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The Tomato Experience

By editor ⋅ June 16, 2008 ⋅  Email this post ⋅ Post a comment

The Tomato Experience - and article from 2003

By Niels Peter Flint

The world is full of people and tomatoes. And the people all want tomato ketchup and concentrated tomato and tomato sauces and peeled tomatoes in cans and sun dried tomatoes and a few fresh watery red tomatoes to put on top of their burger or salad covered in tomato dressing.

Tomatoes are produced mainly in Europe (Greece, Italy, Spain) and the US (Florida, California). Huge land areas are covered in plastics and tons of pesticides and other agro chemicals are used to satisfy this lust for the red watery veggie. The pluckers are mostly severely underpaid, in fact, paid below the minimum level of existence. Most often they are illegal immigrants, who cannot complain since they have no official papers and they live under horrible conditions – almost like slaves, surely worse than pigs in modern pig farms. And tomatoes are dirt-cheap. The total world production of fresh tomatoes is not more than at most 1 billion USD. The total world value of tomato sauces on the other hand is app 50 billion USD. So the processing is creating the value, which the consumers evidently are willing to pay.

Right now the between 1 and 2 billion “haves” can enjoy a material superiority, however often a lousy life quality some would say, but we get our tomato ketchup cheap. The currently 4 billion “have-nots” wants tomato ketchup and cars and fridges and automatic pet feeders and electric toothbrushes etc. too. Can they have this? Just like so many other things that we take for granted in today’s world tomatoes has become a modern commodity, using vast amounts of resources in order to be available for the consumers everywhere at any time – at extremely low and totally unrealistic prices based on slave labor and a completely exaggerated agricultural economic support from various governmental structures.

Tomatoes are fragile and have long been packaged in all sorts of ways mostly in order to be protected and keep fresh as long as possible. Approximately 10-30% of tomatoes in underdeveloped countries decay during transport, due to rot, rats etc. You can easily genetically engineer the long-lasting tomato.

Nowadays tomatoes don’t taste of anything when they are out of season. The flavory tomato having a high taste has been genetically engineered, and sold by Sainsbury, UK. However, the producers had to withdraw due to consumer reactions. Millions of euros, yens and dollars are put into research in genetically manipulating tomatoes so that they last longer, taste better etc.

Tomatoes today like so many other things cost nothing due to massive in-direct support systems, which allows a totally hopeless ecological non-acceptable but also in the long run economically totally unsustainable development.

Imagine designing “the good tomato experiences” which would be about satisfying our need for this red substance in the most appropriate way according to the season. Why not have your own peeled and preserved “basil and honey with chili glassed tomatoes” out of season and fresh vice versa. Well because you don’t even know how to peel a tomato and by the way you don’t have time to do those kinds of silly time-consuming things - and then they are SO cheap in the supermarket anyway (well wait till you have to pay the real prices).

We tend to believe that it’s impossible to make people stop something that they already have gained access to like having access to consume tomatoes all year round. However considering the bad quality mostly being delivered in the winter and the consumer maybe starting to understand the real implications of something as banal as “the tomato need”, maybe many customers would love the following experience in case the below scenario was designed and developed. And imagining that the subsidies for tomatoes will probably not exist in some years from now, it might not be so unrealistic.

Scenario:

THE TOMATO EXPERIENCE year 2010

- in the Food Experience Place (FEP) you now have completely different, inspiring and beautiful fruit and vegetable / home cooking departments. They look like a mix of former vegetable markets with a kind of kitchens with high and low tech machines which in almost magical ways transforms veggies and fruits into all sorts of interesting semi- or ready-made products – designed either by the customer or by various chefs.

In the kitchens experimentation can happen and own recipes can be tested, etc. There are recipe-bourses where you exchange or sell recipes and ideas. You can grind your own coffee and add cinnamon – or mix your own tea from fresh end dried tealeaves, herbs etc. You can design your own mayonnaise or sandwich crème, mix your own yogurth, and blend your own shampoo - and you can make your own tomato ketchup and other tomato products. On the spot or by order. You can smell / taste your own creations as an artificial simulation is made in a computer, which gives you an indication of how the chosen combo of fx. tomatoes and pineapple will taste or smell like..

Tomatoes are still sold by the piece in the supermarkets but only when in season. Bulk gets to our doorstep ordered by your personal avatar via the Internet. You go to the foodexperience-places (FEP), to get inspiration rather than just to shop. In season there are numerous different kinds of tomatoes and just as many byproducts of the preserved tomatoes. When the tomatoes are getting too old, they are simply made into fx. tomato-ketchup or other products, either in the store or at other centrally located micro-food processing factories.

Heinz has designed this sophisticated system where they “satisfy your tomato-need” in the most (sustainable) appropriate way.

