Interesting, but not that dissimilar to the United States. I grow a couple thousand acres of tomatoes in California, all of which are for processing into juices and pastes. These tomatoes are all transported in open-topped trailers by semi, and the losses have always bothered me. There is a tight turn just after leaving our property and the pile of tomatoes there grows steadily with the season as they roll off the top of the trailers. There isn’t much option for us though, and those losses are taken by the processing company.
Interesting fact about tomatoes: if you grow tomatoes for multiple years on the same field your yields will drop to zero due to fusarium fungus destroying the crop. We rotate one year tomatoes with one strand of alfalfa, which lasts 3-5 years and regenerates nitrogen into the soil.
It’s not that much of a loss for them. If you are growing for someone like morning star, they have tightened the supply chain so well that every step is precisely executed. The reason they are open topped is because they go straight to processing and get washed and graded and processed even before they are weighed. It’s beautiful how the system has been designed. Closing the tops is probably saving less than a few pennies per pound but it’s not worth disrupting or delaying the operations systems. Processing company contract out every step of the growing process from nursery to transplanting services to harvesting. Chris Rufer is a model most of us should strive to be..he has perfected tomato processing to an art form.
Chris Rufer may run a tight operation but I have nothing nice to say about him as a person, especially how he communicates with his growers. I’ll leave it at that.
Dutch fact about tomatoes: almost all tomatoes from the Netherlands are grown in greenhouses and most are grown on rockwhool. Computer systems fertilize water that flows through the rockwhool.
The seedlings are grown in labs and then sold to the greenhouses.
And while it is not really organic food, most greenhouses don't use chemicals to keep pests and diseases out. A lot of times different kind if insects are used for this. So it is as bio as it gets.
But you can argue about the taste. While they are as healthy as soil grown tomatoes I think they taste watery.
I think the taste is not necessarily a hydroponics issue, but moreso a market issue. Dutchies choose unblemished pristine tomatoes, these strains are just watery by default. I can't even find heirloom tomatoes around here.
The taste of vine ripened tomatoes is incomparable to the 'industrial' tomatoes that are picked when they are still green. They are picked green so that they are firmer for transport and they ripe just enough to be red in the store.
Let the same tomatoes ripen on the vine and they are truly amazing.
I've grown my own tomatoes, same F1 Hybrid strains as the commercial growers use. There is a world of difference in taste.
Some of them best tomatoes I've ever had came (in winter!) from Thanet Earth, a massive indoor grow op in Kent, England. They grow all year under massive grow lights.
I think a lot of the really good flavours in tomatoes are a function of sunlight exposure.
I always found it baffling that it was too much work to put a tarp over the top. They forced the gravel trucks here to do so, as they kept cracking people's windows, but the total lost material must have been incredible.
> We rotate one year tomatoes with one strand of alfalfa, which lasts 3-5 years and regenerates nitrogen into the soil.
So for a given plot you do tomatoes for one year every 4-6 years, do I understand correctly?
Does it matter so much what other crop you plant, in terms of reducing the fungus? Alfalfa is just a good choice for its nitrogen fixing? Could you leave it fallow for example? (just trying to get ideas for my garden)
Alfalfa is especially good for adding nitrogen, but clover can do the same for a home garden.
You are correct on the number of years between plantings, but really only 2-3 years off are needed to clear the fungus. Alfalfa just lasts longer.
As another comment mentions, some other common crops have the same disease risk, so avoid potatoes and eggplants too many consecutive years.
Fallowing it an option, but a little nitrogen for a home garden shouldn’t be too prohibitive. When you have a lot of acres it can be a meaningful cost saving measure but it’s not huge.
I have this issue right now with my tomato plants. Am I right in my understanding that you don't necessarily need to crop rotate and just supplementing the soil with nitrogen would be sufficient?
If you don’t control the fusarium from time to time, the tomato plants will look great but give no yield. One of the other commenters mentions a new technique for winter cover crop to avoid rotation. I’m not really sure how much of a risk fusarium is for a home garden, it might be as much as our farm or perhaps minimal.
Nitrogen is necessary for proteins so you can get larger yields, but if some other nutrient is missing then nitrogen alone won’t help. K and P also need to be present in good quantities, as well as a mixture of iirc 17 elemental trace elements. I’d use a well-rounded fertilizer like 7-7-7, and if it wasn’t growing then assume there was a disease or pest at play.
