Barry Estabrook's Tomatoland

Barry Estabrook's new book Tomatoland is getting great coverage.  The NYT review is by Dwight Garner, who grew up not far from the heart of the Florida tomato industry.  Here also is an NPR interview on Fresh Air.

From the publisher's site:

Estabrook traces the supermarket tomato from its birthplace in the deserts of Peru to the impoverished town of Immokalee, Florida, a.k.a. the tomato capital of the United States. He visits the laboratories of seedsmen trying to develop varieties that can withstand the rigors of agribusiness and still taste like a garden tomato, and then moves on to commercial growers who operate on tens of thousands of acres, and eventually to a hillside field in Pennsylvania, where he meets an obsessed farmer who produces delectable tomatoes for the nation’s top restaurants.

I described my visit to Immokalee in this blog in 2009.