The politics of tomato paste

I just read this interesting article from Slate.com on recent legal drama in the California processing tomato industry and was reminded of my time in California. I spent 5 years in California while conducting my doctoral research at the University of California, Davis. For an agricultural economics course I took in my first year at Davis, we spent 2 weeks in the summer visiting agricultural sites. One of the most impressive was the Morning Star Company's processing facility. This is the largest tomato processing plant in the world and a large player in this market. It's not necessarily a surprise how cutthroat agriculture can be, but it is always interesting to see places you are familiar with appear out of the usual context.