All you ever wanted to know about tomato farming, and then some

Last Friday I visited a tomato farm an hour or so outside LA. The farm, which is run by an alum from my
business school, is actually more of a seed business with produce as a byproduct.

It was interesting to learn about the seed business--it's much more complex than I'd imagined. The company hires a lab to cross-pollinate different varieties of tomatoes. The lab then sends thousands of varieties of seeds to the farm. The farm grows some of the seeds in order to evaluate the quality of the tomatoes and also gets other local growers to test the seeds. After they've tested the tomatoes and gotten feedback from growers, they select a few varieties of tomatoes, usually by how perfectly round and unblemished they are (so they'll either sell at the grocery store or fit neatly in the machines of tomato sauce makers) and by how firm they are (so they can withstand being stacked in boxes). No consideration is given to the taste, texture, or nutritional content of the tomatoes.

After they select a few varieties, they send the "recipe" for creating the tomato seeds to China for workers there to mass produce. Basically, they tell them which tomato plants to cross-pollinate and then have them extract the seeds of the offspring. I asked what happens to the tomatoes that the seeds come from; the farmer had no idea but suspected they just get tossed. After the workers extract the seeds, they send them back to the farm in California. The farm then distributes them for over $700 a bag. They don't patent the seeds because the seeds are hybrids and are sterile and of lower quality after several generations. So, while that's a great natural protection to the business's "intellectual property" (which I don't think organisms should ever be), it makes tomato growers totally dependent on the seed producers.

On another note, the farm also grows heirloom tomatoes, which varieties of tomatoes that have been grown for at least 40 or 50 generations. They are big, beautiful, and completely irregular in shape and color. Some looked like gnarled yellow pumpkins, others were deep red with dark green streaks and still others were almost purple. We got to taste five or six varieties of the heirloom tomatoes (and take home, lucky us!), along with conventional grocery store tomatoes. The heirlooms had incredible flavor, colors, and texture, while the grocery stores tomatoes tasted a little bit like mushy styrofoam. Anyway, the farm sell its heirloom tomatoes at farmers markets within a 60-mile radius. The farmer talked a little bit about how many of the other stands at farmers markets just buy produce wholesale and then resell it. For tomatoes, he said one way to tell is to pick it up and feel the tomato. If it feels smooth like grocery store tomatoes do, it may have been waxed, which is a sign that's it was purchased from a wholesaler. If it feels a tiny bit rough, almost like it has a little bit of dust on it, then it's less likely to be from a wholesaler. You can also talk to the grower about his practices and get to know growers at farmers markets. If you're interested, they should be willing to let you visit the farm to see how the food is grown.

We also got to walk through the hothouses they grow hydroponic tomatoes, which I imagined growing out of some sort of aquarium. In reality, they way they are grown isn't all that different from tomatoes grown in soil. Instead of soil, the farmers use shredded coconut husks to grow the tomatoes in. They use the shredded coconut material because it is sterile and has no inherent nutrients. In each greenhouse there are bags of the shredded coconut husks, arranged in long, neat rows along with lengths of hose. The bags have small slits for the tomato plants to grow out of and a tiny hose inserted into each slit feeds the tomato plant a mixture of water and nutrients every half hour. Seems like a lot of work to replicate the qualities of soil when it's available for free just under the bags of coconut, but I guess if the goal is to maximize the yield, then maybe it makes sense. Growing tomatoes hydroponically also allows for more efficient water use, as the water that seeps out of the bags of coconut material is captured and recycled.

WaPo reports US is behind the times with animal testing

From an article on how outdated the US's use of animal testing has become, "The reason we use animal tests is because we have a comfort level with the process . . . not because it is the correct process, not because it gives us any real new information we need to make decisions," said Melvin E. Andersen, director of the division of computational systems biology at the Hamner Institutes for Health Sciences near Raleigh, N.C. "Animal tests are no longer the gold standard," he said. "It is a marvelously new world."

Reason number 8,746 to go veggie

Disgusting.

