Ó Springer 2006

Agriculture and Human Values (2006) 23: 253–262 DOI 10.1007/s10460-005-6113-6

TOMATOES: A REVIEW ESSAY

Book review Tangled Routes: Women, Work, and Globalization on the Tomato Trail. By Deborah Barndt. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002, 267 pp., Pb., ISBN 0-8476-9949-8 Exploring the Tomato: Transformations of Nature, Society and Economy. By Mike Harvey, Steve Quilley, and Huw Beynon. Cheltanham, UK and Northampton, Massachusetts: Edward Elgar, 2002, 320 pp., Pb., ISBN 1-8437-6189-0 First Fruit: The Creation of the Flavr SavrÔ Tomato and the Birth of Biotech Food. By Belinda Martineau. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2001, 269 pp., Pb., ISBN 0071360565 Agri-food Globalization in Perspective: International Restructuring in the Processing Tomato Industry. By Bill Pritchard and David Burch. Aldershot, UK and Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate, 2003, 308 pp., Hb., ISBN 0-7546-1508-1 ‘‘Foreword’’ (pp. vii–xxxviii) by Andrew F. Smith. In A. W. Livingston, Livingston and the Tomato. [Facsimile edition, original 1893], with ‘‘Appendix; Nineteenth Century Tomato Varieties in America’’ (pp. 177–226). Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1998, 226 pp., Pb., ISBN 0-8142-5009-2 Souper Tomatoes: The Story of America’s Favorite Food. By Andrew F. Smith. New Brunswick, New Jersey and London, UK: Rutgers University Press, 2000, 236 pp., Pb., ISBN 0-8135-2752-X The Tomato in America: Early History, Culture, and Cookery. By Andrew F. Smith. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2001a [1994], 224 pp., Pb., ISBN 0-252-07009-7. Pure Ketchup: A History of America’s National Condiment. By Andrew F. Smith. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001b [1996], 242 pp., Pb., ISBN 1-56098-993-9 The Force of Irony: Power in the Everyday Life of Mexican Tomato Workers. By Gabriel Torres. Oxford,

UK and New York, New York: Berg, 1997, 243 pp. Pb., ISBN 1-85973-941-5 WILLIAM H. FRIEDLAND College Eight, University of California, Santa Cruz, California 95064, USA

Bill Friedland is Professor Emeritus of Community Studies and Sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He has been involved in studies in the political economy of agriculture and food and in commodity analyses since the late 1970s. In the beginning was the tomato – according to the people of Reynoldsburg, Ohio – as indicated by a plaque reading: ‘‘Birthplace of the Tomato.’’ The plaque was dedicated in 1965 when the town began its first Tomato Festival. Today, the festival attracts ‘‘more than 35,000 tomato lovers from around the world.’’ They can bone up on tomato recipes, buy tomato products, and view the collection of one aficionado that includes ‘‘more than 300 pieces of tomato paraphernalia.’’ They can also see prizes handed out for the biggest tomato and tallest plant (Smith, 1998: xxxiii–xxxiv). A major agricultural commodity that is also a favorite with millions of home gardeners, tomatoes are a relatively high-value crop produced globally for fresh or processed use. Tomato production and processing alone, Pritchard and Burch inform us, amount to approximately 25 million tons annually, and the industry consists of hundreds of thousands of farm and factory workers, tens of thousands of tomato farms, thousands of tomato processing factories, hundreds of specialist processing tomato companies, a dozen key transnational corporations, tens of thousands of individual products, brand names, trademarks and patents, and millions of consumers (2003: 247). This is not even taking into consideration fresh tomatoes grown commercially or the incredible number of homegrowers who produce for their own consumption. With nine tomato books published in the past decade, the time is ripe to assess this tomato literature. Dozens of technical articles appear annually on tomatoes, but it is unusual for so many studies of a single vegetable (technically the tomato is a fruit but socially it is a vegetable) to have appeared in quick succession.

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Summarizing the books Aside from a shared focus on tomatoes, each book – except for those by or involving Andrew Smith – is very different. Five (i.e., Barndt; Harvey, Quilley, and Beynon; Martineau; one by Smith; Torres) deal with fresh tomatoes. Processing tomatoes are the focus of the book by Pritchard and Burch and the two by Smith. Smith’s three books and his contributions to the facsimile re-issue of the Livingstone book are historical accounts; all the rest focus on the modern era, although most have some historical development. The studies by Barndt and Torres deal with tomato workers and the labor process. Harvey et al., and Martineau deal with fresh tomatoes – the former with European commodity systems, the latter with the genetically modified (henceforth GM) Flavr SavrÔ tomato. Pritchard and Burch focus on a global survey of processing tomato systems. Smith’s three books are historical, examining a particular aspect of the tomato. All contain (1) historical stories, (2) recipes from historic cookbooks, and (3) a bibliography. The Tomato in America is typical. An early section introduces the reader to Robert Gibbon Johnson, credited with proving the edibility of tomatoes in the US when it was ostensibly believed they were poisonous. In 1820, Johnson announced that he would eat a tomato in public; when he did and didn’t die, Americans began to eat tomatoes. Smith traces this myth to a newspaper story in 1908. Once invented, it entered public consciousness as an urban legend that was reinforced by a 1949 CBS radio broadcast in the You Are There radio series. Smith’s other two books, Souper Tomatoes and Ketchup, follow the same pattern. Souper Tomatoes begins by discussing the differences between a variety of soups, including German, French, ‘‘economical,’’ and American. Most foods were preserved through drying, salting, or similar processes but preservation did not work with wet foods such as soup. Canning overcame mold problems in the late 1800s and as industrialism transformed and urbanized the world, canning entered mass production and tomato soup proved one of its more popular forms. Smith devotes two chapters to the production of cans, the growing of tomatoes and other vegetables, and the manufacturing, promotion, marketing, and public relations involved in the selling of soup. The penultimate chapter turns to tomato soup art and the success of Andy Warhol in making the Campbell’s tomato soup can an ‘‘American Culinary Icon.’’ The final chapter provides the reader with more recipes than any cook could ever want. Pure Ketchup is ‘‘the first book devoted entirely to the history of ketchup’’ (also known as ‘‘catsup’’). Most Americans will be surprised at the range of ketchups – from anchovies to wine – and its 50+ main ingredients – cucumber, kidney bean, lobster, and walnut, to name

