The American Way

Making my morning coffee, I always turn on NPR.  Today, I was treated to two American food industry stories. 

One was about a lawsuit that some dairy farmers have brought against their representative organization - Dairy Farmers of America, whose CEOs are paid multi-million-dollar annual salaries - for making a deal in favor of a milk processor over the dairy farmers.  The association finally offered a multi-million dollar settlement (on the actual eve of trial of course) with the caveat that they be allowed to say they did nothing wrong. 

The other story was about tomatoes.  Florida tomato growers are asking Congress to remove the price regulations on Mexican tomatoes, which are set so that Mexican growers can't undersell Florida growers. "Why would they want that?" you ask.  And it's a good question.  The answer is:  People are buying more Mexican ripened on the vine tomatoes, and sales of Florida's ripened with ethylene gas tomatoes are declining rapidly.  Since Florida growers can't or won't compete by selling ripened on the vine tomatoes, and people don't like the taste of their crappy product, they're losing business.  What happens if they get the price regulations removed is that they can then sue Mexican growers for "dumping" product - even if the Mexican growers are not dumping (selling product for less than it costs to produce it).  The lawsuit would allow the US government to impose punitive tariffs on Mexico for this supposed dumping, making the Mexican tomatoes more expensive.   The US Commerce department is appearing to side with the Florida growers, of course.  Interestingly, Wal-Mart is siding with Mexican growers.  They know their consumers, eh?

I don't know where California tomato growers are in this.  They weren't mentioned in the story.  At harvest time, the Sacramento Valley tomato fields make that whole area smell like Campbells soup.  I know a great deal of their tomatoes are sold for processing and canning, so maybe that's the difference.  Maybe they're not producing tomatoes for the table so much. 

I suspect the upshot of a successful bid by the Florida growers would be that people just pay more for Mexican tomatoes.  I don't think they'll decide to go back to Florida crap tomatoes.  That's based on my own preference, however, which has been in place since I left the farm as a kid and was faced with whatever those tasteless pink rubber things were in the grocery store that were sold as tomatoes.  I just quit eating tomatoes. 

I can only suggest that if you can't grow your own, you buy at your local farmers market whenever you can. 

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.