I want to write a bit about potatoes today. The potatoes that are currently at the shop were harvested in Lancaster County in July and cured for a few weeks. They sat in a storage barn since then at a nice temperature of 50 degrees and awaited my order, which I placed a couple weeks ago. Over the course of these several months between harvest and my order the potatoes became somewhat dehydrated and thus wrinkly and sad looking. Some of them are even starting to grow a bit. I occasionally knock off the shoots. After they are harvested and cured, potatoes go into dormancy. This dormancy begins to break after some time. So they start growing again.
That explains organically grown potatoes. The potatoes in the supermarket are sprayed post harvest with a synthetic chemical called chlorpropham. In fact many conventional vegetables are sprayed with this post harvest. At least in the United States they are. It was banned in the EU and UK five years ago. This chemical somehow prevents sprouting and retains moisture. Science.
Now I'm not making any claims as to the toxicity of this compound. I'll leave that to the funded-by-big-ag scientists. I do however want to point to something less visible about conventional potato production.
The largest potato producers and packers in the country all have contracts with their respective states' department of corrections. Inmates at state penitentiaries are sentenced to work for little (in PA around 25 cents an hour) to no pay and with no workplace protections. Whatever income inmates do earn are garnished to pay for "room and board" and court fees. Historically this was known as convict leasing, where former slaves who became incarcerated were "leased out" to private companies. Although convict leasing was outlawed in the early 20th century, the more recent crack down on undocumented migrant labor has led the largest potato producers to turn to convict labor. State governments have therefore passed legislation allowing farms to use prison labor when there are labor shortages.
This is of course not unique to potatoes. Much of the agricultural sector in the United States revolves around this type of labor: beef, pork, poultry, fruits, and vegetables. To go even further many prisons are in fact farms themselves. Many of them are enormous. The income from agricultural commodity sales is significant and offsets the inadequacy of government funding. As they say, follow the money.
This food ends up in supermarket shelves and chain restaurants all over the country. Even at your local Acme and Wholefoods.
The literature on all this is vast. There are people who justify this mess and there are people who denounce it. I wanted to bring this all to you attention, and I encourage you to do some more research about it. I'd say that this is yet another reason to eat local, but, some of these prison farms are in fact local.