Is your ketchup political?

Truth To PowerFood
Written By Geren Lockhart
Preview

The scent memory hits me first: that distinct mix of ripe tomatoes running up the conveyor belt and then being processed that filled the Central Valley air during harvest season. As a child in the late 1970s, being shuttled back to the Silicon Valley from my end of summers spent with my grandparents in the foothills, those drives through the Central Valley always coincided with peak harvest season and I’ll never forget that smell. I didn’t question why California produced so many tomatoes, why the trucks never seemed to stop rolling, or if this was unique to Northern California. I knew I loved ketchup but hated fresh tomatoes – a peculiar American contradiction that I now understand.

A few summers later, in an East Village diner, I found myself apoplectic when I was told my eggs would not get their almost constant companion ketchup this time. I gained the ketchup with eggs habit from my grandfather - the same one who drove me home on those late summer migrations. That NYC diner rebellion sparked a journey that would lead me down an unexpected path decades later – from exploring tomato history to uncovering a system of power and influence that stretches from California’s fertile valleys to America’s dinner tables and, surprisingly, into our schools, public television, and politics.

The evolution of my consumption habits over the last few years brought that NYC breakfast rebellion into sharper focus. Why had I melted down over a condiment? The memory resurfaced as CANAVA, my impact apparel brand was evolving into a conscious lifestyle platform that reaches beyond fashion into food and lifestyle. I'd learned firsthand how business could be a tool for positive change, and the more I understood about conscious consumption in fashion, the more I questioned other aspects of my daily life. Was my childhood ketchup habit just preference, or had industrial food systems, cultural norms, and advertising engineered an addiction?

Ketchup became one of the puzzles to solve as I worked to eliminate processed foods and refined sugar from my diet. The quest to create a sugar-free version that tasted good led me down an unexpected path. Just as I had discovered in fashion that a simple t-shirt could tell a story about global supply chains and human impact, I found that ketchup opened a window into something much larger.

What started as recipe development for CANAVA’s evolution into a media platform guiding deliberate living in extraordinary times became an unexpected dive into the power, influence, and hidden systems that shape our daily choices. The story I uncovered raises questions that go far beyond condiments. To understand the full impact of tomatoes on our food system and society, we need to grasp the sheer scale of this industry.

The modern global tomato industry represents staggering numbers that would have been unimaginable on those long-ago summer drives. The global annual tomato harvest exceeds 180 million tons, reaching a value of $195 billion in 2023. Analysts project the market will reach $294 billion by 2032, making tomatoes one of the most important and valuable food crops on Earth. Today China leads global production, followed by India and Turkey, but the story of processing tomatoes - the ones that become sauce, paste, and ketchup - highlights a different path.

With processing tomatoes, three players dominate: California, Italy, and China. But California stands alone at the top, responsible for a staggering 90-95% of all processed tomatoes in the United States and about one-third of the world’s annual supply. Those conveyor belts I watched through the car window as a child were part of a system that would scale to process over 12 million tons of tomatoes every season.

The numbers become even more striking at the individual level. Each American consumes about 31 pounds of tomatoes annually - and here’s the kicker: 22-24 pounds of that comes in processed form. Of those processed tomatoes, 4.5 pounds arrive as ketchup. Think about that: two dozen pounds of processed tomatoes per person, per year, with almost five pounds of it in ketchup form alone - a full pound of corn syrup comes with this.

Ketchup’s journey from a simple condiment to a cultural touchpoint mirrors larger industrialized shifts in American food systems. A profound transformation was underway in California’s Central Valley while presidents’ peculiar eating habits and temper tantrums made headlines and Congress debated ketchup’s status as a vegetable. The apparent political story - played out in news cycles and campaign controversies - masks a deeper, far more opaque tale of power, influence, and money.

While politicians debated ketchup’s vegetable status (it’s a fruit) and the media covered condiment controversies, the real transformation of America’s tomato industry was happening behind the scenes. The most impactful story begins not with presidential preferences, but with a convergence of public investments in agricultural innovation.

In the 1960s and ‘70s, three major publicly-funded innovations transformed California agriculture:

  • UC Davis developed revolutionary tomato varieties bred for mechanical harvesting

  • Public-private partnerships created the machinery needed to harvest these new varieties

  • Research breakthroughs in drip irrigation technology transformed how crops could be grown in the Valley’s challenging climate

This trifecta - crop science, mechanical engineering, and irrigation systems - created the foundation for many agricultural empires.

History shows that one person would capitalize on these public resources more than anyone else: Chris Rufer, who founded Morning Star Company in 1970 and maintains 100% ownership today. Through Morning Star, Rufer controls about 40% of California’s processing tomatoes. This means Rufer controls about 38% of America’s processed tomatoes and 12–13% of the world’s processing tomato market.

To put this scale in perspective: Morning Star processes five times more tomatoes in a single day than the entire country of Italy does - and they are one of the world’s major tomato producers.