If memory serves, that fungus family attacks all nightshades, not just tomatoes, right? So you can't rotate potatoes or eggplant or you get the same problems.
And in fact potato fruit are poisonous! Just remember that when you grow potatoes and you get those "nice small tomatoes" on the potatoes that do bloom and fruit :) Luckily not many bloom and fruit usually, so most people that just grow a few potatoes for fun don't even get tempted. Then again they don't ripen red anyway, so I guess there's that to "save the curious".
EDIT: Anyone else have an unusually many potatoes bloom and bear fruit this year? I've never had this many before.
The bigger warning to any potential potato farmers is to make sure you keep the potatoes underground; any tuber above ground will also have heightened levels of solanine. If they're light-skinned they'll also turn green from chlorophyll, which helps identify them a bit, but better to make sure they're well-buried.
(All my potatoes had a couple fruits this year, but I'm in Germany, so I have no clue if that data is relevant...)
That's a good one that people should know even for potatoes they buy. If green, discard.
But you are right, some people don't.
I think it is relevant because I'm in Canada and even though we now have a total of statistically irrelevant 2 anecdotal data points only it is something. Lots of fruit on potatoes in the same year on different continents more than 5000 km apart on a plant that usually has very few if any fruit at all. My very first years of planting potatoes I did not even have flowers.
There’s a tomato plant that produces little purple tomatoes that don’t look that different from potato fruits. I knew someone who planted both one year and I still haven’t forgiven them for being so reckless.
I remember reading that when they were first brought to Europe via the Columbian exchange people were reluctant to eat them fearing they were also poisonous. Now it's hard to imagine, e.g. Italian cuisine without tomatoes.
They feared that because people were being poisoned. Pewter plates were common at the time and the tomatoes acid leached the lead out causing acute lead poisoning!
Even the “sweet” tomatoes have pretty close to the same pH, it’s just the sugars covering the tang, like soda or honey.
As a bitter taster it doesn’t matter how much sugar you put on the tomato it’s still too much. About the only thing IMO that you can put on a tomato to make it acceptable is a bacon cheeseburger.
Then any other equally acidic food on pewter plates should have caused lead poisoning too? E.g. if they ate salads in those days, with a squeeze of lemon juice?
Well I am an owner of the farm, along with my brother, which my great-grandfather purchased as a retirement project in 1950. Total area is about 7,000 acres, of which tomatoes will soon be replaced by almonds as the primary crop. We used to be the largest asparagus operation on the US, but NAFTA has ended that industry and it was a difficult 20-year transition to find almonds. There was a long-standing belief that our soil wouldn’t handle almonds due to excessive water, but that is proving to be very wrong.
Day-to-day operations are handled by a general manager that is brilliant. My brother is also out there daily working on his distillery and helping to run things. I work mostly on IT and then also handle special projects, especially financial ones.
Life is pretty good to have a large piece of land in CA. Tree nuts have been absurdly lucrative for the past two decades and it has pushed the land values up a lot. It’s put me in the interesting situation of being able to focus most of my energy into equity investing to try and balance my portfolio against the farm holdings. I do, however, attach a strong emotional connection to the land such that when asked what group I most strongly identify with, it is always “Central California Farmers.”
With the operational structure we have in place, I would describe it as fairly pleasurable for me. I get to work on interesting problems when I want to, and not much else. I’d say it’s actually the size that makes this possible, we could never afford our general manager on just a few hundred acres.
I don't think it "must" be? Tomatoes are very common in that situation because their seeds can survive passage through the human digestive system, but if a different plant's seed happened to coincidentally land there there's no reason it couldn't grow too?
Well, animal feces is commonly used as a fertilizer. I think it would be bad news for a plant if bacteria were traveling around inside it.
People reusing human wastes generally try to compost it for a while, I think, probably partly to reduce the risk of diseases, but probably also in a large part to remove the foul smell. Shoveling shit isn't fun.
I'm experimenting with it in my garden right now. Definitely had a fusarium issue this year (tomatoes in the same location for 3 years running). I have hairy vetch in now as a cover crop in that bed and will plant tomatoes again next year to see how it goes.
This info came from a gardener Youtuber, but it appears backed up from a google search. It appears the experiments were done with watermelons, but I would assume the results would be the same with other crops.
