TEDxFruitvale 2011: An unprecedented environmental and human tragedy on the shores of Lake Apopka, Florida by Barry Estabrook

What happened on the shores of Lake Apopka, Florida, was an unprecedented environmental and human tragedy. Looking at who profited from it and who paid for it is a stark reminder of how little we respect and value the men and women who feed us.

Stints working on a dairy farm and a commercial fishing boat as a young man convinced Barry that writing about how food was produced was much easier than actually producing it. Barry's article for Gourmet on labor abuses in Florida's tomato fields received the 2010 James Beard Award for magazine feature writing. His book Tomatoland, about how industrial agriculture has ruined the tomato in all ways -- gastronomic, environmental, and in terms of labor abuse -- was released in June 2011 by Andrews McMeel.