Have your tomato and eat it too.

Okay, another post on tomatoes, and I'll start with a few questions:

What would you prefer, sun ripened tomatoes or chemically ripened tomatoes?
What would you prefer, hand picked or machine harvested tomatoes?
What would you prefer, Roma tomatoes for $24/bushel, or $12/bushel?


Lets go out on a limb, and figure that most people want a bushel of sun ripened, hand picked tomatoes for $12. On our farm, we hand pick sun ripened tomatoes, and they cost $24/bushel (we actually pick in ½ bushels for $12). They taste great, but why can't they be cheap like the ones at the grocery store?

It all comes down to economics, and as you know, modern industrial farming goes to great lengths to satisfy consumers' demand for cheap food. On our small farm, Rafael can pick about three bushels an hour. In the large farm roma tomato business, one man can pick over 1,000 (yes, one thousand) bushels an hour! How is this possible? They are picked by machines such as the Pic Rite HC290. On our farm, Rafael only picks the ripe tomatoes, and leaves the green ones to continue ripening in the sun. If you are harvesting by machine, you need all the tomatoes to be ripe at the same time! How is this possible? The tomatoes are artificially ripened with chemicals such as ethephon. Forcing tomatoes to ripen all at once is great for the bottom line, but there is a huge loss of  flavour and sweetness of the tomatoes.

Large tomato farms have a huge economic advantage over small farms like ours. Through economies of scale, and automation, they can produce tomatoes that are very very cheap in comparison to ours. At this time of year we get lots of inquiries about our tomatoes from people shopping around for their sauce tomatoes.  Some ask about flavour, or how they are grown, but the vast majority are asking one thing, "How much?" For an extra 25¢ a serving, they could enjoy superb tomato sauce all year long, but off they go in search of cheap tomatoes, that look good, but are tasteless.

I am constantly amazed at how little our society cares about taste, and that that so many people taste only with their eyes. If it looks good, it must taste good? Maybe its got something to do with us all being in a big rush, and we've got time for a quick look at what we're eating, but we don't take the time to sit down and enjoy great tasting food.

I'm glad there are enough of you foodies out there who do pay a little more for our tomatoes, so that our crop is profitable, and we'll grow them again next year.