Where Grocery Store Tomatoes Come From

I was looking at various websites today about where grocery store vegetables come form and came across one that I thought was worth mentioning. This site is about Florida grow tomatoes. This article was called:

Why Supermarket Tomatoes Suck
This article is written by Barry Estabrook and he has a book out called Tomatoland which after seeing this article I just may have to read.

It explains in great detail exactly how many different chemicals (pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers) are used on these tomatoes. In this article he states, "According to figures compiled by the Florida Tomato Exchange, an industry group, a grower typically applies more than $2,000 worth of chemical fertilizers and pesticides to every acre of tomatoes (an area about the size of a football field) that he raises during a season." To think If I were to follow these practices I would spend around $4,000 on chemicals for my 2 acres that I plant on. What more can I say that is just plain insane!

He also talks about when then tomatoes are picked, as you may already know most supermarket tomatoes are picked when they are still green and ripened by being gassed with ethylene. But one thing that I found interesting was if these tomatoes have even a trace of pink on them are not harvested.