I'm a big fan of tomatoes - we used to grow them at home in Europe, and I swear to you I have found 0 tasty tomatoes in the US, aside from this one tomato that my friend's boss grew in his garden, which tasted almost like a tomato should. Sometimes I feel like entire generations of people in the US don't know what a good tomato tastes like because they've never had a proper tomato.
I find the tomatoes in US stores bland and watery. They must be collected when green and ripe on the truck or in the store. I even grew my own tomatoes here from organic seeds and they ended up being just mildly better tasting than store-bought tomatoes. What happened to the tomatoes in the US?
Can someone demystify this for me: where are all the good US tomatoes at?
> I find the tomatoes in US stores bland and watery. They must be collected when green and ripe on the truck or in the store.
I once read somewhere that many commercial tomato varieties have lost their flavor because they have only been selected for appearance (red/flawless). But I don't know if that is true.
Luckily I found that here in Europe, recently, there have been very flavorful cherry tomatoes in the grocery stores again, but they cost between 6 to 7 euro/kilo (the watery ones around half the price.)
In selecting delicious cherry tomatoes, I observed two criteria:
1) they'll have a somewhat rough surface, rather than smooth - like little particles
2) they'll often have little yellow dots at the top around the stem
Like most veggies sold in grocery stories in the US, the varieties are engineered to line up with the supply chain needs. Tastier heirloom tomatoes tend to not do as well in transport, or don't last as long on the shelf, or whatever other reason.
As is already suggested, the good US tomatoes and fruit in general can be found at farmer's markets, local farms, and/or local grocery stores that have relationships with local farmers. Also, a lot of smaller local farms that grow tastier veggies tend to supply to locally sourced farm-to-table type restaurants directly instead of selling them in stores,
My parents get their tomatoes from a local hydroponics farm that only sells straight from the farm (in the middle of nowhere), and in bulk to local restaurants.
At the farmer's market. Look for heirloom tomatoes. I get them during the summer from either the farmer's market or a food cooperative in the Seattle area (PCC). Heirloom tomatoes are the only tomatoes I tasted on this continent that are on par with the tomatoes my parents grow in their garden in Europe.
Farmers markets and home gardens are where you find the tomatoes you are thinking of, rather than chain retailers. The produce you see in the stores are developed to be shipped in. Heirloom varieties are too fragile, even in the farmers market the tomatoes at the bottoms of the piles will be damaged from the weight of those above.
If you can find a good Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program, they'll give you good tomatoes. Granted you'll also get a bunch of other vegetables but it's good quality and saves you from having to buy groceries from July to November. I've had tomatoes from a CSA that tasted like candy.
Fairly accurate, though I love CSAs (and I suspect this is a loving parody by the author).
What I find especially funny is
> What the hell am I supposed to do with all these turnips?
Do people really not know what to do with turnips? Turnips are amazing- roast them, put them in soups, they're great. Now radishes, on the other hand, those are a mystery to me.
Not sure what to do with turnips, but let's fix this radish situation right now.
Radishes are awesome! I like to eat them raw with just a bit of salt, but for a general cooking frame of reference, you can use radishes anywhere you would use a cucumber.
Here's some salads I like to make with radishes:
========================
= default radish salad =
========================
* radishes (thin round slices)
* chopped scallions
* dill (a lot)
* salt
* pepper
* olive oil
* chopped fresh parsley (optional)
From here you have a few options:
1. just add some vinegar and/or a bit of lemon
2. for a tzatziki-like route, use lemon, garlic and greek yogurt. Cucumbers are totally optional here (the salad becomes more watery).
========================
= poor-man's cole slaw =
========================
* cole slaw without the mayo
* add thinly sliced radishes
=======================================
= tomato salad loaded with vegetables =
=======================================
* thick sliced tomatoes (1/2 inch cubes or pyramid-like shape)
* onions
* sliced cucumbers
* diced red bell pepper
* thinly sliced or diced radishes
* olive oil
* salt
* pepper
* half a dozen kalamata/black olives
* greek feta sliced into 1 inch cubes
* chopped fresh parsley (optional)
Dip sourdough bread into the tomato juice at the bottom to get to heaven.
