The tomato hornworm is one of the ugliest bugs I’ve ever seen. It is almost the size of an adult human finger, sports a green skin with white stripes, and out of its rearend protrudes a dangerous looking red “horn.”
In fact, the tomato hornworm is not a worm at all but a caterpillar. It is the larval stage of the five-spotted hawkmoth, commonly called a hummingbird moth. The adult moth lays its eggs on the underside of foliage in late spring. Within a week, the eggs hatch and the larvae emerge and feed on the foliage for a month, growing long and fat. Next, they create cocoons and pupate in the soil. In warmer climates, in as little as two weeks, the adult moths emerge from the soil and repeat the cycle.
The hornworm is the bane of tomato gardeners across the country. Working from the top down on a tomato plant, they can entirely defoliate it in no time. Tomato gardeners know it’s critical to remove these pests if one wants to have any hope of enjoying the vine ripened goodness of a homegrown summer tomato.
For as long as I can remember, my dad grew tomato plants in his backyard in New Mexico. And for as long as I can remember, he battled with tomato hornworms, which he just called “tomato worms.” Tomato worms can be dealt with by a variety of measures, but it boils down to either handpicking them off the plants or applying some type of insecticide. When you have a small backyard plot of tomatoes and a couple of fearless, sharp-eyed kids like my dad did, handpicking is the easy choice.
As a reward for picking tomato worms, we earned a penny apiece for each one we collected off the vines and returned to my dad. That was enough money in the 1970s to buy a few packs of Bazooka bubble gum. And, of course, we all got to enjoy the worm-free harvest of tomatoes, too.
And enjoying vine ripened tomatoes was something my dad loved.
He would eat them straight off the vine, like an apple, savoring the sun-warmed flesh and juice. Other times, he cut them into slices with his tomato knife, which had a smooth, wooden handle and a blade worn so thin you could bend it, the result of years of resharpening. He would often eat the slices with a little salt or on top off a saltine cracker.
Little did my dad know that the tomatoes’ flavor was the result of a complex combination of sugars, acids, and as many as twenty volatile organic compounds (VOCs). VOCs are chemicals that can be smelled by humans in minuscule amounts, measured in parts per billion, but have a huge impact on how tomatoes taste. All these chemical components are the result of some fifteen genes within a tomato that encode for flavor.
Tomato gardeners like my dad didn’t need to know the chemistry of tomato flavor to know it tasted good. And not only do they taste good, but they are good for you. Tomatoes are an excellent source of vitamin C, vitamin K, potassium, calcium, folate, thiamine and niacin. In addition, they are a major source of the antioxidant lycopene, which has been scientifically linked to a reduced risk of heart disease.
Therefore, it is no wonder tomatoes are the most popular backyard vegetable to grow, appearing in nine out of ten backyard plots. They are also one of the most consumed vegetables in the United States, second only to the ubiquitous potato. In 2023, the average American consumed more than thirty pounds of tomatoes, counting fresh and processed consumption.
In many ways, the popularity of tomatoes is surprising. The tomato’s wild ancestors originated on the remote coast of what is now northern Peru and southern Ecuador, not exactly a likely location for the origin of one of the world’s most popular vegetables.
The coast of northern Peru and southern Ecuador is a rugged landscape, characterized by hot temperatures and little rainfall – a climate more like the desert city of Phoenix, Arizona than the beach town of San Diego, California. Again, an unlikely location for such a popular vegetable to originate.
The tomato’s wild ancestors still exist in isolated pockets, though most people would not recognize them. Their small, pea-size fruits bear little resemblance to today’s large modern tomato, although they are reported to be very tasty.
Eventually, the wild tomato made it north to Mexico or Central America, where it was domesticated by Mayan or Mesoamerican farmers. There, through controlled breeding, it began to resemble the fruit we have today, which is a thousand times larger than its wild cousin.
And this is what the Spanish explorers found when they arrived in the New World in the 1500s. The Spanish subsequently took the domesticated tomato back to Europe, where it flourished for the first time in the Old World in the arid Mediterranean climates of Spain, Italy, and southern France.
Today, of course, tomatoes are grown throughout the world, even in climates much different than the region where they originated, thanks to modern technologies like greenhouses, hydroponics, petrochemical fertilizers, and drip irrigation. More than 192 million tons were produced worldwide in 2023, making it the highest value fruit or vegetable in the world, according to the United Nations.
