Tomatoland Essay

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Recommended: Impact of agricultural subsidies

"As one large Florida farmer said, 'I don't get paid a single cent for flavor...I get paid for weight. And I don't know of any supermarket shopper who tastes her tomatoes before she puts them in her shopping cart.' ... It's not worth commercial plant breeders' while to breed for taste because their customers — the large farmers — don't get paid for it." Once again, farmers are powerless in the face of economic superpowers in Estabrook's book, Tomatoland. Farmers aren't incentivized to create tasty, nutritious tomatoes because consumers aren't asking for it. Estabrook believes that most consumers, including myself, are oblivious to how tomatoes and other produce have been transformed over the years by economic goals. Estabrook describes the …show more content…

Globalization has been portrayed as a positive force in the developing world, however Jamaica has clearly suffered the exploitive nature of globalization in the film, Life and Debt. It is truly unbelievable that only a few people can manipulate the lives of millions of Jamaicans for the sake of economic growth. The IMF's deputy director in the film detailed the unrealistic conditions that the IMF expected of Jamaica. It's astounding that they believe that capitalist principles can be successfully applied to a 3rd world county. One example is the proposal to jump start economic growth by “expanding exports and diminishing imports” simultaneously even though one of the IMF's conditions was for Jamaica lower their trade barriers to make it easier to import goods into Jamaica. The Jamaican farmers and laborers expressed an especially powerful critique of the reduced trade barriers and the large amounts of subsidized food that is imported due to the reduction of trade barriers. Local farmers simply cannot compete with the subsidized imports. Their lands that were once abundant with produce are not empty. They explained that they couldn’t sell their food as cheaply as the imported subsidized food. This is especially upsetting because the World Trade Organization is supposed to create fair competition. Which brings us to the ultimately significant question once again of who benefits and who is disadvantaged by the vicious cycle of capitalism and

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