Secrets of our Food: The Hidden Ketchup Chronicles | ENDEVR Documentary

I grew up in the south of France in Provence a tomato Paradise one day a piece of news shocked me Le cabano the jewel in the French crown of tomato sauce had been bought by a Chinese investor General Liu he decided to produce sauce with Asian Tomatoes [Music] General Liu was trying to conquer this sector the local Deputy seemed delighted but I did not understand why a country where they do not eat tomato sauce wanted to compete with Provence or Italy [Music] for two years I put my life on hold to understand how this product had become a necessity to all mankind I discovered a different tomato unlike the one we see in our salads a tomato that you'll never see round and hole on your plate a tomato Modified by geneticists to meet the needs of the agri-food industry these are tomatoes that are very firm fruit you can drop them they won't burst I discovered a misunderstood and fascinating industry an industry born from the success of Italian Gastronomy and reinvented in the United States by a few men who turned it into Red Gold in California I met the biggest leader of this industry a multi-millionaire who was obsessed with productivity [Music] in Italy I saw Harvesters exploited in Africa Farmers ruined for the past two years I've been collecting sauces juices soups concentrates pulp peeled tomatoes and ketchup from around the world the story I'm going to tell you is not about a simple canned food it's an absurd story of our globalized world its winners its losers the men and women who feed mankind without ever seeing the fruits of their labor [Music] no no no no no [Applause] no no no no [Music] no no no no no no [Music] no body to discover how the Chinese produce their Tomatoes I needed to make a very long journey three thousand kilometers from Beijing in the west of China to xinjiang [Music] Le long inaccessible to foreigners and under military control the region was annexed by China in 1949. foreign [Music] people a Muslim ethnic group that regularly Rebels against the central power s are now a minority in xinjiang this region is now populated by millions of Han the majority ethnic group in China and migrants from other regions [Applause] [Music] all at the initiative of Beijing [Music] [Music] here a third of the Harvest is still manual as it was in the West 50 years ago [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] all right and his wife come from the distant region of Sichuan three thousand kilometers from here paid for what they pick they earn 0.01 euro per kilo um [Applause] color foreign [Music] this difficult work with an uncertain income attracts the poorest families in the country including children um foreign minimal labor costs destitute families paid for their labor I understood better why the Chinese tomato was replacing the provincial tomato and the Chinese workers replacing those in Europe but who had the Absurd idea that China should launch itself into this industry China is one of the few countries where they do not eat tomato sauce that is the whole paradox I searched for a reason in the Chinese Capital Beijing in a neighborhood that is reserved for the rich I found the main player in the Chinese tomato industry this is the first time he has agreed to be interviewed in front of a foreign camera Liu Yi also known as general Yu a former leader of the Bing Tuan as explained in this official video the Bing Tuan is a military industrial organization founded in 1954 on the order of Mao and composed of former Army soldiers its mission is to populate control and develop the region of xinjiang to avoid any rebellion of the ugor people in reality General Liu never led a fighting unit but under his command battalions of Chinese workers were sent into the commercial War of the tomato ES [Music] foreign foreign this is how in the early 2000s the Chinese Army found itself at the head of a group of tomato sauce the chalkas group a matter of national pride for the Chinese [Music] foreign [Music] before arriving in China the Tomato went around the world in five centuries once upon a time there was a red fruit round and fragile known only to the people of South America brought back to Europe it was planted in the garden of the kings of Spain and the kingdom of Naples and even on the banks of the Thames its red color fascinated botanists but it was feared to be toxic in the 19th century the Italian industrialists embraced it and put it to good use but the tomato is still fragile in the 20th century geneticists invented new varieties which didn't get crushed before they arrived at the factory it is this new tomato that is harvested all over the planet today [Music] from the fields I followed the Tomato trucks to the factories today China has become world number two in the Red Gold industry with the kafko tunhei group a state-owned company an agri-food Giant the director's assistant at one of the largest factories in the country takes me on a tour every day 5 000 tons of fresh tomatoes are delivered here unloaded with jets of water they are sent into the depths of the factory inside the principal is barely more complex than when you reduce Tomatoes at home foreign in these Vats the tomatoes are sterilized and transformed into concentrate the Red Gold of this industry it takes six kilos of tomatoes to make one kilo of this paste I Now understand where my favorite sauce comes from in 20 years China has become a superpower of the Tomato industry