And as different as wild tomatoes are to domestic ones, summer tomatoes from the backyard are different from winter tomatoes from a commercial mega farm.
To begin with, while it is almost universally agreed that summer tomatoes are one of the tastiest fruits, it is also almost universally agreed that winter tomatoes are one of the worst. In consumer surveys, winter tomatoes consistently fall at the bottom of satisfaction surveys because they are essentially a large, tasteless mess.
This is because fifty years ago, tomato breeders began to breed a new kind of tomato, one that would satisfy the needs of commercial growers. Commercial growers get paid for yield, size, and appearance, not taste. So, it is these characteristics which tomato breeders have selectively bred into modern tomato varieties. They are large and they look good, but they are tasteless.
And by these criteria, tomato mega farming has been wildly successful: per acre yields of tomatoes have gone up fivefold since the 1930s and threefold more since the 1970s. But the result is a large tomato whose flavor has been essentially bred out of it, which represents a major disconnect in the supply chain between tomato breeders and end consumers.
During the winter, ninety percent of the fresh tomatoes in the supermarket come from Florida, which is not an ideal or even a good place to grow them. Florida’s sandy soil is devoid of nitrogen, an essential chemical for growing tomatoes, and sand contains almost no moisture. Florida has mild winters, so bugs and pathogens that attack tomatoes aren’t subject to killing frosts, making them available to attack again the following season. And its high humidity creates perfect conditions for tomato blight, wilt, spots, and mold.
The main attraction for growing tomatoes in Florida is, in fact, not agricultural but logistical: it is easy to transport its produce to the rest of the country by trailer trucks.
Growing winter tomatoes commercially in Florida is a far different endeavor than the way my dad grew them in the backyard in New Mexico. The cultivation, harvesting, and processing of winter tomatoes is a major agro-industrial effort that requires enormous amounts of petrochemicals and human labor.
The preparation of Florida tomato fields begins by forming the sandy soil into raised beds, which are covered in a polyethylene mulch. The beds are copiously fertilized with nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium, mainly derived from industrial processes like the Haber-Bosch process, which synthesizes ammonia from atmospheric nitrogen and hydrogen gas. Ammonia is a critical ingredient in the production of nitrogen-based fertilizers.
Because of the poor soil in Florida and to increase yields, tomatoes use more fertilizers than other vegetables require. Excessive use of petrochemical fertilizers can lead to adverse environmental and health effects because of chemical deposits and air and water pollution.
This is far different than the way my dad prepared his tomato beds in his backyard. He simply broke through New Mexico’s tough caliche soil with his shovel and turned in a few spadefuls of compost from his compost pile. He always had a pile of grass clippings, leaves, and kitchen waste composting in the backyard. And to this he sometimes added horse manure, which provided a range of nutrients, including nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium, in a natural way.
During their time in the fields, tomatoes can be attacked by dozens of insect species and diseases. In addition, numerous weeds try to outcompete the tomato plant for sunlight and nutrients. The commercial tomato farmer turns to a hundred different chemicals to combat the onslaught of pests: insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides. The raised beds are literally fumigated with these chemicals to keep pests at bay.
Many of these chemicals are still on the tomatoes when they reach the supermarket. According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and U.S. Department of Agriculture, fifty-four percent of tomatoes sampled in one study contained detectable levels of pesticides. The residues in the sample were below levels considered to be harmful to humans, but in high enough concentrations they can cause cancer, attack the nervous system, disrupt the endocrine system, and cause reproductive problems and birth defects.
It seems that not much has changed since scientist Rachel Carson first alerted the world to such problems in her 1962 book Silent Spring. In her book, she carefully documented how DDT, the most popular pesticide in the world at the time, was poisoning birds, fish, and other animals. And she reasoned, if DDT could harm animals, then it could harm people, too. Partially because of Carson’s book, the use of DDT was banned for use in the United States in 1971. Since then, however, thousands of new pesticides have entered the U.S. market.
My dad didn’t combat tomato pests with insecticides. Nor did he use herbicides to kill weeds, preferring to “cut their heads off” with his hoe. This was before organic farming was a trend – my dad simply employed the simplest and most cost-effective means to keep his crop pest free. Of course, being able to do so is the advantage of the backyard gardener and not something that is so easily accomplished on the scale of the commercial grower.