only a few. Smith considers various ketchups made in American households before commercialization. Tomatoes emerged as the primary ingredient at the end of the 18th century. In the early years of commercialization, the adulteration of tomato ketchups was remarkable; before pure food regulation, rotten tomatoes and tomato debris were regularly put into cans by hundreds of manufacturers. As urbanization expanded, ketchup producers consolidated into a small number of large manufacturers. Smith deals with this concentration process episodically rather than systematically. Smith’s history of the origin of federal pure food legislation in 1906 was surprising to this reader; federal legislation was preceded by state legislation as early as 1874. I had always thought Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle triggered national legislation. Rather, national regulation came after 30 years of state actions. A major impetus came when Europeans banned American-made ketchups because they were so contaminated. Yet, once legislation was adopted, the industry did not rapidly shift to pure tomato ketchup since, all too frequently, enforcement was lax (as it is today). It took decades before a reasonable level of enforcement took hold. Smith provides a short description of ketchup production in the recent period, including agricultural mechanization, the labor process, and the shift from making ketchup from fresh tomatoes to the use of processed pastes. There is also a brief report on the genetic manipulation of tomatoes. In addition to the three books reviewed here, Smith wrote a ‘‘Foreword’’ (34 pages), ‘‘Appendix’’ (45 pages), and bibliography (5 pages) for Livingston and the Tomato. Livingston and the Tomato was ‘‘the first comprehensive book about tomatoes published in America’’ (p. vii). Smith writes that the book chronicles ‘‘the rapid conversion of the tomato from what was a ribbed, hardcored, frequently hollow fruit – to the delicious, juicy, lip-smacking fruit we know and love today’’ (p. vii). There has been a remarkable transformation of the tomato since 1893 when the original book appeared. In the US what was mainly an ornamental fruit is now a food mainstay for millions of summer homegardeners and a major input to diets around the world. Smith’s ‘‘Foreword’’ provides biographical notes on Alexander Livingston (1821–1898), a seed breeder and seed company owner, and information about the tomato festival in Reynoldsburg, Ohio where Livingston was born and began his breeding career. His ‘‘Appendix’’ provides a list of 172 nineteenth century tomato varieties, including alternate names, available in the US. Torres’ The Force of Irony and Martineau’s First Fruit focus less on tomatoes. Torres is concerned with fresh tomato harvesters in Mexico, and Martineau with the GM Flavr SavrÔ tomato by Calgene and its approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Book Review Torres draws on Scott’s (1985) argument that the weak are not without weapons. There is a ‘‘prosaic but constant struggle between the peasantry and those that seek to extract labor, food, taxes, rents, and interest from them... I have in mind the ordinary weapons of relatively powerless groups: foot dragging, dissimulation, pilfering, feigned ignorance, slander, arson, sabotage, and so forth’’(p. 29). In Autla´n in the western Mexico state of Jalisco, Torres contends that agency is continually operative in the lives of tomato workers. Although dominated by a factory/industrial system of production, workers exercise agency through irony. Torres proposes ‘‘two key concepts: heterogeneity and diversity’’ (p. 55). ‘‘[W]orkers and trusted personnel... come from all over Mexico... The experiences of industrial cultivation and local community socialization are not a homogenizing matrix’’ since there are ‘‘differences in age, gender, ethnicity, skill levels, job type and permanence’’ (pp. 55–56). Torres sees no generic tendencies in the industrializing process; every behavior is situationally specific. The largest group of workers (64%) are drawn from local communities and Jalisco state, while the remaining workers come as migrants from greater distances. Following the season, Torres covers the preparation of seedlings, transplantation, cultivation, tying of plants, harvesting, and packing. He also includes data from a census of tomato workers and the gendering of tasks. Attention is given to the concept of cacicazgo – ‘‘a set of relations with a dominant local leader, landowner or local politician (cacique)’’ (p. 53 n. 8). Despite devoting considerable space to the local cacique’s career, Torres fails to explain how cacicazgo impinges on the tomato system in Jalisco state. Torres, in defining irony, mentions games, jokes, riddles, sexual innuendo, sabotage, theft, work stoppages, and includes a ‘‘game’’ of seeing how far workers can throw tomatoes (p. 169). Why this game should be considered ironical seems strained; it can be seen as a ‘‘game’’ but also as sabotage. Torres provides examples of irony as expressed by workers. For Torres, these forms of workers’ action highlight how ‘‘workers never surrender totally to bosses, even though their dreams of alternative life-worlds do not have them managing their own tomato farms’’ (p. 181). He introduces the concept of ‘‘contingent utopias’’ to explain worker behaviors. ‘‘(M)y use of ‘contingent utopias’ similarly denotes momentary illusions, expectations of better conditions or pleas for more creative and realistic alternatives. This differs from idealized and unattainable social models’’ (pp. 182–186).1 First Fruit tells two distinct stories. The first, about biotechnology, consists of locating and turning off the gene controlling tomato ripening, followed by ‘‘regulatory science,’’ or the scientific work necessary to get

