The Politics of Produce · Episode 14 of 17 · 21 min
Picked by Hand: Tomatoes, Immokalee, and a Penny
The fresh tomato cannot be machine-picked, so the question is who picks it and under what conditions. The episode covers Florida's forced-labor record, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers' Fair Food Program and its penny-per-pound model, and the trade war: the 2025 end of the U.S.-Mexico Tomato Suspension Agreement and the 2026 ITC affirmation.
Who's who
- Coby LorenzenUC Davis engineer who developed the mechanical tomato harvester
- G.C. Jack HannaUC Davis horticulturist who bred a machine-pickable tomato
Where it happens
- Immokalee, Florida+1 more episodehome of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers
- Sinaloa, Mexico+1 more episodecenter of greenhouse tomato exports to the U.S.
- UC Davis, Californiadeveloped the tomato harvester and processing tomato
Timeline
- 1979suit filed against the University of California over mechanization research
- 1993Coalition of Immokalee Workers founded
- March 2005Yum! Brands agrees to CIW's terms after the Boycott the Bell campaign
- 2011CIW launches the Fair Food Program
- July 14, 2025suspension agreement terminated; antidumping duty of about 17.1% imposed
- June 30, 2026ITC leaves the antidumping order in place
Still debated
Mechanizing the processing tomato raised yields and lowered costs but destroyed tens of thousands of jobs, and both are true. Whether antidumping duties help American workers or only raise grocery bills is also disputed.