"The Ruination of the Tomato" DUE WED. Feb. 13 @ 8:15 a.m.

[Mr. Daiss]

You do not need to respond to anyone else's post for full credit this time!!

Kramer gives many reasons for the "ruination" of the tomato.  Which do you see as most at fault for what has happened to the tomato in particular and to modern agriculture in general?  Explain your rationale in a paragraph.

[nrogie]

If you're like me and see all of the images aren't rotated the correct way, just download the pdf, then save each of the images as a separate .png file. This way you can rotate each of the pages on your computer.

[nrogie]

I think the main reason for it was mainly because there are so many people who want to eat tomatoes and/or tomato products. The more demand there was for it, the more scientists tried to genetically engineer the tomato to have the best productivity, and the best "looks". The reason for mass harvesting and production of tomatoes (or any product of agriculture) boils down to consumer demand. If everyone in America was to boycott tomatoes because of all the growth supplements, pesticides and other chemicals, I'm sure the industry would change something. There's not that much organic food to go around.

On Monday, February 11, 2013 11:19:12 PM UTC-5, Mr. Daiss wrote:

[rcowart]

In the article "Ruination of the Tomatoe", what I see most at fault for what has happended to the tomatoe in paticular is the taste and how the use of technology ruins it. Now days all everyone wants to do is to get things done fast and quick and with the help of technology it's not that hard to do. Before technology had ever came to be, all people had was each other and you also had to have patience then as well. When you have a smaller business, your food tends to taste better and all that is upon it is because there was more time taken in between making it and it was done in a natural manner. With the help of technolgy, we can get anything done in what time we have. Technology is a way for humans to be less productive and for it to be more easier on the workers. When you have a person and a machine that can do the same thing but with different times, you will probably pick the faster one. When less time is taken out on a food it can really take the taste and all natural feel to the food away. Technology seems better most of the time but all in all it makes your food unatural and fake and not the real thing.

 

[jpark]

I see technology as most at fault for what is happening to tomatos in particular because many people want to eat it, the farmers need to have so much to sell ina short amount of time. Farmers use chemicals to grow the tomatos so quickly, just like cows! When the author explained the tractors moving in, I was imagining it in my head, not only animals get chemicals in them to grow them faster, but fruits, vegetables. Those are things we see as healthy food and we can diet on them anytime without worrying about getting fat or sick! In this article if I'm understanding correctly, they are telling us that the tomatos are getting "built" instead of grown naturally. Yes they are GROWN, but they are being chemicalized (if that's even a word haha). Modern agriculture should be grown naturally and not with machines and stuff, but I also don't agree with people working because that would lead to slavery again.

On Monday, February 11, 2013 11:19:12 PM UTC-5, Mr. Daiss wrote:

[jpark]

I agree with Rachel when she said that present day, people wants to get things done faster and quick with the help of technology. Techonology is also another way for people to be less productive which I call LAZY... But I am glad for technology though!

On Monday, February 11, 2013 11:19:12 PM UTC-5, Mr. Daiss wrote:

[csquires]

Now almost all food is processed and not organic. chemicals are added into the tomato which makes it not as healthy as it would be if you went ouside and picked the tomato and ate it. Factories has made what was healthy not anymore. The factories that the food goes through takes out all the nutrition.Probably in the late 1800s and early 1900s food was much healthier and the people who ate it were healthier as well. People today are lazy like Rachel says. We want things done fast and don't really care what we put into our bodies.

On Monday, February 11, 2013 11:19:12 PM UTC-5, Mr. Daiss wrote:

[Jasmine Lee]

In the article, “The Ruination of the Tomato”, what I see as a fault is the technology. Some people use technology to hack other people, some use it to be social, and some just use it to be plain old LAZY! They make all these chemicals to make tomatoes ripen faster and have mass productions of tomatoes. Man, just let the stuff grow naturally and if you did maybe you won’t have these people trying to put you out of business.  I totally agree with Rachel, people back in the day didn’t have all this technology, when they were farming. They had TWO THINGS:  patience and two hands. They let vegetables grow naturally and healthy. Maybe if they didn’t use all those chemical that little boy off of that video “Food Inc.” would still be alive right now.  