Robots for rats

The NIH and EPA are teaming up to use more robots in toxicity tests and fewer lab animals.

This new, trans-agency collaboration is expected to generate data more relevant to humans; expand the number of chemicals that are tested; and reduce the time, money and number of animals involved in testing, officials of both agencies said.

Better, faster research, less cruelty, and for less money. Everyone wins.

The way nature never intended

Leave it to humans to take magnificent animal like a wolf and turn it into a marshmallow topiary of a dog, like the poodles on the left, shown last night at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. And those are the best of the breed!

Hideousness isn't the only calamity that comes with inbreeding dogs generation after generation. It's no secret that "purebred" dogs generally suffer from a host of health problems.

Purebred dogs at even the best of breeders live pretty depressing lives. I dogsat a number of times for a coworker, who was also a breeder of terriers. My coworker really loved her dogs and had a reputation for being one of the best breeders. She and her husband had between 12 and 16 dogs at any given time, depending on whether there were puppies in the house. Only one dog was allowed out of her cage all the time. The rest got fed twice a day and walked a few times a day. They spent the remaining 23.5 hours of every day in small wire cages stacked on top of each other in the sun room.

When I dogsat, I tried to take the dogs on long walks and have a couple of dogs out in the fenced yard at a time. Because the dogs were not neutered and didn't all get along, I could only have a couple of them out of their cages at a time, which meant that even if I had several dogs out of their cages for most of the day and switched them every hour or so, the dogs still spent all but a couple of hours a day trapped in their cages. The dogs would thrash and cry every single time I had to put them back into their cages. Heartbreaking. And those are likely the best of circumstances for breeders' dogs. (I won't even get started on their far worse cousins, puppy mills).

On top of that, the more purebred dogs there are, the less likely it is that animals in shelters will be adopted and the more likely it is that shelter animals will either be put down or live out their lives in shelters. According to PETA, about shelters house about six to eight million unwanted cats and dogs and about half of those animals are put to sleep each year.

What can we do to reduce dog and cat populations so that no animals need to live in shelters or be euthanized?

First, pledge to stop buying pets from pet stores and breeders. Should be the easiest decision you've ever made, but if you're having doubts, just take another look at those fugpoodles above and then check out the adorable dogs on petfinder.com).

Second, spay or neuter your pets. Lots of low-cost options are available for those on a tight budget. Just think of all the money you'll save on diapers for your female dog when she no longer goes into heat.

Third, lobby for or support legislation calling for mandatory sterilization of pet populations, like the bill the City of Los Angeles just passed.

Fourth, spread the word.

Yeah, NYT!

One of the best articles I've seen recently on the argument for going veggie ran in yesterday's New York Times.

Sundance Film Festival

On Sunday I flew back to LA from the Sundance Film Festival in Park City. Didn't see much for celebrities (no, the bald guy Charlotte marries in Sex and the City, Danny Baldwin, and the random guy from Neil Young's band do not count), but I saw some fantastic films, sat in on some really great panels, took in a set by Brett Dennen at the Music Cafe, and basked in the beauty of Park City's snowy, snowy mountains. Most of the celebrities come earlier in the week, so things were quiet, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that people seemed to be more focused on making great film and on making social change through film than on the glitz and glamour Hollywood has lent the event in recent years.

First, the films.

Flow: For Love of Water
The pathos was a bit over the top (they compared the future consequences of the water shortage in some parts of the world to the meteors that caused mass extinctions), which is too bad because I think it undermined the credibility of what was otherwise really good content on the consequences of privatizing water.

Red
Malicious teens shoot dog. Owner goes on insane rampage seeking vengeance, which (spoiler alert) ends with a bloodbath (at least for a Sundance Film). Don't get me wrong, I love dogs and empathize with the owner's anger, but no one in their right mind would go as far as he did. Overall the film was trite, predictable, and low on insight and character development. Too bad the best thing about the film, the cute dog, is only on screen for the first few minutes.

