Tomatoes? Be Afraid, be very Afraid

Roughly 8 years ago, after Pat died, I started paying attention to what was going on in the tomato fields at the bottom of our mountain. Oh, I had watched them since moving here, but something did not click all of a sudden. In the spring, the ground is plowed, long black plastic runs are made, raised, to plant the tomatoes in. Poly vinyl chloride, likely. Like water bottles, harmful to your health.  The laborers plant the tiny plants, they grow rapidly, so must be fertilized, they stake and create twine cages. All summer, I see big trucks spraying the plants, weed and bug killers are prevalent. Then, what got my attention, the tomatoes are picked green. Hmm, are not vine ripened ones the ones that have good flavor?   Some research showed that of course, ripe tomatoes would be rotten after shipping across the country. So they are shipped, then put into a chamber to ripen them with ethylene gas. This is a naturally occurring gas, but used to ripen, if someone walked into that chamber, they would die. Then they are processed and canned, most of the time into cans with white lining, More poly vinyl chloride, deadly to our health.  After picking the green ones, the fields are sprayed with poison, that turns the plant brown and crackly in 24 hours, and signs are posted saying "IF you eat these, you will die"Then  a few days later,m they are plowed under, and left to ruin the ground all winter. Next year, it starts all over. In ground that is polluted with sprays. This year, in fact a week ago, on my way to church, I could see the fields had been sprayed, and the plants were brown and crunchy.  On my way home from church, I got a real shock. Laborers were in those poisoned fields, picking through the dead plants and packing every usable green tomato into crates, filling many trucks with those crates, to be shipped out.  Does this tell you anything about what Hunts, Lucks, Van Camps etc are feeding you?  If you can still buy a can of tomatoes,  tomato sauce, or paste, pizza  , spaghetti or any other sauce, or ketchup, if it does not say ORGANIC you are being fed a lot of cancer causing crap.  Corn, wheat, potatoes are just a few of the other crops that are loaded with these goodies,  you can pull up all kinds of references on line, it's scary.   We are lucky, grow a good share of what we eat. RIght now, Doug has a lot of cherry tomatoes. I cooked up some dried, organic black eyed peas,  mixed them with salad peppers and cherry tomatoes cut up, and red onion chopped, dressed with a splash of soy sauce. Makes a great high protein salad. We are all sad for the folk in Texas, hope they recover as soon as possible.  We should all be caring for their welfare, at least its nice to see all the heros helping with rescue, and less about the violence that wracks our country.  Those rains have arrived in TN today,  nothing grim, but steady drizzle this afternoon. We need it.  Should keep us from having fires.  Hope you have a good week, Labor Day already Monday, summer is ending soon. See spots of red and gold in the trees already. Have a great week, stay well, eat GOOD food.