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regulatory agencies to approve release of the GM tomato. The second could serve as a Harvard Business School case study on how not to build a business. For nonscientists – or social scientists who often learn a considerable amount of scientific and technical information to understand the commodities we research – Chapters 2, 3, and 4 will be either a tough slog or a dead loss. Most readers are advised to make a ‘‘quick trip through’’ unless they have some knowledge of biotechnology. As for the organizational analysis, the Harvard Business School people who prepare such cases usually order them better. Nonetheless, Martineau, inside the company with a fine critical eye, tells a great story. Martineau’s Flavr SavrÔ story is derived from her personal experience as a PhD in genetics. She was the third PhD scientist hired in 1988 by Calgene for the company’s tomato team. When hired, Martineau explains, she was welcomed by the R&D Vice President ‘‘into the Calgene family. I had been informed – warned might be a better way to describe it – about this family atmosphere...’’ Managers talked incessantly about the ‘‘openness’’ of the company and its managers. Yet she noted the contradiction between these verbal messages and the body language when contradictory points of view were expressed by the troops (see pp. 131–132 and 183–184). Surviving several financial crises and layoffs, Martineau remained employed until 1995, when the Flavr SavrÔ was approved as safe by the Food and Drug Administration and, nearly simultaneously, Calgene was swallowed by the transnational giant Monsanto and the Flavr SavrÔ tomato was abandoned as uneconomical. Propelled by their belief in biotechnology miracles, Calgene set strategies intended to yield high returns on investments. If a tomato could be developed that could be harvested vine ripe (rather than the ‘‘mature green’’ as are most fresh tomatoes) and the ripening arrested, this would increase its shelf life. The Flavr SavrÔ would taste like a ripe tomato and yield a price premium. Calgene expected to get rich. Once the science of turning off the ripening gene was accomplished, the regulatory agencies had to be satisfied since the Flavr SavrÔ would be the first, GM, whole food. Calgene’s managers also committed the company to a vertical strategy in which Calgene would control downstream from the laboratory into agriculture, distribution, and marketing – areas in which it had no experience. Continually operating on the cusp of expectations that the organization could resolve its problems, the vertical strategy created the growth of an overpaid and bloated bureaucratic apparatus. There were grounds for celebration when Calgene received FDA approval for the Flavr Savr.Ô ‘‘Even a rumor that it had cost the company $10 a pound didn’t seem to dampen anyone’s spirits’’ ( p. 192).2

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Martineau’s book does not focus on the tomato. The Flavr SavrÔ tomato is incidental to scientific, regulatory, and organizational analysis. Because of its focus on getting its message out, Calgene generated national and international interest in its GM tomato, heightening consciousness of the inadequacies of fresh tomatoes and, ultimately, in its own failure to resolve the problems. While the Calgene tale has its fascinations, the role of the tomato places Martineau’s book on the periphery of this review. In Deborah Barndt’s Tangled Routes, in contrast, the tomato’s centrality is second only to the workers in tomato fields and supermarket clerks who ‘‘sell’’ tomatoes. An activist academic, Barndt makes no bones about her association with workers – especially women – involved in fresh tomato production/distribution/retailing and, like the Martineau book, hers is in part a personal story. Barndt’s story is about tomatoes primarily from Mexico, secondarily from Ontario. During the summer, tomatoes are sourced locally from fields in Ontario. Thus, her tales hinge on the operation of retail supermarkets in Canada. The first part of the book is notable for its food romanticism and confusion. The former is indicated by a cartoon contrasting the small family farms of campesinos, where ‘‘every tomato had its own personality,’’ with big plantations where tomatoes don’t know their neighbors and have ‘‘completely lost [their] sense of community.’’ The confusion arises in Barndt’s outline of the tomato’s journey from farm to supermarket. This is accomplished by setting out five stages (‘‘for Tomatl and alternative practices’’) and 21 steps (‘‘for corporate tomato’s journey’’). An unclear me´lange of stages and steps begins in pre-Hispanic Mexico and proceeds through land struggles, US-induced monocultures, multinational corporations, Zapatistas and NAFTA, women harvesters, weather, Del Monte, trucking, etc. until the tomato finally arrives in Canada. Tomatl is the way Barndt refers to the ‘‘original’’ Aztec and other Meso-American tomatoes when the Spanish arrived. Her critical approach to the transition from tomatl to mass produced tomato is placed in five key ‘‘moments’’ of transformation: the scientific and colonialism, the industrial and capitalism, the chemical and development, the genetic and neoliberalism, and the computer and globalization. These theoretical issues include ‘‘globalization from above and below, an interlocking analysis of power, and four axes for exploring the relationship between the tomato journey and women’s stories’’ (p. 54). The Tomasita Project, ‘‘a popular education process, integrating collaborative research methods and innovative photographic tools’’ (p. 54), is tied to ‘‘an interlocking analysis of gender’’ (p. 62). She turns to Mexico for details on growing and packing tomatoes. Empaque Santa Rosa is one of the top three tomato producing firms in Mexico. Geared