On a commercial tomato farm, after ten to fifteen weeks, the tomatoes are ready to pick. They are not, however, picked vine-ripened like my dad did. They are picked when they reach a stage growers call “mature green,” which sounds like an oxymoron, but simply means the tomato has reached a stage where it is almost ripe but still green and hard enough to be suitable for shipping to long-distance markets. The green and hard tomatoes are then taken to packhouses for final processing before being transported to market.
At the packhouse, the tomatoes are first given a chlorine bath to kill any bacteria like salmonella that might be present. (Tomatoes are responsible for most produce-related food-borne illnesses in the United States.) Next, they are misted with mineral oil to prevent spoilage and get a sheen. Finally, they are gassed with ethylene until they take on the appearance of being ripe.
Ethylene gas is a colorless and odorless gas produced both naturally and artificially. Tomatoes and other plants produce it as a hormone, which triggers ripening, and it is also formed through organic decomposition. At the packhouse, though, it is created by an industrial process in which a catalytic generator produces ethylene by converting ethyl alcohol to ethylene and water by heating it in the presence of a catalyst. Since the 1920s, food scientists have concluded no ethylene-ripened tomato would ever have the taste and texture of one that is naturally ripened.
Ethylene is a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming, though not as much as other greenhouse gases like methane and carbon dioxide. It can react, however, with other pollutants to form ground-level ozone, a component of smog and a potent greenhouse gas. It should be noted that ethylene is also created as a byproduct of burning fossil fuels and biomass.
Finally, the artificially ripened tomatoes are packaged and shipped on trailer trucks to supermarkets across the country. Oil is the primary raw material used in the creation of plastic packaging, accounting for four percent of the world’s oil consumption. Quite obviously, fossil fuel burning trailer trucks significantly add to the oil (and gas) used in the production of tomatoes.
As a result of these agro-industrial and transportation processes, commercially grown tomatoes are one of the most environmentally unfriendly vegetables available to consumers. In an assessment of the environmental impacts, Impactful Ninja (a global community of experts researching and publishing science-backed content) rated tomatoes as having the second-highest carbon footprint of all fruits and vegetables due to their impact on land, air, and water.
But the environmental consequences of tomato farming pale in comparison to their human consequences.
Unlike other crops like corn and soybeans whose cultivation is highly automated, the production of tomatoes is still largely a manual process that requires significant human labor from beginning to end. And most of that labor in Florida is done by a migrant and seasonal workforce totaling some 400,000 men and women, forty to fifty percent of whom lack legal work authorization.
Under the watchful eye of gang bosses, these workers toil for up to fourteen hours a day for meager pay in difficult and dangerous conditions. Workers are paid based on the number of buckets they deliver to the truck. The average piece rate today is 50 cents for every thirty-two pounds of tomatoes picked. Therefore, a worker must pick 2.25 tons of tomatoes in a ten-hour workday to earn the minimum wage.
One of the most insidious problems with Florida tomato farming is the extensive use of pesticides and other dangerous chemicals that workers are exposed to daily, without proper training or personal protective equipment. Likewise, serious injuries such as sprains, fractures, lacerations, and heat-related illnesses are common, due to the physical demands of the work.
Because many of the workers don’t speak English, lack work authorization, and don’t have medical insurance, they are reluctant to seek medical attention for their work-related injuries. When they do, they usually must pay for care out of their own pockets.
Unlike other workers in the United States, farm workers are exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act (FSLA), which was enacted in 1938 as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. The FLSA established minimum wage, overtime pay, recordkeeping, and child labor standards for most full-time and part-time workers in the private sector and in federal, state, and local governments. It provided protections for workers, ensuring they received fair compensation for their labor, but did not include agricultural workers, an exception Roosevelt had to make to satisfy Republican demands, in order to get the law passed.