thousands of tons of concentrate are packaged for export in these large blue barrels foreign [Music] these barrels of concentrate are like barrels of crude oil shipped around the world they will then be refined by a multitude of brands [Music] I think ketchup sources a lot of products you you consume in Europe already contains ingredients from this Factory from our fields we are selling a lot of the UK to Germany uh east Europe for sure we are trusted by all the international big all the international names Heinz Unilever McCormick and nestler Etc so all these big names they may buy from us tomato base foreign the biggest buyer of tomatoes in the world you all know it it's Heinz this multinational is the first to have made the tomato a multi-billion dollar industry [Music] every year Heinz sells 650 million bottles of ketchup in more than 140 countries I decided to go back to the very beginnings of the Tomato industry to the east of the United States [Music] according to Legend it was in this modest two-story house that the entrepreneur Henry John Heintz laid the foundations of his Empire a touching story of a billionaire who started out with nothing just how they liked them in the United States and that's worth a little photo souvenir [Music] how did Heinz become the world's number one ketchup almost 150 years ago what you're going to discover is not written in history textbooks at the end of the 19th century Pittsburgh was the world capital of Iron and Steel activities the Carnegie factories produced a quarter of American Steel Pittsburgh was the symbol of the country's Industrial Development a city where the floods of European migrants came to find work in steel and Ford car factories [Music] but it was Heights that revolutionized mass production the birth of mass production really came out of this area out of these plants Heinz clearly was using the assembly line technique before Henry IV Henry Ford really it evolved but Henry Ford's first really production line was around 1915. Heinz was using assembly line process here in 1890s they were a little different like I said he used a lot of gravity feed systems to make it automated he used the automated welding for his cans on a line you know way ahead of when Ford was welding his car so yeah a lot of his techniques he was very into technology Heinz was a pioneering technology contrary to popular belief the bottle of ketchup preceded the car on the assembly line Henry John Heights was the first to make ketchup a consumer product his slogan the world is our field of German descent he sells preserves of horseradish Jam meat pickles condiments and catsup the ancestor of ketchup a Puritan who was obsessed with hygiene he used clear glass for his bottles a pledge of transparency and quality he thus gained the confidence of consumers behind as a capitalist I mean he was a he was a pure capitalist I mean it was all about uh you know money and marketing treated his people well but the end result was he wanted to make money Heinz Ketchup from the 1950s ketchup became part of the American way of life [Music] it came to be one of the symbols of a triumphant America along with Coca-Cola rock and roll and American cars the American dream of a society of prosperity and abundance is realized through Mass consumption [Music] today industry provides the bulk of our diet [Music] Agro business generates an annual Global turnover of four trillion dollars a sector that the billionaires covet in 2013 the Heinz company was bought out for 23 billion dollars by Warren Buffett the second richest man in the world it was the largest Takeover in the history of the agri-food industry [Music] the arrival of the billionaire was not good news for the employees advance [Music] I found workers that Heintz brutally fired the price of adjusting to capitalism in this city with a population of 28 000 nearly 1 000 employees lost their jobs when the ketchup giant decided to close its largest plant in North America a year later half of them are still unemployed the service award that you got at Heights yes award there it's very nice I was very proud of that and I got that if I stayed there but they closed down yeah and we're here what's that plaque I was the employee of the year two years in a row and they gave me that beautiful plaque over there no I would have got that and I stayed there have you stayed there you wish well thank you but that's nice accomplishments in Leamington no one expected a man whose Fortune is estimated at 73 billion dollars to close the factory Heinz will never close down people eat people need food and there'll never be a tornado here 2010 there was a tornado in 2014 Heinz closed down so it just goes to show you that never say never because things happen like that I understand that they they can say all they want like you know they can say well it wasn't competitive enough we wasted too much space it was this it was that what it comes down to is it costs them money and they don't want to pay a decent wage they want to pay third country or third world waged and it doesn't matter if you give up you know cut your wage in half or do this or do that they're going to close it so anything that they come up with that the union could go back and say well here's here's the money saver right here too bad we're getting close the plant produced 100 Canadian tomato juice and ketchup it may be surprising but in southern Canada the climate is ideal for growing tomatoes this culture even maintained around 