When in doubt, ferment them! Turnips and radishes both ferment really well. Just make a 2% brine, i.e. weigh the turnips and the water used to cover them, then add 2% of that weight in salt. Put in a clean jar or even a plastic container and check every day. I add some garlic, chili peppers, etc.
A lot of people in the US don't like tomatoes as well. One of my friends told me he hated them until he moved to another country and then found out what they were supposed to taste like.
The only good tomatoes I've had in the US come from friends' gardens.
For one thing, your own source shows that tomatoes are a rich source of many different vitamins, minerals, and fiber. But furthermore, this treatment of nutrition is a little reductive. You could eat highly processed food that is formulated to deliver the desired daily value of major nutrients, yet it would fail to deliver the same benefits as a simple diet of fruit, vegetables, small fatty fish, and nuts - even if the latter isn't optimized for nutrients. Why is this? We don't seem to know enough to answer at this time, but it appears food is more complex than a tabulation of various nutrients.
So does this mean we should be trucking tomatoes long distance? Not at all. People should eat whatever fresh produce grows locally, and supplement with canned or fermented foods that capture the benefits of faraway and out-of-season crops without the downside of wastage and shelf-life optimization.
My take is that it makes sense to grow the water-heavy vegetables yourself. These vegetables seem to be the most prone to damage during transport anyway. Plus, you can select heirloom varieties.
Then just get your staples (grains, potatoes, dairy products), plus fruits which require specialised agriculture, via the commercial food system.
If I had a house, instead of an apartment, I'd test the soil and then replace most of the backyard plants with good-looking and low-maintenance food producers; and replace the front lawn with pollinator-attracting xeriscape and maybe some herbs.
Did you miss the part before your quote about them being a moderate source of vitamin C? The whole sentence needs a re-write anyway IMO, "no significant nutrient content" seems like too strong a statement given the table. A large tomato would cover ~10%DV of a whole bunch of vitamins and minerals.
Kind of a tangent but this really makes me think about this problem I see with thinking in Silicon Valley. It seems to be a common belief that if someone is solving a problem they have with some product or service, they are helping everyone in the world. But the rest of the world is very unlike Silicon Valley. Someone making an app to help them book a masseuse is not going to be solving problems for people who cannot afford to transport their tomatoes in refrigerated trucks.
I strongly believe that the best way to help people in other places very different from our own is to open source the best of what we know. Everything we rely on. For example instead of buying refrigerated trucks from an expensive European suppler (let's suppose) they could clone the designs and manufacture refrigeration more cheaply. Such an effort would take time but if we shared the plans for everything we rely on, someone could make it cheaper and offer it to those with less income. A free market of manufacturers would compete based on who can manufacture goods the cheapest, rather than who can both design them and manufacture them.
Maybe refrigeration is already generic enough that this particular item would not get cheaper, but in general if everything was open source then people in places like this would be more able to manufacture what they really need even if they lack certain technical skills required to design the things. And with trade normalization required by the WTO, many of these companies cannot clone certain useful goods due to patent restrictions.
We are so wealthy in the USA and yet we do not often consider sharing our wealth in this way with every other person sharing this time with us.
But you are discounting the rarity of productive labor and the value of R&D. Yes, we have serious vices in the US with our spending on frivolous pursuits, but at the same time we're doing incredibly ambitious things. If we undercut the profitability of those ambitious pursuits, we lower the number of ways to get funding to those enterprises. In the face of low payoffs for big ideas, you just get all that effort put toward more apps to book a masseuse for your dog.
Wealthy people pay to have their problems solved, so undercutting intellectual property just directs more high achievers to cater to 'first world problems' rather than chasing big ideas.
I have this discussion a lot, and I've found that many people share your belief. However I disagree with this view. I recently wrote a comment with citations here:
But the gist of it is: patents prevent many people from innovating. That is the purpose of a patent: others are prevented from following forks of a given idea to the benefit of one entity. I argue that the losses to society from preventing so many people from following forks of an idea are greater than the benefits gained by giving one entity a monopoly. Constantly locking down new ideas for 20 years actually encourages companies with patents to rest on their laurels (see the linked comment above for figures) and prevents motivated newcomers from trying variations on the patented idea.
