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How Sustainable Are Tomatoes?
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How Sustainable Are Tomatoes?

26 MIN · EN · STATUS: [ STREAMING ]
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Almería, Spain grows so many tomatoes for European supermarkets that its greenhouses form a plastic sea covering an area equal to 45,000 soccer pitches. The film follows that supply chain from both ends. Marcos Diéguez of Ecologistas en Acción shows how only about a third of the plastic sheeting gets disposed of properly, with the rest piling up in illegal dumps around the region. Miguel Carmona of the SOC-SAT Almería union takes cameras to the roadsides where undocumented workers, mostly from North Africa, wait each morning for day labor, and to the makeshift camps built from wood scraps and discarded greenhouse tarps where some live without electricity, running water, or sanitation. Growers and researchers explain efforts to fix the system: hardier tomato varieties bred to need less intervention, and geothermal heating trials meant to cut the energy cost of year-round cultivation. The film treats the tomato as a lens on industrial agriculture generally, tracing one vegetable from seed to supermarket shelf through the environmental and labor costs usually left off the label.