40 local producers since 1909 the Canadian tomato Capital has grown to the rhythm of heights the families of the city provided labor for four generations [Music] emotionally I think it did most people that worked there we gave our life to that plant yeah and I loved working there I like the people I worked with but it hurts to lose a plant like that all because of some money and that's the bottom line it's money and not people's lives I don't think that they they cared enough about the people here if they came here and looked at what they'd done to some of these people I mean they should be ashamed of themselves since its acquisition Warren Buffett has closed five plants and cut 7 400 jobs about a quarter of the company's Workforce [Music] if factories are closing all over the world many more are opening in China sold the Chinese the industrial techniques to make this concentrate [Music] I asked General you oh [Music] foreign [Music] Polo of the Tomato industry is Armando gandolfi in Parma the gandolfi family have been tomato merchants in the industry for three generations Armando is the world's largest Trader in tomato concentrate uh [Music] um foreign dozens of factories paid for by the Chinese with a barter system [Music] s and it is thanks to this transfer of technology that China has become the world's largest exporter of Red Gold in these barrels nearly 1 million tons of concentrate leave the port of Tianjin each year the main destination takes a crossing of several weeks to Italy [Music] a thousand tons of Chinese concentrate are unloaded every week in Salerno the Chinese concentrate is then reconditioned by the Italian industry the recipe is simple take Chinese concentrate dilute it in a little water add a pinch of salt and you're done [Applause] these cans are then exported to Africa the Middle East and Europe this is how you can eat Chinese Tomatoes while believing they were grown under the Italian Sun there's nothing Italian here except a name and the flag so is there anything illegal here no I would say basically what you're talking about is misleading consumers so it's part of the company's responsibilization or responsibility sorry to try to give an image of serious or seriousness and to try not to cheat consumers by telling this looks Italian it's not Italian the Spaniard Juan Jose amezaga is one of the biggest tomato concentrate traders in the world each year he buys the equivalent of six hundred thousand tons of fresh tomatoes for resale in the form of concentrate if you eat tomato sauce it's partly thanks to him [Music] the agribusiness Giants trust him for their supplies [Music] in the Tomato industry a Trader does not just stay in the trading rooms Juan Jose amazaga travels the planet to select the most beautiful harvests if the Italians are supplied by China he prefers California okay today tomato is a red gold today California has been growing tomatoes for many many years and growing steadily the acreage as consumption increased [Music] and they have you know good technology they've got the highest yields in the world as a country as a region and it's always an up it's a it's always good to know what what's going on here [Applause] here I am in the heart of the largest tomato field in the world it reaches further than the eye can see this is like a tomato version of Silicon Valley California produces a third of all the tomato sauce consumed in the world in these fields none of the fruit is picked by hand machines are used for the entire Harvest yet up until the 1960s large landowners relied on Mexican manual workers known as braceros two hundred thousand of them handled the Harvest of tomatoes each summer for 30 cents an hour [Music] at that time Cesar Chavez an agricultural worker and a charismatic leader worked with his Union to demand better working conditions [Music] foreign [Music] foreign for 40 years Cesar Chavez fought for more social justice in the California fields [Music] the organized strikes and demonstrations which were harshly repressed his rallying cry SI SE puede was echoed by Barack Obama during his 2008 campaign with his famous yes we can [Music] Cesar Chavez passed away in 1993. he was considered an icon of American Civil Rights his former private secretary Mark Grossman told me this story I think of some words that Cesar Chavez spoke in the late 1970s when he said capital and labor together produce the fruit of the land but what really counts is labor the human beings who sacrificed their youth numb their spirits and torture their bodies to produce the greatest agricultural wealth the world has ever known and yet these same men women and children too often do not have enough food to feed themselves he called that one of the tragic ironies of our time in 1964 Cesar Chavez succeeded in persuading the government to end the Bracero Program landowners could no longer exploit this cheap labor force rather than raising wages the owners decided to mechanize the Harvest to increase their profits fifty thousand Farm Workers were employed in the canning tomato industry in the years before mechanization research the two generations of mechanization in the canning tomato and essentially what happened was that over a period of about a decade the workforce was decimated and those people lost their jobs and lost their livelihoods it was a sudden and dramatic uh decimation of people's livelihoods who had relied upon canning tomatoes for many of them for Generations foreign [Music] here is one