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[zallen]

I believe that all of the chemicals that were used are most at fault for what has happened to the tomato. Before all of the chemicals were used, the tomatoes tasted much better than they do now. Back in the early days, they had that certain taste that everyone would look for in a tomato. Now, the tomatoes are bland and boring. Today, we really don't have a clue what is being put on the tomatoes. For all we know, we eat the tomatoes we could be putting harmful chemicals in our bodies.   

On Monday, February 11, 2013 11:19:12 PM UTC-5, Mr. Daiss wrote:

[zallen]

I believe that all of the chemicals that are being out on the tomatoes are at most fault for what has happened to tomatoes today. In the early days, the tomatoes had that taste that everyone would look for in a tomato. Today, the tomatoes have a bland and boring taste to them. Another point is that we really have no idea what kind of chemicals is being put on the tomatoes we eat. For all we know we could be putting harmful chemicals in our bodies that could harm us or even cause death. 

On Monday, February 11, 2013 11:19:12 PM UTC-5, Mr. Daiss wrote:

[mstroud]

     I feel that Tomatoes were originally very healthy and just made itself, and now that they are in today whether everything has something in it, it has all these chemicals and unhealthy ingredients mixed in with them or tomato products. It may have happened because so many people wanted this and it was so popular that people/scientist tried making it better for the people, almost to where it went bad. Sometimes a little is better. Rather than creating a whole different unhealthy product. In "The Ruination of the Tomato" Technology seems to have a big or extreme part on this as well.So many people insist on having this products, they may not be hand made in time so they use these chemicals and other ingredients to speed up the process.

[aletaylor]

I feel like people have taken over the way we use technology. Now we use technology for our food, thats not good. Due to the consumers having such a high demand for tomatoes,scientist have remade how we grow tomatoes. Now the put all theses chemicals in them to make them look good and taste good. It is partly our fault as the consumer that this has happened because we demand more, bigger, and better tomatoes.

[smiller]

I find the use of chemicals and nonorganic substances has lead to the "ruination" of the tomato.  All the chemicals that are used, are used for reasons that only help the producer of the product rather than the consumer of the product.  The chemicals will help it to grow faster so that the producer can make more money, or help it to not spoil so that again the producer can make more money off of the product.  Practically all of the time that chemicals are put into foods it does not effect the consumer in a positive way.  This is what I find most disheartening and just down right disrespectful about food producers in the age that we live in.

[cwilliamson]

I feel like technology is at fault here because it changed the taste of the tomato. I agree with Nick though. We are the consumers, and we want more tomatoes at quicker rates. We also want them to taste good. So scientists are always coming up with way to make a product more presentable to the public. That includes the tomato. So, we the consumers are at fault for the ruination of the tomato.

On Monday, February 11, 2013 11:19:12 PM UTC-5, Mr. Daiss wrote:

[gparsons]

     Much of today's produce has tons of chemicals in it because the companies think if they make everything bigger and better then they can sell it for a whole lot. The chemicals and technology are completely ruining the natural beauty of todays food. everything is either processed or organic. Organic is better for you but, because they made the unhealthy stuff easier to find they raise the prices to be higher for organic stuff. it is ridiculous. They want t make everything faster. it is faster to make a tomato with steroids and chemicals than to let it naturally grow. they need to get tons of them out so they don't believe they have the time to "wait for the grass to grow" (haha). anyways, its not right for our food to be so chemically covered. it's healthier to go for natural stuff.

On Monday, February 11, 2013 11:19:12 PM UTC-5, Mr. Daiss wrote:

[etenney]

Like Caroline said earlier, mostly everything is processed and no longer organic. With this being so, we are not as healthy as we could be. Processed food is cheaper than the organic food which is healthier. With economy that way it is now, many people care more about the price rather than what they are putting into their bodies. Also, technology is also at fault. With all the updated and big machines that do so much work like processing quickly, people rather get it quick. 