People often say that without patents, investment would cease. But the linked example in the above comment features a great first hand account from an engineer and hacker about the innovation that happens in China when anyone can take ideas from others. It's a vibrant development environment in fact. My view is that investment would not cease, but the nature of investment would change. Instead of fewer larger investments, we would see more frequent smaller investments. So the economy would continue to function fine, only without constant barriers to copying all the good ideas would spread rapidly and many people would experiment with forks on those good ideas. In the end, the rate of innovation would be higher without patents, I believe, than it is with them. A relatively unorthodox view, but I find that those in the orthodox camp also tend to significantly discount the amount of innovation that happens in the normal course of market competition without intellectual property in play. Market forces already reward innovation. Patents do create a bigger reward for those innovators who make it all the way through the patent process, but at a great cost to society. This is why 3D printers only dropped in price by 50% after their first ten years on the market, and then dropped in price by 98% in the first ten years after the patent expired (see the linked comment for figures).
Growing and transporting tomatoes in Africa is a whole diff ball game than in other parts of the world. Farming is just a tiny slice of Ag. Supply chain is the biggest team player.
Also: processing tomatoes and tomatoes eaten out of the hand are two diff markets. Everything from genetics to harvest to inputs is different.
> One of my former classmates in undergrad is a Visiting Researcher at Purdue in the Agricultural Engineering department; he tells me that many tomato transporters actually own or rent fuel tankers that they fill in the South to sell at a markup in the North. In order to make some extra cash on the trip South with the empty tanker, they carry tomatoes.
> I know what you might be thinking: is it even sanitary to transport tomatoes that close to gasoline? But that is the least of the issues plaguing these transporters, the biggest one is that they lose about 12% of the tomatoes in a two-day trip.
meat production and processung in the "developed" world isnt much better. in fact this might even be better because those cattle probably weren't raised in factory style density
The article shows raffia baskets containing tomatoes strapped to the top of fuel tankers. So they're not transported within the same space as the fuel.
Tomatoes don’t contain any alkaloids..nicotine is a very different kind of alkaloid. Tomatoes contain a diff kind of alkaloid from other nightshades. Tomatine levels drop as fruit ripens. Hardly addictive.
Having said that…if we want to talk about addictive alkaloids in our food.. Vanillin, Cocaine and Capsaicin are closely related alkaloids and all have addiction potential.
Addictive properties in a behavioral sense are defined differently from chemical dependency. Physiological and psychoactive aspects of neural stimulation are similar among these alkaloids.
Tropane structure of cocaine, scopolamine make them accumulate in liver whereas vanillin, capsaicin etc do not accumulate.
Scopolamine stramonium etc are fascinating too. Datura stramonium (DS) is a widespread annual plant, containing atropine, hyoscyamine, and scopolamine, which can produce poisoning with a severe anticholinergic syndrome. In some parts of the world, ingestion of the roots, seeds or the entire plant is a trick to obtain its hallucinogenic and euphoric effects.
Also was used to poison royalty and by dacoits. It also has medicinal properties. Has been recorded in medical textbooks at the time of Takshila university and in Buddhists texts. Very effective as homeopathic preparations. Jimson weed is still a common weed on road sides in America. Datura is in the same family of plants as peppers, tomatoes, potatoes and eggplants and it contains a lethal set of alkaloids. But they don’t have the same kind. Tomatoes, for example, doesn’t have any alkaloids. Only tomatine.
Supposedly because they contain glycoalkaloids. I'm not sure who invented the Autoimmune Protocol (AIP), but it seems to have the same scientifically questionable origins as Leaky Gut Syndrome. I have yet to see any scientific evidence supporting AIP.
There's one study hypothesizing that glycoalkaloids can increase/aggravate intestinal permeability (which is a real thing), but this study only looked at mice [1]. The hypothesis has not been rigorously tested in any serious clinical study on humans.
> I have yet to see any scientific evidence supporting AIP.
The food elimination diet is very scientific - you add items back in one at a time to test if they cause a negative reaction to your particular physiology.
I've just finished a five day water fast and plan to limit my diet, introducing new types of food slowly while observing any undesirable effects. Would you mind sharing some of the foods which you found most surprising or troublesome?
I wonder if they can charge more for the non-cold-chain tomatoes due to better flavor:
>Cold storage is widely used to extend shelf-life of agriculture products. For tomato, this handling results in reduced flavor quality. Our work provides major insights into the effects of chilling on consumer liking, the flavor metabolome and transcriptome, as well as DNA methylation status.