of the industrialists who prefers machines to workers Chris roofer [Music] this Steve Jobs of the Tomato industry is the boss of Morningstar the world number one in the industry it alone produces almost as much as China this entrepreneur methodically applies his libertarian ideas a mixture of anarchism and Ultra liberalism here every movement is timed starting with those hundreds of trucks each day they offload twenty thousand tons of fresh tomatoes start putting water in the trailers before to save 15 seconds so when they come in here that's already pretty pretty much full of water saving 15 seconds per truck saves seven minutes per hour the equivalent of one working day per year here more than elsewhere time is money paranoid paranoid I think we could do a lot better morning started Fishing Company very much because they have managed to reduce costs all through the supply chain from the field to the trucking of finished goods per dollar investment in a plant you produce much more they can produce more than six million tons of fresh tomatoes that's more than all Italy in three factories it's impressive really amazing yes the man by my side produces more than all of Italy each hour Chris roofer transforms one million three hundred and fifty thousand kilograms of tomatoes into concentrate under the control of only two employees how's it going 44 last hour 44. they still give you this excuse I can't pump it in this Factory that has been automated to the extreme many Executives and workers have been removed and replaced by computers they're running the whole Factory these two seasonal girls they got an issue they call they call they call Jimmy or something hey Jimmy get out there and do that okay they're like the plant managers the world's largest Factory runs with only 70 workers per rotation Chris roofer likes Parables for him liberalism is a best of five sets and tough luck for the losers so if you play tennis with another person you're there you're proving your game so the competition allows you to improve your game and if you improve your game you have more fun so that's what the competitive system is all about is is getting the people with better ideas better processes to to expand and and kindly telling those that aren't doing as well that maybe they should do something else maybe they shouldn't play tennis maybe they should take up golf or swimming apply to the labor market his lesson sends shivers down your spine [Music] for 50 years large companies have been increasing their profits by mechanizing production and reducing the cost of wages everywhere machines replace Manpower lay off more to earn more this is company's winning formula and the more the bosses invest in technology the more production volumes increase Supply stimulates demand four have the shelves been so stocked never before has mankind consumed so many tomatoes but by concentrating more and more wealth in the hands of big companies and destroying more and more jobs how long can this system last yeah [Music] today three great powers of the Tomato industry are in Fierce competition the United States Italy and China in the war of Red Gold there are no rules even the least ethical moves are permitted this is what I discovered here at gin 2D one of the biggest Chinese exporters of tomato based products ma Jen young the managing director of the company agreed to show me his Factory like any good entrepreneur he starts with a small guided tour of his production line until now everything seems normal [Music] the first surprise was waiting for me in the warehouses Gina Gina does that not remind you of anything this is Gino's Chinese cousin that Famous Brand created in Italy and which actually contains Chinese concentrate to compete with their former partners who hid Chinese concentrate in Italian cans the Chinese camouflaged their tomatoes in cans that are the colors of Italy in the end everybody is eating Chinese foreign the factory has a secret weapon in this trade war against Italy that the director forgot to show me a miracle ingredient [Music] a white substance is added to the tomato sauce in large quantities this substance does not appear on the label [Music] foreign this powder is soybean fiber a thickener ation videos according to my information some boxes of Chinese concentrate contain up to 55 additives it's a method of lowering manufacturing costs since these additives are cheaper than tomatoes in reality the reason they can cut their products with soy is because of an agreement with their distributors the entire production and distribution chain is complicit in this fraud only the consumer is fooled which is what the trader Juan Jose amezaga condemns and one thing I must say is that these people are declaring that to the buyer they're telling the buyer that we're going to put so much of this and this and this and this is a price if we don't put this this is the price so it's normally a higher price when it's pure tomato paste then they add fiber 20 fiber three percent color whatever it's another another price so the buyer knows it he's aware of it doesn't appear on the label but the buyer knows it Distributing companies that buy thousands of tons of Chinese paste in cans under the their own brand in the Distributors brand in Africa know that the product will have these things and it's not declared [Music] let's go back to China in 20 years it has gone from a tiny player to a giant of the Tomato industry initially the Chinese didn't care at all about