On Monday, February 11, 2013 11:19:12 PM UTC-5, Mr. Daiss wrote:

[jkramer]

On the surface it may appear that the ruination of the tomato is that the tomato has been altered chemically and has to be sprayed red in the growing process. Also, that the tomato is no longer a natural product but rather a scientific product. But what I think Kramer is trying to make a point about is how the tomato in the economy and market has changed and essentially been ruined. The farming business has gone from family farmers who only owned around 45 acres to mass producers who own around 350 acres and work under and for the big companies. What led to this change is the harvester. The harvester allowed for mass production of tomatoes and small farmers can't keep up with this production pace even if their tomatoes are as good as or even better than the mass producers. This has put many out of business and others have been laid off. The tomato is no longer a fresh and rich taste but rather a bland taste, which has been combined with green or molded or defected tomatoes in some cases. This is due to the farmers mixing in these so that they use up all of the percent that is allowed them and not waste their money. In the end, the tomato is ultimately ruined by the spreading industry and the demand of more and therefore a farmer has to do what a farmer has to do!

On Monday, February 11, 2013 11:19:12 PM UTC-5, Mr. Daiss wrote:

[mculberson]

I think its just the part on people for trying to engineer a tomato. By engineering the tomato to grow faster, bigger, and taste better: its not a good tomato. The engineerig can harm you and possibly kill you. The whole using chemicals and what not is just bad for the person and bad for the company.  IF they harma  person, then the people will stop buying their product! It happens in other products to, like CHICKEN!!!

[pdaugherty]

There are many reasons the tomato has been so-called "ruined".  We haven given it this image of a plump round bright red perfect circle with no blemishes at all and natural tomatoes just don't fit that description.  The ordinary public sees these organic tomatoes and thinks that there is something wrong with them but in reality they just have these warped expectations.  Instead of trying to fix our views of the tomato, the industry produced tomatoes by the guidelines of the public.

On Monday, February 11, 2013 11:19:12 PM UTC-5, Mr. Daiss wrote:

[wkerdasha]

I think that the main reason that there are tons of people that want to eat tomatoes and other things made out of tomatoes. It seems like the more people there are that want tomatoes it makes it harder to produce more organic tomatoes. This results in more scientists trying to cut corners so that the tomatoes can be made at cheaper costs. The result of this means that prices of tomatoes will go down and so will the quality while the farmers make more money off of one truck. Most people don't realize how many foods are processed today and do not realize it or don't care. On the other hand there are people that do care and if they were to go on strike against processed foods then more food could become less processed. The problem is that the need for organic foods could not keep up with the demand.

[dclaxton]

The main reason that i see for the tomatos being ruined is the mass want for them.  There just wasn't any way to grow that many tomatos to apease all of the people. Scientists had to devlop ways to chemically engineer the tomatos to grow faster and bigger, but in the process they lose the natural and real taste of a tomato that is grown on its own time instead of being given tomato steroids. People don't care about their tomatos quality as long as they can always have them at any given time. The companies have to keep their consumers happy by making more and larger tomatos at a mch faster rate than the competition.

[Nathaniel "Naythanyull" Kelley]

          In my opinion, the biggest contributor to the "tomato tragedy" (Alliteration ftw) was sort of a chain reaction, started by the innovation of technology. The tomato harvester greatly reduced the number of workers necessary for harvesting, making way for humongous expansion of planted crops. This, in turn, caused companies that had the money to invest in a harvester to have an advantage over small time farmers. Then the companies began to steadily grow larger and larger until their mass dominated and destroyed local farmers' chances at any sort of profit (See any parallels with the meat industry yet?). Like Kramer says, 85% of tomatoes are now grown in California, the majority being created by the "tomato oligopoly." Although this is a farfetched expectation for the modern human, if companies had stayed smaller and not tried to dominate the market, the tomato situation in general would be better off.

