‘The Spinach King' Review: It Runs in the Family

Wall Street Journal

30-05-2025

Back when New Jersey was manifestly a 'garden state,' Seabrook Farms, working day and night in floodlit fields, could produce a million peas in 24 hours. Charles F. Seabrook, its creator, was often called 'the Henry Ford of agriculture.' Mechanization and technology were his gods.
Seabrook planted spinach, beets, cabbage, parsnips—but the secret sauce in what Life magazine obligingly dubbed 'the biggest vegetable factory on Earth' was his relentless instinct for improvement.
C.F., as he was known, introduced irrigation to his field early in the 20th century, when neighbors were still relying on watering cans. He built roads and rail spurs to speed fresh romaine to city tables; he entered the American kitchen with frozen foods and dehydration.
In 'The Spinach King: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty,' C.F.'s grandson, John Seabrook, a writer for the New Yorker, tackles the saga of his family's business in exposé style.