Iconic Jersey Tomatoes, An American Folklife and Foodway

If terroir sets the place for culture, and seeds are nature’s intersection that allows for folklife and foodway, then Iconic Jersey Tomatoes, An American Folklife and Foodway by Jeff Quattrone is the Jersey tomato version of that. Through his lens of his life in New Jersey and his seed and food sovereignty art and activism, Jeff tells the story of the collective generational experiences around tomato seed breeding that led to the Jersey tomato becoming a part of New Jersey’s cultural identity.

New Jersey is one of four peninsula states in the United States. It’s the only one that is surrounded by three types of water: fresh, brackish and ocean. The pesnulia and its terroir and merroir set the place for Jersey history. Tomato seed breeding is a big part of that. From Campbell’s and their tomato breeding program, to local seed and canning companies under one roof, to seed companies and independent tomato breeders, all contributed to local community and economic power over seeds and food. It was a way of life and not the social actions needed today. The book chronicles Jeff’s revival of six functionally extinct Jersey-bred tomatoes and their histories, along with the history of eight other Jersey-bred tomatoes. Property deeds, seed catalog pages, and adaptations of Jeff’s Growing the Food Sovereignty Revolution Propaganda Series visually compliment the deep and hidden history that the seeds allow him to bring forward for lessons to respect, revive and reinvent to meet current seed and food system challenges.