toward the North American market, it has 12,000 employees, 90% of whom are field workers and packers. The company farms 6000 hectares of field tomatoes and 80 hectares of greenhouses. The company represents ‘‘globalization from above.’’ ‘‘Globalization from below’’ provides a picture of the gendered division of labor and the labor process in packing and in the greenhouses. Barndt deals with two aspects of mobility: a male truck driver who brings tomatoes from Mexico to Canada, and a Mexican woman who travels to Canada annually for the harvest. The driver’s experience provides the sole treatment of transportation in any of these studies. There is no information on economic, labor, or capital costs or on fuel consumption – nor is there any information on the cost of carrying this high-value, shortlife product by air. Exploring the Tomato, by Harvey et al., is distinguished by its approach – using the tomato as a probe rather than focusing on it as an object. Unlike the books by Smith in which the focus is the tomato and its products, Harvey et al., concentrate on the tomato and its interaction with human beings historically, as well as on how tomatoes expose the operations of capitalism. Harvey et al., see the tomato as an artifact of food with which humans interact and ask how it has evolved, been modified, differentiated, and changed over time. According to the authors, tomatoes embody the changing structures of modern societies from demographics (the drive toward urbanism) and spatial specialization (with different tomatoes and products originating in different places), to scientific and technological development (ranging from varietal development and seed production to mechanized harvesting and the application of information technology), with distinctive and differentiated consequences in different tomato forms and tomato products. Harvey et al., show that Italy and Spain, both southern European and Mediterranean producers, are ‘‘contrasted opposites’’ (p. 257), with Spain exporting only fresh and no processed tomatoes to northern Europe, and Italy exporting mostly processed tomatoes and, only recently, fresh tomatoes to northern Europe. Harvey et al., examine the rise and fall of the ‘‘Guernsey Tom,’’ a tomato produced in Guernsey and other Channel Islands for the UK fresh market. This tomato provides a classical example of uneven development, one in which the producers locked themselves into a production regime and an organizational structure that was geared to the British market but unable to adapt. The entry of Dutch and Spanish tomatoes caused the ultimate demise of the Guernsey Tom. In its aftermath came the fresh European round tomato with an average daily consumption ranging from 6.4 per person per day in Greece and 4.4 in Portugal and Italy, to

Book Review 0.34 and 0.32 respectively in the UK and the Netherlands. In northern Europe ‘‘fresh’’ refers to tomatoes eaten in salads compared to southern Europe where the ‘‘fresh’’ tomato is used as a cooking ingredient. Three distinct supply organizations are explored: the Dutch; the Spanish, French, and Moroccan; and the British. The Dutch production system was and continues to be based on central distribution. Harvey et al., do not discuss the role of the Netherlands state in facilitating the unusual form of organization that has sustained large numbers of tiny (2.2 hectares) glasshouses, remarkable for having the highest tomato production in the world. The Dutch system imploded in the early 1990s with the ‘‘water bomb scandal’’ of tasteless tomatoes. This led to a restructuring that initiated a different central distribution organization. The Dutch are organizationally flexible as long as central organization remains firmly in place. In Spain, France, and Morocco state-supported grower cooperatives market tomatoes through independent wholesalers to hypermarkets and supermarkets. In Britain, ‘‘supply chain management’’ is dominated by five supermarket chains. Harvey et al., go on to examine the technological and organizational transformation of the European round tomato. Between the early 1970s and 1995 this transformation included: a shift from soil to hydroponics; the introduction of disease resistant seed strains and CO2 enriched atmospheres; information technology control systems; new tomato varieties; bumble bee pollination and biological pest control; and the combination of heat, power, and information technology. Once processors learned how to put tomatoes into cans, ways had to be found to increase productivity and production. With the transition from batch to continuous processing, new problems had to be confronted, not the least of which was establishing the tomato’s identity, leading to branding and to the establishment of standards of production. Two unsuccessful attempts, Zeneca’s GM tomato pure´e and Calgene’s Flavr SavrÔ fresh tomato (the first processed, the second fresh), are examined. Both ‘‘disappeared after an economic life of little more than two years’’ (p. 130). With the growth of supermarket chains the tomato essentially ‘‘disappears,’’ becoming an ingredient in a host of supermarket products such as soups, sauces and salsas, sandwiches, pizzas, etc. British retail marketing has become remarkably concentrated and supermarket chains have committed themselves to ‘‘own label’’ branding (i.e., where the chains are supplied fresh, processed, and chilled foods by large scale growers, processors, and chilled food firms). All produced foods bear the label of the chain in which they are sold. One advantage of this economically concentrated system is that, ‘‘given their risks and costs, even the largest

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branded manufacturers produce only four or five new products per year. Own-label manufacturers produce one to two thousand’’ (p. 177, emphasis in the original). As the supermarkets concentrated, they looked for large suppliers to deliver to the central distribution centers they owned or controlled. These super- and hyper-markets, with hundreds of retail outlets of enormous size, now dominate food retailing. Pritchard and Burch’s Agri-food Globalization in Perspective is centered on processing tomatoes globally. Several points summarize their book. First, processed tomatoes have become a major input in many national food systems and may be on the brink of global organization. Second, there is not yet an integrated globalized system. Rather, there are a number of separate systems including those of the US (overwhelmingly California), the European Union (overwhelmingly Italy with smaller systems in Spain, France, Portugal, and Greece), the Middle East (Turkey), and more recently in China and Thailand. The much smaller Australian and Canadian processing tomato systems are also examined because, despite considerable similarities, very different outcomes took place during restructuring due to different regulatory systems. According to the authors, no global pattern has emerged: What passes for the ‘‘global food system’’ consists of a set of heterogeneous and fragmented processes, bounded in multiple ways by the separations of geography, culture, capital and knowledge. Global agri-food restructuring needs to be understood as an intricate set of processes operating at many scales, and on many levels, rather than a unilateral shift toward a single global marketplace (p. xi). Pritchard and Burch’s book is an audacious study in global comprehensiveness, encompassing the totality of processing tomatoes. Anyone who has attempted a fullscale study of a commodity will have to admire the breadth and depth of their research. Besides their geographic range, they deal with topics such as seeds, growing, processing, storage, markets, and regulatory regimes. My sole complaint is the inadequate index. Two introductory chapters consider processing tomato agriculture and the technologies of processing. The first covers the industrialization of agriculture before turning to agricultural production processes and mechanized harvesting, examining the model set by California for the global industry. They next turn to first- and second-tier processing. In the first-tier, harvested tomatoes are converted into an undifferentiated stable industrial input. This is later transformed, in the second tier, into a variety of products such as ketchup, sauces, pastes, soups, etc. The process is elaborated with details on the largest California processor – the Morning Star Packing