Sugar
The movie is by the creators of Half Nelson and is about how we crank ballplayers from Latin America through the baseball machine like so many cogs on a conveyer belt and toss them out when we're done with them. Unfortunately, I think that's exactly what will happen to the Dominican actors in the film. Still, the lush visuals and subtle acting make for a good movie.

Half-Life
What unwinds as a weird and unsettling look at the life of a dysfunctional California family is made beautiful and lovely by the animated (literally) imaginations of the main characters and touching depictions of each character's vulnerability.

I Always Wanted to be a Gangster
A French comedy, oddly enough, and the only lighthearted movie I saw. Absolutely gorgeous imagery. Funny, original, and sweet-but-not-too-sweet. Probably my favorite movie of the festival.


Now, for the panels.

That Must Be Told: Todays Human Rights Documentary Movement
The panelists started by showing clips of their films (more info below) and then moved to a discussion of whether it is enough to simply make a documentary film and raise awareness or whether one must also offer concrete ways for viewers to take action. That segued to a discussion on the trend of working with nonprofits that use documentary film in their campaigns, and the benefits that can come with collaboration, like exposure, funding, and offering audiences a way to take action. Amnesty International has a campaign related to Mumia Abu-Jamal, a Black former Panther and journalist, and his 25 years on death row, and so they were willing to collaborate with panelist Livia Giuggioli on her film about his life, In Prison My Whole Life. The film screened at Sundance, but unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to see it.

Also on the panel:

*Gillian Caldwell, 1Sky Alliance

*Oren Yakobovich, B'Tselem, collaboration on Shooting Back, a very cool project in which B'Tselem gives cameras to Palestinians living in Israel to film their daily lives. Democracy Now! uses the film on their website.

Paul van Zyl, International Center for Transitional Justice

James Orbinski, the Nobel prize winning doctor for Doctors Without Borders and the Narrator of Triage: Dr. James Orbinski's Humanitarian Dilemma


The Double Bottom Line: Too Good to be True?

A panel of directors and producers debated whether one of the goals of documentary filmmaking should be to make a profit. Panelist John Schreiber of Participant Productions argued that though every once in awhile a documentary will make a profit, films with critical messages need to be made whether or not they'll generate a profit. He does evaluate whether a film will be able to generate enough revenue to cover its costs, though.

Panelist and moderator Jess Search of the Channel Four Foundation (and formerly of Witness, a You-Tube like site for user-created content related to human rights), echoed Schreiber's sentiments and argued that there's a sweet spot between being socially important/relevant and entertaining that leads to a wildly successful film bu is really difficult for most documentaries to hit and creates unrealistic bars by which to measure the majority of documentaries. Occasionally a film like An Inconvenient Truth will hit that sweet spot, but if documentary filmmakers make only movies that are on hot topics and are always entertaining, lots of important stories will go untold.

Panelist Bristol Baughn, an executive with Reason Pictures and GOOD, disagreed. She talked about how she thinks it is possible for filmmakers to make a profit by telling relevant stories, using compelling narrative and marketing effectively.

The panelists then discussed ways to measure the social value documentary film creates, like number of viewers, number of click-throughs to take action, and measures of actual action taken, and agreed that social value is difficult to measure, but is becoming more measurable with online metrics.

The panelists also talked about how they are changing their distribution strategies in response to new media outlets like YouTube. Schreiber talked about takepart.com, a site that lets people watch documentary films on all different kinds of issues and gives them tools for taking action right on the site. A video on Canada's seal hunting, for example, is posted next to links for contacting Canada's prime minister, information on boycotting seafood, and supporting HSI's ProtectSeals campaign.

Panelist Annie Sundberg, the director of The Devil Came on Horseback, (which looks like a very compelling film on the Darfur crisis, by the way) spoke about how distributing films through non-traditional venues, like screenings at schools and collaboration with nonprofit would could use the film in their campaign, can be as effective as more traditional distribution. She also spoke about using viral marketing tactics like contacting relevant interest groups on sites like MeetUp.com to host screenings for a fee.

All in all, a fantastic few days.