"Ripe: The Search for the Perfect Tomato" (Counterpoint, 304 pages, $26), by Arthur Allen: "Ripe" is the latest in a rapidly growing number of books examining U.S. agricultural and food production systems and their affect on public health and the environment.
Arthur Allen, a former Associated Press writer, focuses on the tomato industry, and he's somewhat more sympathetic to corporate farms and big business than trendsetter Michael Pollan and others writing on similar topics. The first part of "Ripe" includes a number of derisive comments about members of the "crunchy left," who want cheap, locally grown, organic tomatoes year-round. Allen notes, rightly, that that's nearly impossible to provide, given the climate in most of the country.
He visits Mexico, where the American entrepreneurs who run Del Cabo Farms are trying to help local farmers make a living by growing new hybrids to be shipped to American markets. The question, Allen notes, is whether their tasty tomatoes will hold their flavor and form during their long journey north.
That musing leads into an examination of American tomato breeding that has created ever firmer, but increasingly bland fruit. As labor problems and costs grew in California's tomato industry, farmers growing tomatoes for ketchup, sauce and other products turned to mechanical harvesting. Mechanical harvesters require tomatoes that fall off the vine when shaken — but not before — and can withstand sorting. Allen recounts how researchers at the University of California, Davis helped develop these.
In Florida, farmers growing tomatoes for direct sale needed fruit that ripened slowly and wouldn't spoil during shipping. They eventually developed a method of picking tomatoes while they were green and then exposing them to ethylene gas to turn them red when they reached their destination.
But while Allen is understanding of the risks farmers face and their need to make a profit, he becomes increasingly critical of the effect of business interests on the American diet as "Ripe" progresses. Americans eat tomatoes that fit the needs of Heinz, McDonald's and a few other corporate giants because those companies provide the bulk of farmers' sales. McDonald's and other fast-food companies need firm tomatoes that hold up when sliced thin and look nice on a hamburger bun. Taste, Allen insists, is not a priority.
Allen also delves into labor and trade issues, writing critically about the treatment of farmworkers in California and Florida and looking at how a flood of cheap tomato paste from China could eventually put American farmers and the Mexican laborers who pick for them out of work.
While each chapter in "Ripe" is focused, the book as a whole has a meandering feel as Allen jumps from plant breeding to international trade to labor organization. Parts are also heavy with science and Latin plant names.
But readers with endurance and a strong interest in understanding the politics of food and the forces dictating what's available at their supermarkets will probably find it enlightening.