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Company – and a major second-tier processor and global marketer of processing tomatoes (and other processed foods) – the Heinz Company. Consumption is examined by analyzing the strategies various companies use to reach consumers. A comparative analysis of the Australian and Canadian processing tomato systems reveals that while the two systems were relatively small and similar, their embeddedness in local regulatory regimes produced major differences as both underwent neoliberal reorganization. The key to the differing outcomes rests with the regulatory apparatuses that established controls over grower-processor bargaining. Pritchard and Burch skillfully weave together commodity systems analysis, industrial organization analysis, corporate analysis, and the differences in regulatory regimes. This chapter shows that different national regulatory systems – not just formal regulation by the nation-state but the ‘‘regulations’’ embedded in custom, tradition, and national history – militate against homogeneous global patterns. Australia has undergone rigorous deregulation whereas Canada has essentially retained a strong regulatory state apparatus. The consequences in Australia have included grower concentration and a sharp differentiation between first-tier producers and second-tier branded food companies. Concentration has also taken place in Canada but the ‘‘immersion’’ of the tomato growers in the Ontario Processed Vegetable Growers Association has provided broad-base support for maintaining state regulation. Turning to Europe, Pritchard and Burch examine the ‘‘distinct European tomato,’’ distinct because of its complex roots in different national regimes and histories. This is overlaid with the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Union and a vague ‘‘harmonization’’ at the EU level that changed substantially in 2001. Europe is far from ‘‘harmonized’’ but the glimmerings of the new regime are underway. This is complicated by the shift of agricultural policy from subsidies aimed directly at agriculture to subsidies aimed at retaining rurality and the rural landscape. Five nations constitute the European processing tomato actors: Italy, Spain, Greece, Portugal, France. Italy is, by far, the most important. ‘‘Italy acts as the central node within the complex, being both a major importer and the largest exporter’’ (p. 181). There is a major division between the north (where Parma is the center of processing and the Po Valley the main location of growing) and the south (the Naples area). Both areas are fragmented with many small growers and processors but some economic concentration seems to be taking place. The main product in the north is industrial-grade tomato paste, which makes the north ‘‘potentially vulnerable to the restructuring of pan-European supply chains’’ (p. 183).

This means that the product could be replaced by cheaper imports from Turkey or China/Thailand. The south is more fragmented. Its center of processing is south of Naples but supplies increasingly come from Puglia and incur substantial transportation costs. The European discussion concludes with three short sections: (1) China meets Turkey, in which the entry of cheaper Chinese paste has supplanted previously cheap paste from Greece and Turkey; (2) the ‘‘pain in Spain,’’ in which a highly fragmented industry of many tiny processors and a lethargic industry are confronting extinction; and (3) ‘‘cross-border integration,’’ in which national firms of some European countries have begun to acquire processing firms in other countries. Pritchard and Burch focus on China and Thailand as examples of the variability in processing-tomato production, regulation, exports, and markets. Thailand popped onto the global scene but quickly diminished. China, however, is different – its processing tomato system has grown enormously. Thai processing tomato production began impressively but quickly became only localized. King Bhumibol initiated ‘‘Royal Projects’’ to help impoverished hill tribes and provide agricultural substitutes for opium production. These were mixed projects aimed at beginning processing. The first of four factories was opened in 1973, followed by private investment by an Israeli conglomerate, among others. Tomatoes turned out to be the most important of the commodities grown for processing. Expansion of the industry took place because of internal demand for tomato paste as a domestic input, primarily for seafood canning. Thai investors also saw opportunities for low-cost exports and the Thai government provided incentives to support industrial projects. By 1995–6 there were 16 processing factories. Investors included new specialist processing tomato companies, existing processors moving into processing tomatoes, foreign investors in joint ventures with Thais, and large diverse Thai conglomerates. Pritchard and Burch frequently use a specific company to explain processing development. In Thailand, the Northeast Agricultural Company (NACO) is exemplary. Founded in 1986, its initial investors were a Thai food processor plus the manager of his family’s 1600 hectare tobacco farm. Additional capital was raised from the Asian Development Bank, the Thai Military Bank, and other financial institutions. NACO’s first factory opened in 1988. A New Zealand investor was brought in but this relationship failed with the 1997 Asian economic crisis. Pritchard and Burch offer three conclusions: (1) while Thai investors triggered processing development, local control gave way to foreign and Thai financial investors; (2) Thai producers focused on low-cost processed paste for export which made them very vulnerable; and (3) New Zealand’s entry into the processing market