tomato sauce but with their legendary charm the Italians exchanged factories for five years of tomato concentrate [Music] what a beautiful Chinese tomato a bargain for Italy that turned Chinese production into a sauce that was made in Italy without anybody noticing but since then the Chinese decided to take on the Italians with sauces made in China the battlefield for this Duel of Red Gold Africa where they consume the most concentrate per capita with a population of 27 million and six percent growth Ghana is a dynamic economy the second biggest in West Africa [Music] globalization is changing eating habits absolutely delicious secret behind delicious meals in this part of Africa in terms of vegetables the tomato is King it accounts for one-third of vegetable expenditure but the local tomato Market is collapsing in favor of sauces from China and Italy Imports have multiplied by 30 in 15 years Channel the conquerors of this new market I visit them twelve thousand kilometers from Beijing in their secure residence guess who I find there General you and his son Quinton the general has been there for two months because he sniffed out a good opportunity West Africa is the region which has the fastest growing consumption of tomatoes and his presence is part of a policy that is promoted at the highest state levels in China foreign this confident talk also reflects a reality the African continent is fast becoming the next big consumer Market in the world in this market that you saw there's hundreds of shops that sells tomato paste here and the brands there are 50 brands at least in the market it's 90 trans factories who produce because they have invested so much into the machineries and they need a way out to do it so they will produce for anybody whether it's OEM whether it's for their own brand that they can sell in the African market so in terms of that the Chinese producers need to find a way to to to digest their own excess Surplus the wheels of the economy keep on turning in Ghana I arrived during a major economic change China is relocating part of its production to benefit from cheaper labor on production lines imported from their country the Liu's manufacture their finished products from Chinese concentrate jobs Ghanaian workers are paid four times less than Chinese workers 100 euros per month you're in China as you know the global not that uh well you see a lot of factory shutting down moving to Southeast Asia moving to uh moving to Vietnam moving to Indonesia Malaysia those areas and you will see especially in the tomato paste business that you see a lot of factory moving to African countries and I'm glad to say we're one of the first who took in this step to establish our presence more closer to the market rather than that 10 000 miles away by purchasing canned Chinese Tomatoes rather than fresh tomatoes from his own country the consumer weakens local producers a little more since Independence thousands of Ghanaian Farmers have been growing tomatoes an activity that offered a future to entire families their Tomatoes were processed in factories in the public sector and the canned goods were sold in the markets a sector protected by Customs barriers to the Delight of the farmers foreign [Music] but under pressure from International financial institutions free trade has become the rule and imports have overwhelmed the country which has been disastrous for farmers and the local Factory had to close so since nobody buys their tomatoes and the state does not help them some of them try their luck in Europe in Italy ironically they pick tomatoes [Music] [Music] thank you as early as five o'clock in the morning hundreds of men head for the fields coming from Africa via the Mediterranean their Journey ended here to survive they have no choice but to pick the specialty Tomatoes of southern Italy in 2011 Musa Suleiman and Muhammad Suleiman traveled 3500 kilometers in search of a better life than the one they had in Sudan for several years they've been living in hardship s [Music] thirty thousand migrants work on the Harvest on hundreds of plots that are too small to be done mechanically [Music] they have come from Africa but also from India Romania or Bulgaria they're paid an average of 20 euros for 10 to 12 hours of work under a blazing sun a supermarket Kwame is foreign foreign [Music] mano [Music] today he works for a Cooperative as fruta zero exploitation zero which produces organic and fair trade sauces especially for the German Market tomato sauce will never taste the same for me again it has the bitter taste of economic forces that concentrate profits in the pockets of a few it has the smell of liberalism which has established itself from one continent to the next and the color of migrants blood from all over the world every year World demand Grows by three percent and it will grow even faster when the Chinese start to eat tomato sauce this Prospect pleases the Visionary General Liu she died [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: ENDEVR

Views: 624,807

Keywords: Free documentary, documentaries, full documentary, hd documentary, documentary - topic, documentary (tv genre), Business Documentary, food documentary, food insider, food history, food lobby, food lobby documentary, food documentary 2023, documentary food, ketchup, ketchup documentary, tomato, tomato documentary, tomatoes, tomatoes documentary

Id: Fx_cPrC-K28

Length: 54min 29sec (3269 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 27 2023