          Meanwhile, technology is also being used by chemists and scientists (Why do you think they have so much more to do with tomatoes these days?) are breeding special tomatoes that have traits that are only beneficial to increase processing efficiency. "Engineers called for tomatoes that had tougher skins and were oblong so they wouldn't roll back down tilted conveyor belts." The engineers, of course, never thought of how these new traits would affect the taste. After all, who cares about how a tomato tastes if you get it for a good price?

On Monday, February 11, 2013 11:19:12 PM UTC-5, Mr. Daiss wrote:

[lreed]

On Monday, February 11, 2013 11:19:12 PM UTC-5, Mr. Daiss wrote:

> You do not need to respond to anyone else's post for full credit this time!!
>
> Kramer gives many reasons for the "ruination" of the tomato.  Which do you see as most at fault for what has happened to the tomato in particular and to modern agriculture in general?  Explain your rationale in a paragraph.

The engineering of the tomato is at most fault. Since the tomatoes are in such high demand, the engineers will do anything to have larger, plumper tomatoes in the less time possible. This is also seen in Food Inc. where they will do anything to have the cows larger and stronger no matter the risk of bacteria. Modern agriculture in general has become this way. It's no so much as the quality as it is the quantity. The producers would rather have large, chemically engineered tomatoes, than slightly smaller organic ones.

[Westcott]

The tomato is only one example of what is truly going on behind all the processes of what we consumers see in the food industries. It isn't entirely the fault of the machinery and the science that the companies are using, it's the fact that we are overloading it all into our food that makes it bad. The chemicals themselves might not be considered bad, it's just the use we provide for them. Unfortunately, it is not an easy problem to fix. The larger companies are more ruthless these days. They have more control over us not only by supplying us our food, but they also take part in the government agencies that are supposed to be keeping them in line. Self-policing is NOT the best policy, because many companies will take advantage of it for the larger paycheck. They hire illegal aliens who probably don't have such a good education and get paid less because they are here illegally. Most of these people are not even properly trained for the jobs they get, and therefore can make many mistakes from lack of training, experience, and lack of ample time to actually do it. If these companies were to just get rid of these illegal workers and hire true American citizens, these companies would be required to pay more for them in order to cover minimum wage laws and healthcare laws, etc. They control our food industries by making the organic, healthier food more expensive, and therefore our logical minds are more inclined to buy the cheapest food possible. These days the companies are no longer caring about quality and such, but how much money they can make out of endangering our lives with this unhealthy, highly processed food. It is no easy matter correcting this error, as any changes to improve it would mean less money for the big company in charge, or, more likely, we would have to pay two to five times as much for our everyday food. Other companies take advantage of our problems, using their cheaper labor to produce enough to sell in our country, most times at lower prices, forcing us to become more dependent on other countries productivity in some areas rather than on our own. The bitter, scary cycle is a well-designed trap or pit that keeps getting harder to dig out of the longer we stay in them. Most people in our country either don't know, don't care, or are too scared to speak up about it.

[Nathaniel "Naythanyull" Kelley]

ARGGHHH Typo "chemists and scientists WHO are breeding special tomatoes"

[tpatten]

I think that since tomatoes are in high demand all year round, scientists try to genetically alter the tomato so it's ready for sales much earlier to meet demand. Technology is mainly at fault. Because consumers demand fo rtomatoes, producers are putting chemicals and pesticides, causing the tomatoes to become less and less healthy.

[rgarvin]

The main fault in "The Ruination of the Tomato," is technology. Companies are trying their hardest to create and produce food faster and faster. This has lead them to use chemicals and other products on our food. Are we really eating tomatoes or are we just eating a fruit that is consumed with chemicals. Our food would be way more healthy and more tasteful if they would stop using chemicals on the fruit.  I understand that is an ignorant statement because we need our food mass produced but maybe we should do without. In the grand scheme of things cutting back on the production and chemicals on our food would be much more beneficial.  