Book Review illustrates how global restructuring operates even though this particular instance failed. Twenty-six companies comprise the Thai industry, most in second-tier processing (i.e., using paste as an input to make other products). Even before the 1997 crisis the industry was dominated by three firms. Because of the crisis, Thai Pizza Hut’s growth rate dropped and the effects on processing tomato demand were substantial. The crisis ‘‘served to transfer some of the ownership and control of Thai capital assets to overseas investors’’ (p. 219). The Chinese case is very different. The central Chinese government became the main economic actor for political reasons, establishing full control over China’s far western province of Xinjiang. The Chinese moved the Peoples’ Liberation Army into Xinjiang as part of the revolution in 1949. In 1954 the army was converted into a work force to establish Han control, with soldiers becoming civilian settlers. The army units ultimately were organized as the Xinjiang Production and Construction Group (XPCG), which included state farms that were moved into growing tomatoes for processing. Pritchard and Burch note that ‘‘...there is no Western model that approximates the XPCG’s organizational structure and motivations. The traditional binary categories of capitalism/communism or private enterprise/ state-ownership do not provide an adequate framework to describe this entity’’ (p. 236). In the mid-1980s, according to the authors, Chinese processing tomato production was essentially zero. By 1993, production had reached 500,000 tons of raw product and in 2000, 1.8 million tons – an ‘‘unprecedented’’ 10% of world production. The first processing factory was opened in 1983, and a curious development unfolded involving ‘‘...several hundred Italians... in various capacities,’’ including traders and employees of Parma-based food machinery companies (p. 231). The Italians functioned as traders, not investors. They brought expertise and processing machinery sales to the development, taking payment not in currency but in product. By 2000, an estimated 40 production lines were installed in western China. The Italians sold the paste at ‘‘extremely low prices’’ with Japan and Italy taking most of the output (p. 233). China’s output is overwhelmingly export-oriented (in contrast to production elsewhere in the world) but mainly supplies Asian countries. Japan is a significant trading partner and there is some trade with Australia, New Zealand, and Russia. Were domestic consumption to develop, awesome possibilities would result. There are some expectations that this will occur because of the spread of western foods. KFC, for example, has over 500 outlets in China. Pritchard and Burch ask, ‘‘How ‘globalized’ is the processing tomato industry?’’ (p. 248). They assess the extent of globalization using four criteria: (1) the

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convergence of prices internationally, (2) the international product flow, (3) the international investment linkages and the globalizing actors coordinating production internationally, and (4) the international transfer of ideas and knowledge. There is some global price convergence with bulk tomato paste but it is not as pronounced as with other commodities. The global market for paste is fractured because of differing demands for degrees brix (levels of dissolved sugars) and viscosity levels (the degree of flow in a fluid). There is, however, some convergence between California and Italy. Most product flow is within nations or regions. Japan is the only major importer (from China and Turkey) that represents international processing tomato trade. Pritchard and Burch speculate that production coordination may be beginning since a few firms – Heinz and Unilever among them – show strong globalizing efforts but, taken together, probably handle only 10% of all processing tomatoes. There are also some mergers and acquisitions driven by discount warehouse retailers and the growth of own-labels. Pritchard and Burch come to two conclusions: (1) ‘‘first-tier processing remains relatively diffused...in the hands of national firms’’ (p. 256); and (2) consolidation is taking place in consumer food products and retail/distribution with ‘‘profound implications for the processing tomato industry’’ (p. 256). They do not see this as leading to ‘‘extensive international production coordination’’ (p. 257).3 As for international flows of information, knowledge, and people, there was nothing resembling this up through the 1990s. Since 2000, however, there has been significant change, as indicated by three information exchange institutions. Pritchard and Burch suggest four areas of possible change: (1) end-users will increasingly demand ‘‘quality,’’ imposing an ‘‘ever-narrower range of specifications [leading] to increased attention to linkages between supply chain actors... [and blurring] the boundaries between firms and industry sectors’’; (2) first-tier processors will experience more cost-price squeeze and greater vulnerability; (3) the cost-price squeeze and the quality imperative will encourage uneven farm-level restructuring with movements toward larger highly capitalized growers; and (4) future growth will be in ‘‘intellectual property [including] hybrid seed development, seedlings transplants, logistics and management, food machinery and technology, and branding and niche marketing’’ (pp. 263–265).

Assessing the books Before assessing the tomato books, let us consider how tomatoes emerged as a topic in the social science literature.

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There was no such literature until the mechanization transformation restructured the processing tomato harvest (later also utilized for fresh market tomatoes) in California between 1964 and 1970. The end of the US-Mexico bracero program in 1964 forced a shift toward harvest mechanization. This stimulated a social science cottage industry on processing tomatoes. Rasmussen (1968) trumpeted the achievement as resolving the labor shortage and producing a concomitant savings on workers’ wages. This was followed by an economic analysis by Schmitz and Seckler (1970) showing that, for a comparatively small investment in research, large returns were made in the form of labor savings. This study also indicated that there had been costs to workers, but it did not pursue the issue. This became the focus of Friedland and Barton’s (1975) study, while Thompson and Scheuring (1978) studied the second stage of harvest mechanization based on optical and electronic sorting. The publication of Hightower’s (1973) Hard Tomatoes, Hard Times, although it did not deal centrally with tomatoes, tied in with the growing environmental movement and raised the issue: Why are fresh tomatoes so tasteless? The books reviewed here move in very different directions. Three – Pritchard and Burch, Smith (ketchup and soup) – deal with processing tomatoes, whereas four – Barndt, Harvey et al., Martineau, and Torres – are concerned with fresh tomatoes. Barndt, Harvey et al., and Pritchard and Burch, make commodity systems central to their analysis, while only two books – Barndt and Torres – devote attention to workers. There are also variations in the use of the commodity systems/chains approach. Smith’s three books follow a distinct pattern: historical treatment, collection of recipes, and bibliography. The Tomato in America is an example of antiquarian history concerned with the American tomato up to the Civil War. These are not easy histories to encompass and Smith dug out ancient newspapers and cookbooks to do so. The material is presented topically but has the tendency to become a collection of factoids rather than a set of coherent stories. Smith’s ketchup and soup books tell better stories. In the ketchup book, there is a beginning theme (the commercialization of ketchup) followed by the struggle to enforce sanitary standards and eliminate non-tomato materials and chemicals. The soup book follows the ketchup book pattern and presents a useful history of wet foods, the origins of canning as a form of food preservation, and various canning soup companies. For food historians, tomato aficionados, and some general readers, Smith’s books can be very useful. Most others will probably find that each contains more than they want or need to know about their respective topics. Smith’s discussion of ketchup adulteration and the fierce battle against regulation is useful in its specifics but he fails to note that, in this struggle to regulate and