IN the FEP Heinz and other food processing companies provide you with various services based on what is in season. The left-overs are processed and can, as described, be “designed” by the customer, in case the customer has not been foresighted enough to by his or her tomato products off-season. Obviously, in case a customer desperately needs fresh tomatoes off-season – it can be delivered, but then you pay the real costs.

In the FEP tomatoes etc. are bottled or canned or put into newly developed eatable packaging that adds the spices, salts etc. when cooked (the packaging contains starch and aromas for the tomato soup). You can also bring your own container and you can of course buy loads of different kinds of fabulously designed recyclable or disposable or eatable containers, which are all made from best available materials.
The “new” and freshly made (but preserved) tomato-products are now sold either directly in the shops or on delivery since many order via Internet). Due to the RFID-tag development each tomato product is registered – if you as a consumer want that. This means that the tomato products you are designing and ordering – in season – will be available to others on the local “FEP-virtual (Tomato) bourse”, where the FEP sell your products on for you in case you fx. have ordered too many Pineapple-tomato-ketchups or just in case you want to be a new Heinz - with the help of Heinz.

The tomatoes (and obviously many other products too) stay in the store until they finally are bought in some form or another, which means that there is literally no waste. And the waste that might appear is put into the local biogas system, which powers machines operating in the FEP.

In 2010 most tomatoes in the FEP´s are NOT packaged - in case they are, they are covered with a very thin layer of bio-film which in principal is eatable too. But most places the TOMATO-cascading-life-system has been introduced, also called THE (Heinz) TOMATO EXPERIENCE.

Before we were used to “tomatoes”, now we have green, and yellow, and Caribbean, and this and that kind of tomatoes - we have become aware that a tomato is not just a tomato. The consciousness about fresh food has increased drastically and the strong interest in fx. eating seasonal has allowed all these new (old) kinds of also tomatoes to be grown. Eating seasonal is not just because it’s better for the environment, and more healthy, but also because it’s more exiting. Seasonal food varies your daily eating. And the fact that the FEP-TOMATO EXPERIENCE project allows varied food, a lot of creativity and ecological as well as economic sense is probably what has made it very successful worldwide.

Why “the TOMATO EXPERIENCE” ?

This kind of project might sound problematical for some. However, it satisfies a need or trend, which we are seeing in the developed world today. Its not just about delivering tomatoes - its about delivering quality food experiences which, if designed the right way, will be sustainable too.

Why this would become a sustainable solution I could write a whole thesis about. My claim is that this concept will make economic as well as ecological sense - AND - it will create something new and better for both the consumer, but – if designed the right way - also for the farmer, the pluckers and many others.
It’s in many ways a radical solution, and then yet just one out of thousands of new ways of making projects that satisfies our basic “modern” needs in our daily lives.

Obviously this sounds as if it would become a very expensive solution. Well, considering the more than 50 billion USD turn-over in the tomato-biz every year, I’m pretty sure (when legislation is changed) and designers start developing concepts which really show how the world is working (the designer becoming the “eco-cascading expert”), at that time, which hopefully is as soon as possible, I’m pretty sure that a concept like this will make a hell lot of economic sense.

I’m proposing these kind of scenarios because I believe that we have to invent entirely new ways of consuming in order to survive. Basically EVERYTHING we do and design today needs radical change. Designing new bio-degrable walkmen does not save the world, neither does it make any real contribution, it just makes us continue to consume in a little bit less totally unsustainable way – and the traditional comment to this is that its not my responsibility, nor the responsibility of my company, to clean up the world; well who the hell should then – the MARS men????
We are all in this together, so lets get our fingers out and get going.

Designers should become a kind of “CREATIVE Overall-solution developers or designers.” If we combine that with being “eco-cascading experts”, then designers could come up with valuable solutions to the problems or challenges the world is facing (so I wrote 15 years ago too).
It might seem inadequate to target an issue as marginal as the production, distribution, sales and consumption of tomatoes. However its just one of thousands of daily commodities which we consider having no impact. But when seeing this in a broad context and knowing that if you apply the same thinking to all sorts of other “daily-commodity-issues”, developing extraordinary and beautiful, sexy and emotionally functional solutions. This could have a major effect on a prosperous, creative, sustainable development on the planet.

Having been the first O2′er I find it scary of course that nothing much has happened the last 15 years that O2 has existed. The same issues are still discussed. We need radical solutions. The TOMATO experience is of course only an example – and actually not that radical. But I hope that we will see much more powerful and radical – realistic – concepts being developed in the O2 network the coming years. O2 should worldwide be the voice of radical sustainable visions, especially designed by the young generations – if you dare. Or dare you not to………As Claude Fussler says (president for WBCSD) we need 4 planets in 30 years in case we don’t make drastic changes in the way we live and consume. The future is up to you….it can become hell; it could also become paradise. But one thing I can guarantee – it’s a lot of fun developing these concepts, it’s a lot harder to make them real.
Text by Experience Design Producer Niels Peter Flint
October 2003 – written for O2 Netherlands - 10 year anniversary magazine