume that this comment refers to a one-time event, with them picking a few tomatoes to use in a salad and stopping whenever they wish. However, the topic of tomato picking sparks other thoughts for me.
the following is a link to a Washington Post article about tomato pickers in Florida.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58505-2005Feb27.html
Here is an excerpt from the article:
"If they're lucky, the workers get to spend 12 hours on their hands and knees, filling buckets of tomatoes for 40 to 50 cents a bucket. To make at least $50, they scurry to fill 125 32-pound buckets -- two tons of tomatoes. But if it rains, as it did Friday, work stops. The workers are returned to the parking lot in rickety school buses 12 hours after they left, having earned just a few dollars, maybe none at all."
You might also want to check out this website, which is the website for the Coalition of Imokalee Workers, a tomato pickers' group in Florida that is attempting to fight awful conditions.
http://www.ciw-online.org/news.html
I can tell you from experience that tomato picking is not fun, especially if you have to do it for hours on end in the summer heat. Bushel baskets of tomatoes are not light. The sun is very bright. Tomato plants stems an leaves get green stains all over your clothing, especially if they were recently watered. And tomatoes have to be picked most urgently right after it rains, because they will have taken on a lot of water and if they are left for too long, they will split, which can ruin the tomato and cause it to rot or can just make it unattractive so people wont buy it. The plants are almost always sprayed with insecticide to increase crop yields, even in personal gardens. These insecticides can be dangerous, and there is no way to avoid contact with them, especially if the plants were recently sprayed.
No offense to anyone who has fantasies of picking their own tomatoes and eating them. Just remember what goes into picking the ones that you get from the supermarket or even a local farm.
1 comment:
It is hard to imagine that these types of menial jobs still exist. When we think about it, we realize that they must, but I think most people in the US are so removed from where their food comes that they never think about this regularly. The description of the tomato pickers makes me think of the Great Depression. Also, it makes me wonder whether our country could exist as it does without situations like this. Sad to say, but we are lucky to have ready access to cheap and fresh food. But if tomato pickers did not do these jobs under the miserable conditions mentioned above, we probably wouldn't have such a supply of easily accessible food. It may not be right, but I think there is no simple answers as to how to end their plight.
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