control the untamed vigor of industrial capitalism, the emergence of robber barons and a national market were part of national evolution. Smith has a useful but truncated examination of the Heinz and Campbell companies. Both tend to emerge as corporate heroes. In his ‘‘Foreword’’ to the Livingston book, Smith notes how the tomato has been transformed over the past 150 years from a marginal food and an ornamental to a mainstay of the American diet; one might have expected him to speculate about this transformation. Here the issue of culture comes to the forefront. Americans may have abandoned their fears about tomatoes by the end of the Civil War, but tomatoes did not emerge as a mass food (in preserved form) until much later. Was this because the technology of processing and canning was easier and cheaper for tomatoes than for other foods? Tomatoes ‘‘took off’’ significantly, Levenstein (1985) informs us, when Italian foods became widely popular in the US. This began after European immigration peaked and the children of first generation migrants began to move beyond the ethnic diets their parents brought from the Old Country. Heavily tomato-based, Italian food began to be widely used for pastas and pizzas before, during, and after World War II – then raged across the globe. Levenstein (1985) explains how this took place in North America but a convincing cultural explanation is yet to be produced. Martineau’s Calgene study has the strength of a critically observant insider but is deficient in its knowledge of what ought to constitute a corporate or company analysis. Aside from her direct experience, the literature she draws on comes primarily from journalistic treatments. This is a mixed blessing. The Flavr SavrÔ tomato attracted heavy press coverage and Calgene’s managers fed this interest. Details of Calgene’s unfolding strategy and operations were extensively covered but, as journalists are wont to do, reporting is episodic. The details are present but Martineau does not bring to bear a substantial corporate analysis. In other words, this is a good story, but readers will have to bring an analytic and theoretical framework to Martineau’s empirical material. The advantages of being a critical insider become clear as Martineau discerns the distinction between company myths and behavior. The result is a captivating history of how not to behave. There are interesting agrifood lessons to be learned from Martineau’s story. First, don’t proliferate high-cost employees before you have a product (i.e., don’t count those chickens before they’re hatched). Second, if you’re going to mess around with an agricultural commodity, you had better understand it in detail. Even with the ‘‘success’’ of turning off the ripening gene, the Flavr SavrÔ had to be trundled thousands of miles from field to market, and ripe tomatoes get bumped and bruised. Third, it is sheer lunacy, given the history of farm/post-farm relations – where far

Book Review more money is made beyond the farm gate – for Calgene to have adopted a vertical strategy. The losses sustained when it pioneered its way into vertical integration were phenomenal. What may seem like elementary industrial relations were continually violated. For example, having just hired Martineau despite an oncoming financial crisis, company managers felt they had to show investors that Calgene ‘‘could make the tough decisions’’ by laying off scientific staff. Martineau comments, ‘‘...the company’s management team had not achieved its financial targets and yet the science staff was paying for it’’ (p. 16). Nor would the layoff be received well by the staff when the Chief Financial Officer who made the announcement was ‘‘an especially disagreeable bearer of this bad news. The conspicuous display of his brand-new, top-of-the-line Jeep Grand Cherokee at work the afternoon of the ‘downsizing’ only worsened the relationship with what remained of the R&D staff’’ (p. 16). I found the Torres book unconvincing and overtheorized. There is no doubt about Torres’ theoretical grounding. His discussion of Scott’s Weapons of the Weak approach and Long’s actor-oriented perspective are set out in detail but I found the supporting empirical material unconvincing. Workers undoubtedly manifest many of these weapons but Torres (and Scott) concomitantly minimize the controlling power of the managers and employers. Manifestations such as sabotage, characterized as irony, left me puzzled. During my factory experience, I became acquainted with a range of forms of sabotage, none of which were considered by my fellow-workers or myself as ironical. The strength of the Torres book rests in the ethnographic detail about tomato workers. We learn about the labor process, workers’ reactions to employment relationships in production, and labor recruitment. The weaknesses are notable, however. We are led down a lengthy tangent like cacicazgo but are not shown how it operates on tomato workers. Long’s (1992) actor-oriented perspective addresses the form of the heterogeneity and diversity of the tomato workers. Like all workers going through the peasant-toproletarian transition, there are unquestionable differences between tomato workers but, as has been the case since the industrial revolution, the diversity of origin, language, race/ethnicity, etc. has been partially overcome by the collective proletarian experience. Torres, however, recognizes this commonality by emphasizing the emergence of irony and tying it to the agency of the tomato workers. He cannot see the emergence of a class from the largely peasant backgrounds of these workers. Barndt’s study portrays her actors as real people. She has integrated the Mexicanness of the workers in Mexico with the Mexican workers in Ontario’s fields. This is not global but it is representative of global trends. Barndt

