Free Tomatoland by Barry Estabrook Page A

cycle, the water not only picked up the chemical fertilizers but also the pesticides. Nourished by nitrogen and phosphorus from the fields, the water in the lake turned pea green. The only surviving fish were tough, trashy, minnowlike gizzard shad.
    By 1996, the situation had become so dire that the Florida government bought out the big landowners and closed down the farms. The fourteen landowners were paid $103 million for property and equipment. ( In one sweet deal , a farmer sold the government a vegetable cooler for $1.4 million and then bought it back at auction for$35,000.) The twenty-five hundred workers, who often had families that lived with them on the land, got nothing other than the order to clear out. They were not retrained for new jobs because the powerful farmers feared that educated workers would abandon the fields before the last carrot or tomato was picked.
    In the winter of 1998, theSt. John’s River Water Management District decided to reverse the usual pattern of water flow and flood the recently acquired land in the winter to attract waterfowl. Sure enough, that year theAudubon Society tallied the largest Christmas count of migrating birds ever recorded for an inland location. The joy was short-lived. By the end of the winter, more than one thousand fish-eating birds had died—blue herons, white pelicans, bald eagles. It was one of the worst bird-death disasters in U.S. history. A $1.5-million scientific investigation was launched. After a few years, researchers determined that the cause of the deaths was pesticide poisoning . Investigations into the health ofalligators also revealed disturbing signs. Males had stunted penises and high levels of estrogen; females had high levels of testosterone. Reproductive rates were far below normal. Again, pesticide poisoning was the cause. But while the research money flowed into looking into the causes of reptile and bird illnesses, not a nickel was spent on examining the laborers who spent their lives working, eating, and sleeping on the contaminated land.
    “It’s painful trying to get up in the morning and get from one day to the next,” said Lee, as we walked along a sandy track through the now-overgrown fields. Even though a dozen seasons had come and gone since the last pesticide-spraying tractor, signs read, “Warning. Visitors must stay on roads. No fishing allowed on this property. These lands were former agricultural land that were subject to regular use of agricultural chemicals, some of which, such as DDT, are persistent in the environment and may present a risk to human health.” Lee received no such warnings when she went into the fields to pick corn, cabbages, carrots, greens, and tomatoes, receiving twelve cents to pack a box of corn, fifteen cents for a box of greens.
    We finally reached a small park by the lakeshore and took shelter in the shade of a live oak, welcome respite from the scorching sun and unbearable humidity. Cicadas trilled from the scrubby brush that has replaced the rows of vegetables. There was no wind. The water, while not pea green, was khaki colored and opaque. It was high noon on a sunny summer day in the middle of a metropolitan area of two million people, and there was not a soul on the entire fifty-square-mile lake.
    The effects of pesticides can travel far beyond the boundaries of Florida’s tomato fields, reaching people who have never touched a crop. One Sunday morning , the ReverendGladys Herrera had to stop midway through service and evacuate all ninety members of her congregation atEl Calvario Fuente de Vida, a church in Naranja, a town in an agricultural area just south of Miami. “Sister, I feel sick. I feel bad,” said one worshipper. Others reported dizziness, tickling in their throats, and itchiness in their ears and eyes. Kids started coughing. Some vomited. Although no one had warned Herrera, a nearby farm had applied methyl bromide to its tomato fields, the same chemical that felled Guadalupe