How did one person come to control such a significant portion of a global food supply? The foundation of his empire begins with public education and research - Rufer reportedly studied at UCLA and Cal Poly before returning to UCLA for his MBA. These public institutions, along with taxpayer-funded agricultural research and infrastructure, provided the groundwork for his empire. Morning Star relies on roads, water systems, and agricultural infrastructure maintained by taxpayers to move millions of tons of tomatoes from fields to processing plants.

Rufer and Morning Star’s rise reveals a striking contradiction. While building extraordinary wealth through publicly-developed innovations and infrastructure, Rufer channels money through tax-exempt foundations to promote anti-government ideology. His organizations - the Morning Star Foundation, Foundation for Harmony and Prosperity, and Free To Choose Network- distribute content through public channels like PBS and the Free To Choose owned izzit.org which distributes partisan educational materials to public schools nationwide, often directly advocating against the very type of public investment that enabled his own success.

This maze of extraction operates alongside a corporate structure promoting what Morning Star calls "self-management" - a workplace philosophy that places significant responsibility on individual workers while making traditional union organizing far more challenging than other manufacturing business models. Public records reveal a decades-long pattern: Rufer consistently challenges regulatory authority, engaging in legal disputes that test the limits of environmental and labor regulations while consuming significant public resources in lengthy battles with state and local authorities. His approach appears to follow a familiar playbook: challenge the rules, drain public resources in litigation, and see what he can get away with.

Beyond business operations, Rufer has worked to extend his influence through political channels, challenging campaign finance restrictions to increase private funding in politics. His foundations, which receive millions in tax-exempt donations, appear focused less on charitable work and more on promoting specific ideological viewpoints through public institutions - using tax advantages to amplify private influence over public discourse.

The pattern here reflects a broader trend in American business: public resources enable private wealth creation, which then funds efforts to reduce public oversight and collective organization. Tax-exempt foundations extend the reach of private wealth while advancing ideologies that often appear to conflict with public interest - all while utilizing public channels for distribution.

Striking to me is how this system operates in plain sight, often celebrated without examination of its broader implications. In August 2024, the Sacramento Bee published a glowing profile of California's tomato industry by a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, praising the innovations that enabled Morning Star's dominance. The article, like many mainstream media narratives, focused on productivity gains while overlooking the cost of that productivity on stakeholders and the planet in addition to how the profits realized from publicly-funded research are being used to advance ideologies that often appear hostile to the very public institutions that enabled this success. Such accolades raise questions about how even our most prestigious journalism awards can sometimes reinforce rather than challenge dominant narratives.

Consider this twist: the tens of millions channeled through tax-exempt foundations to promote anti-government ideology could have been invested directly in the next generation of agricultural innovation - perhaps through scholarships or research grants to UC Davis, the very institution whose public research enabled Morning Star’s success. Instead of battling public institutions, these resources could have strengthened them, creating new opportunities for future innovators. This pattern of extracting value from public resources while working to undermine them raises important questions about responsibility and reciprocity in our food system.

Understanding these systems of extraction and influence might feel discouraging, but it’s actually a starting point for positive change. When we understand how systems work, we can begin to change them. While massive processing operations dominate our current food landscape, alternatives already exist and new ones are emerging every day.

The path forward starts right where my journey with tomatoes began - in gardens like my grandmother’s, where she would pluck ripe tomatoes warm from the vine and eat them like apples. Back then, it grossed me out. Now I understand how much goodness I missed because of my cultural conditioning and those traumatic early encounters with mealy, industrially grown tomatoes.

You don’t need acres of land to make change. Growing even a single tomato plant connects us directly to our food system, bypassing industrial processing entirely. Tomatoes thrive surprisingly well in pots - even on a fire escape or sunny windowsill.

Communities across America and the world are developing alternatives to industrial food systems. Local farmers’ markets, community-supported agriculture (CSA) programs, food cooperatives and community gardens offer ways to support transparent, sustainable food production. Many of these organizations prioritize organic practices, fair labor standards, and community reinvestment - the opposite of the extractive models we’ve examined. Resource below include tips finding and evaluating local food options in your area.

For those times when fresh tomatoes aren’t practical, smaller-scale producers are creating alternatives to industrial products like ketchup. Yes, these products often cost more than mass-produced versions filled with corn syrup. However, they reflect the true cost of quality ingredients and fair labor practices while supporting local economies and delivering better nutrition. Through CANAVA’s test kitchen, I am working to develop alternatives to common processed foods, including this simple sugar-free ketchup recipe that proves homemade alternatives don’t have to sacrifice flavor to amp up nutrition and positive impact.

The goal isn’t perfection - it’s progress. You don’t have to make everything from scratch or never buy conventional products again. Instead, it’s about understanding our options and making conscious choices that let us live well, be well, and do good simultaneously. Every tomato plant grown, local product purchased, or homemade sauce created represents a step toward a more transparent and equitable food system. Together, these small actions add up to the systemic change that can transform not just what we eat, but how our food system works for everyone and the planet.

With my grandfather at the original Squeeze Inn in the 1990s, just a thirty-minute drive from UC Davis where this story began. He's the one who drove me through those tomato fields so long ago. Though he's no longer with us, I can still taste the ketchup.

Geren Lockhart https://www.gerenlockhart.com
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