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also elaborates forms of exploitation, although this eventually gets tedious. Her work as an activist is also creditable; she does not hesitate to explain where her sympathies lie and how exploitation oppresses the quotidian lives of the workers in fields and supermarkets. My re-reading of Barndt’s Tangled Routes in the context of the other tomato books yielded a stronger favorable impression. Reviewing the book on its own (Friedland, 2003), I was disappointed with the characterization of the two chains as ‘‘global commodity chains’’ since they were limited and hardly global. This re-reading showed the utility of chain or system analysis in telling a whole – if limited – fresh tomato story. While I learned from all the books, those by Harvey et al., and Pritchard and Burch proved most useful. Harvey’s focused consideration of fresh European tomatoes showed their historical development through a series of stages as consumption patterns grew and shifted. They showed how the tomato has been modified and reconstructed through human interaction. I was somewhat puzzled when the authors treated the tomato as an object in itself. This formulation hearkens back to the contention that commodities are actors, not simply acted upon by human beings. Harvey’s empirical stories provide examples of human manipulation to the point where today’s tomato bears only a passing resemblance to nature’s original. The experiments with GM tomatoes for the fresh and processing market hardly stand out as examples of the ‘‘agency’’ of tomatoes. The breeding reports I read regularly in industry journals represent human determination to transform the item found in nature to the item creating corporate success. In their chapter on ‘‘The Fabrication of Nature,’’ Harvey’s show how the tomato ‘‘found in nature’’ is shoehorned into an industrial product by growing new disease resistant strains of the plant in glasshouses in rockwool, in CO2 enriched atmospheres controlled by information technology, with bumble bee pollination and biological pest control, and with the integration of heat, power, and information technology. I thus found it hard to see the tomato expressing agency as some researchers have contended. The strength of the Harvey’s story rests on their intensive examination of fresh British tomatoes at different time intervals. We discover the world of food retailing and its remarkable transformations under the hegemony of highly concentrated retail supermarket chains. The Harvey’s book is eminently readable. Pritchard and Burch, in contrast, present a complex monograph that must be studied. They are dealing with complicated systems that operate in approximately half the world. Each ‘‘national’’ system has had its own historical development and distinctive regulatory apparatuses. Each also has experienced substantial restructuring and been in continuous transition over the past two decades.

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Pritchard and Burch attend assiduously to commodity chain analysis but frame their study around globalization. They make clear that there is no global processing tomato, having established criteria for assessing the degree to which the object of their research has become globalized. Specific commodity chains are brought to the fore in detailed economic, political, organizational, company, and sociological analyses. This book establishes a benchmark for future commodity systems analyses and the degree to which commodities are globalized. Considering its comprehensiveness, the failure to include an adequate index is a disappointment. I would advise readers who study this book to make their own index; finding material in the mass of information Pritchard and Burch provide can be a serious task. On a final note, three of these books – Harvey et al., Pritchard and Burch, and Torres – go out of their way to emphasize heterogeneity, diversity, complexity, and the unpredictability of the future. I remain puzzled by this. I can understand the reluctance of authors to make predictions about the future but, at the same time, some projections based on their stories are feasible. For example, I have little doubt that fresh and processing tomatoes will continue to manifest economic concentration in production, utilization, and marketing. Despite all the conversation about flexible specialization, I find it difficult to conceive of a restructuring – either production and handling of fresh tomatoes, or processing tomatoes – returning to small units of production. In other words, economic concentration, in which the already-big get bigger, is more likely than a restructuring into smaller units. It is equally unlikely that we have reached an end to the incessant search for the ‘‘perfect tomato’’ for whatever use. What drives this process is the continuing belief that there can be no end to this search. China may not yet have entered seriously into the global world market for processed tomatoes, but if the experience of other industrial production is utilized, the ‘‘race to the bottom’’ will not be long in coming. It is also likely that the condition of tomato workers will remain as abysmal in the future as it is at present. There is little indication that wages will rise or that benefits will be provided. The wage bill for production will become a greater part of the price for tomatoes and their products.

Notes 1. I was reminded of Ely Chinoy’s (1955) classic, The Automobile Workers and the American Dream, which shows how auto workers deal with assembly line stupefaction by cherishing ‘‘the American Dream’’ – what Torres might refer

to as a ‘‘contingent utopia.’’ The American Dream is getting off the assembly line and starting a small business where ‘‘I can be my own boss.’’ Chinoy also shows how the dream remains, for most assembly line workers, just a dream. 2. We are not informed what it actually cost the company to harvest and deliver the tomatoes but it soon became clear that the cost of production and delivery was significantly beyond the price premium. 3. Pritchard and Burch cite an interesting case twice (pp. 7, 259). In 2000 ‘‘a southern Italian canning company fulfilled a contract for private label canned baked beans for a British supermarket, using Mexican-sourced beans and Chinese tomato paste. This brought into effect a highly flexible and footloose set of production arrangements: the British supermarket’s decision to source its canned baked beans from a southern Italian canner was made on the basis of [a] short-term price-based contract, and the southern Italian canner in turn sourced its inputs on the basis of short-term price-based contracts’’ (pp. 259–260). Is this an example of the ‘‘race to the bottom?’’

References Chinoy, E. (1955). The Automobile Workers and the American Dream. Garden City, New York: Doubleday. Friedland, W. H. (2003). ‘‘Review of Deborah Barndt, tangled routes: women, work, and globalization on the tomato trail.’’ Rural Sociology 68(3): 461–463. Friedland, W. H. and A. Barton (1975). Destalking the Wily Tomato: A Case Study in Social Consequences in California Agricultural Research. Davis, California: Department of Applied Behavioral Sciences, University of California. Hightower, J. (1973). Hard Tomatoes, Hard Times. Cambridge, UK: Schenkman. Levenstein, H. A. (1985). ‘‘The American response to Italian food.’’ Food and Foodways 1(1): 1–23. Long, N. (1992). ‘‘From paradigm lost to paradigm regained: The case for an actor-oriented sociology of development .’’ In N. Long and A. Long (eds.) Battlefields of Knowledge: The Interlocking of Theory and Practice in Social Research and Development (pp. 16–43). London, UK and New York, New York: Routledge. Rasmussen, W. D. (1968). ‘‘Advances in American agriculture: The mechanical tomato harvester as a case study.’’ Technology and Culture 9(4): 531–543. Schmitz, A. and D. Seckler (1970). ‘‘Mechanized agriculture and social welfare: The case of the tomato harvester.’’ American Journal of Agricultural Economics 52(4): 569–577. Scott, J. C. (1985). Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. Thompson, O. and A. F. Scheuring (1978). From Lug Boxes to Electronics: A Study of California Tomato Growers and Sorting Crews. Davis, California: Department of Applied Behavioral Sciences, University of California, Davis.