[rirappa]

Kramer tells us many of reasons for the tomato being ruined. I think the main reason for the tomato being spoiled is that Americans want their food and because of the population increase they want more and more tomatoes so it is the food industries job to do that. To make tomatoes quicker and easier to access scientists must genetically enhance the food to make it look better and to have the best productivity. The real reason behind the tomato being so different is the population increase and Americans wanting more of this and more of that. Then the food companies are forced to mass produce their product and to try to meet the needs of everyone and they only an pick one so they pick to mass produce their product. Today modern agriculture should be more patient and should not be as reliant on quickness and technology. That to me has also ruined the industry. I cannot blame them though because they want money and money is what makes you valuable as a person in American culture. I do not agree with them doing what they do to make money off of the tomato because I think that real farming is taking your time and using your hands but they have blown that out of proportion.

[hyun]

I think that people and technology is the reasons for the "ruination" of the tomato. People started to invent the technology because it is faster, it's easier, and they can make tomatos "look good" with chemicals and fertilizers. I also agree with Nick how mass harvesting boils down to consumers' demends. The production need to be processing faster for consumers, and they use those technologies to make it. Those technologies is leading to make "scientific fruit" reather than real natural fruits.

[hyun]

I agree with Jillia how small farmers can not keep up with this mass production and those jobs go to big companies. I think Jillia makes good point on these.

[jocoates]

The development of technology is at fault for the ruination of the tomato/modern agriculture. By using machines that help speed up the production of the tomato, companies are reducing the cost of harvesting the tomatoes. Also, by using machines, the companies employ only 100 laborers, instead of 600. Technology is cheaper and quicker. The only problem is that it affects the quality of the tomatoes. Chemicals are put in the tomatoes so they can last longer, which causes the tomatoes to taste "bland." Tomatoes did not always taste this way. This change occurred when technology began to "take over" agriculture. When machinery became popular in the agriculture business, the saying "quality, not quantity" was not upheld any longer.

 

[kdoerksen]

This is basically an example of what we saw on food inc.  Ruination of the tomatoes are mostly the company’s fault. Technology to advance farming is not a bad thing; it is how it is used. The company’s are sacrifice quality and safety for speed which is not good. Some of the other students have said technology is to blame but what about technology that does no harm, like a grain thrashing machine?

[nbowden]

This paragraph gives a more full description of what a harvest day on a tomato farm looks like. It allows people into a day in the life of a harvesting tomato.

[kparys]

Today almost all foods have been processed by machineary and are not organic. many chemicals are added to the tomato which makes it not as healthy as it would be one were to simply puck it and eat it. Factories has made what was healthy into a very processed food today. in the factories that the food goes through takes out all the nutrition. n the late 1800s and early 1900s food was much healthier and the people who ate it were healthier as well. many people today are too lazy, and dont even want to check the nutrition facts. today, all humans want are things to be done fast and the way we wnat without caring what we put into our bodies. 

[ttriplett]

The most critical aspect of the modern agricultural age is the modernization of the world around us. The supply and demand of the world we live in is to vast of an order to fill with old fashioned ways. The industrialization of the food industry is something that is not good, but it is necessary. 

[aherndon]

I think the tomato has been ruined because of the large demand for them.  As an effect of the large demand for great looking and tasting tomatoes, the scientists went to work on trying to find ways to speed up the growth and production of tomatoes.  They have added so many different chemicals and genetically altered so many different parts of the tomato plant that it is really hard to even call what we find in the market a tomato!  The solution to the problem should not be in trying to find ways to alter the tomato or any other type of agricultural product.  The solution should be to just plant more of them.

[taaron]

I believe the most faulty reason for tomatoes being ruined is because of all the machinery and technology used in harvesting them.  The people on the farms just treat the food like crap because since they grow millions of tomatoes they have to find a way to pick them quickly. Im not saying its the people that are the ones using the machines im just saying that the use of machines is what ruins them. If you think about it, tomatoes are like little children. They must be handled with care and delicateness or else they are easily ruined.  All the machines do is mash up a lot of the product and only get about half of what there is to actually harvest. Maybe if americans were not so greedy and want so much for ourselves, then maybe we could treat our good food a little better, but right now we treat it as though we are in a factory handling just any old piece of junk.