Tin can tell-all: a history of the commercial tomato canning industry in Virginia's Bedford and Botetourt counties
Date
2018
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, commercial tomato canning became fundamentally tied to the historic and material identity of southwest-central Virginia’s land and its people. In particular, farmers in Bedford and Botetourt counties took advantage of their locale’s natural resources and adapted existing agricultural infrastructure to develop a new system of agro-industrial commerce. Canning enterprises quickly evolved into the lifeblood of the local economy, generating income for farmers, factory owners, and a diverse workforce of rural laborers, as well as developing a market for railway expansion and providing investment opportunities for the establishment of tangential can-manufacturing and servicing industries. The tomato canning industry became tied to the ground, the people, and the place. ☐ Studying the tomato provides a critical lens for examining how the canning industry altered the local built environment and shaped the personal and material identities for the communities involved. Combining a material culture analysis of the tomato and the agricultural and industrial tools, buildings, landscapes, and equipment associated with tomato processing, along with narrative details from interviews with individuals personally tied to the Virginia canning industry, this thesis documents regional identity and place. It also works to preserve the material memory of a rapidly disappearing rural production system and reassert the importance of this industry in Virginia history. Tracing the relatively rapid rise and fall of “mountain tomato” culture exposes tensions between rural heritage traditions and national agro-industrial growth and allows a commodity food product to be the instructional connective force between a people and their specific lived environment.
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Keywords
Biological sciences, Social sciences, Bedford, Blue Ridge, Botetourt, Canning, Tomato, Virginia