THE EMPIRE
OF RED GOLD
Fruit for the botanist, vegetable for the customs officer, barrel for the trader.
In less than a century, the tomato has become a staple of the human diet. Processed in factories, packaged in barrels of concentrate, these tomatoes circulate from one continent to another. To tell the story of the spectacular universal spread of this tomato that everyone consumes, we needed a global fresco. The red of coulis and ketchup – of pizza and hamburger – tells a little-known story of agro-industrial capitalism, which turns out to be at the origins of globalization… From Uighur pickers in China’s Xinjiang region to Californian tomato magnates, from Italian industrialists to African producers, the story of the industrial tomato and its contemporary international division of labor offers us an unexpected tale that lays bare the complexity of our world.