In addition to a lack of federally mandated worker protection, a new danger has emerged for tomato laborers: the threat of deportation. As part of President Donald Trump’s efforts to secure the U.S. borders, his administration is currently in the process of deporting 1 to 1.3 million undocumented workers across agriculture, meat packing, dairy, and food processing plants. Throughout the country, those suspected of being in the country without proper authorization are being taken into custody at homes, schools, workplaces, churches, and even courthouses by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
Before being deported back to their home country or elsewhere, detainees are being housed in migrant detention centers like the one found in Florida, notoriously known as “Alligator Alcatraz.” The facility, located on an abandoned airfield in the Florida Everglades, is a tent-city designed to hold three to five thousand migrants. Reports from people that have been inside the detention center describe the inhumane living conditions as resembling oversized dog kennels. They have reported the center is infested with mosquitoes, does not have proper sanitation, and lacks adequate food and reliable medical treatment.
The results are sad but predictable: some farms no longer have enough workers to harvest their crops. Many workers have been deported, while others simply don’t show up for work out of fear of being deported themselves. Farming operations are being shuttered and costs are spiking, putting pressure on profits across the food supply chain. Commercial tomato farms across Florida are being mowed over and left to rot due to Trump’s immigration policies.
Violations of human rights in the service of agriculture are nothing new in Florida. The first European settlers to arrive in Florida were the Spanish, led by Juan Ponce de León in 1513. The Spanish explorers and colonists subsequently enslaved Native Americans and used them as laborers, sexual partners, guides, porters, and suppliers of food, and their treatment was usually brutal. They were also forced to convert to Christianity.
Native Americans who resisted were often killed or punished by a system called encomienda, in which the natives were assigned to colonists through land grants. When colonists claimed a piece of land, they were also given a group of natives with it. The natives were forcibly made to work the land by planting crops and mining for the landowners.
The Spanish maintained control over Florida for some three hundred years until they ceded it to the United States in 1819 under the Adams-Onis Treaty. For Native Americans, nothing improved with the United States in control, as the U.S. pursued a policy of forced removal and assimilation exemplified by the Indian Removal Act of 1830. This policy eventually led to the Trail of Tears, a forced relocation of thousands of native Seminoles from Florida to Oklahoma (then called Indian Territory).
By the time Florida officially became a territory of the United States in 1821, slavery had become an integral part of its economy, with the importation of enslaved Africans continuing to grow. Rigid laws were enacted, treating all Black individuals as inferior and suitable for slavery. In 1845, Florida was admitted to the union as a slave state, and by then enslaved labor made up forty percent or more of the population in some counties.
Florida seceded from the Union in 1861 and joined the Confederacy, primarily to protect slavery. The Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 declared freedom for enslaved people in Confederate states, but enforcement was limited until the Civil War's end in 1865. The Thirteenth Amendment, ratified that year, formally abolished slavery across the United States. After abolition, however, practices resembling slavery persisted through sharecropping and convict leasing, affecting many African Americans in Florida.
Today, obviously, slavery no longer exists in Florida, but its sordid history is being whitewashed by Florida politicians. Under the leadership of Governor Ron DeSantis, the Florida State Board of Education has adopted new African American history standards that teach that some Black people even benefitted from slavery because it taught them to be carpenters, blacksmiths, cobblers, and tailors. The Florida Education Association, a statewide teacher’s union representing 150,000 teachers, called the new standards a “disservice” and a “big step back.”
It's clear that Florida has not yet escaped from the gravitational pull created by its past human rights abuses.
My dad was never a fan of the winter tomato found in the supermarket. His main complaint, like most other consumers, was they just didn’t taste as good as what he could grow on the vine. But he also stood for protecting the environment and paying people a fair wage for an honest day’s work – the result of growing up poor on a small family farm. Consequently, he had additional reasons not to like winter tomatoes like those grown in Florida.
In his later years, my dad always planted a few tomatoes in large pots, which he could move into the sunroom attached to the south side of his house at the end of the summer. Doing so allowed him to grow a few tomatoes nearly year-round in the mild winters of New Mexico’s middle Rio Grande River valley.
For my dad, it was as much about the importance of connecting with the land as it was about the tomato itself. Aldo Leopold wrote about the importance of working the land in his book A Sand County Almanac. “There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm,” he wrote. “One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.”
When Leopold wrote those words in 1949, he was referring to the Progressive Era ideal of the independent family farm like my dad grew up on, not today’s commercial mega farms owned by corporations that harm the environment with petrochemical fertilizers, insecticides, and pesticides, exploiting people with abusive labor practices all to make a profit.
I think Leopold and my dad would also agree with the spiritual dangers of not growing a few vine-ripened tomatoes in the backyard.
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