Yeah, I grew some tomatoes on my balcony this summer, and the way they taste compared to what I would buy at the store you would think they are completely different fruits. I would pay maybe 30% more for a sandwich with fresh tomatoes as opposed to the.... red slime that usually come on them.
I've considered a "startup" in this space before. Take all the equipment, knowhow and enthusiasm of the cannabis industry and apply it to tomatoes. Grow them next to customers, under lights with highly controlled conditions and an obsessive focus on flavour. Guarantee less than 24hrs picked-to-delivered.
My research (napkin math) suggested that it would be doable at $8-10/lb, which is certainly high, but probably low enough to attract connoisseurs, high-end restaurants, and regular folks who like to treat themselves. It would be especially valuable during the winter, when you just can't get a proper tomato.
Exactly what we're doing (optimal.ag). Interestingly, the cannabis industry has taken all the equipment, knowhow and enthusiasm of the (Dutch) tomato industry and applied it to cannabis - not the other way around.
First time I flew into Amsterdam it was dusk and I was mesmerized by the seemingly endless fields of greenhouses growing weed. Only years later (after telling everyone about it) did I learn they were actually growing produce :D
Dutch tomatoes have a reputation for being bland ("water bombs"), is making more flavourfull ones just product focus? Like picking the right varietal, picking them at the right time, delivering quickly, etc?
Beyond genetics and environment, soil/nutrient fertility also affects the taste. For example, drought-stressing tomatoes near harvest generally improves flavor at the cost of yield, both by the obvious mechanism of adding less water and by more complicated interactions with the biosynthesis of flavor compounds.
In hydroponics the same improvement is achieved by increasing the nutrient solution concentration (since that's what drought stress looks like to the roots), often literally with salt, NaCl. Growers will typically describe this as raising the solution electrical conductivity, EC, since that's an easily-measured proxy for total dissolved ionic stuff. Hand-held EC meters cost a few dollars, or large systems often run with closed-loop measurement and dosing similar to my
>First time I flew into Amsterdam it was dusk and I was mesmerized by the seemingly endless fields of greenhouses growing weed. Only years later (after telling everyone about it) did I learn they were actually growing produce :D
Lol - yeah the production of cannabis is not yet legalised in The Netherlands.
>Dutch tomatoes have a reputation for being bland ("water bombs"), is making more flavourfull ones just product focus? Like picking the right varietal, picking them at the right time, delivering quickly, etc?
I've heard this before too. Maybe this was a thing at one point in history but it's not true any more. If you go into a supermarket today in Europe then all the tomatoes on offer will have been grown in greenhouses. The low-end stuff will have been grown in Spanish/Moroccan low-tech greenhouses (plastic tunnels). The higher-end stuff will have been grown in Dutch glasshouses.
I wouldn't call it "Low-tech" greenhouses in Spain. Is exactly the same stuff than dutch ones, the same seeds and the same bumblebees and the same chemicals, except by the Mediterranean climate and much more sun. (And I wouldn't be surprised to find that some of the Dutch tomatoes sold at an extra price are really cultured in Spain by Dutch companies).
Brown tomatoes are showing up in more grocery stores now, and have a much better tomato flavor than beefsteak tomatoes. They are often sold in a sleeve of six or so, or labeled as "kumatos". Really, give them a try - they are much better than regular store tomatoes.
I have seen brown ones packaged as you described but labeled as Capri. Maybe they aren't the same but they are a lot better than the average commercial tomato.
I keep hoping that one of these shipping container farms will support tomatoes due to this issue. Unfortunately, I have yet to find any (although some claim version N will be tomatoes). My hunch is that they can't grow tomatoes dense enough to make the economics work.
We (Optimal Agriculture) have built an autonomous growing system for high-tech greenhouses and have achieved 'superhuman' performance in a recent tomato trial. We collect a bunch of sensory data about the crop and growing environment, run cloud-based optimisation, and then control the actuators of the greenhouse autonomously (lighting, screening, heating, cooling, irrigation, etc). We are turning $100M greenhouse facilities into IoT-connected-devices and then building an intelligence layer on top.
We are now building a commercial-scale facility in the US which will produce 50,000kg of fresh produce daily. And then we will scale from there.
Our goal is to accelerate the deployment of new greenhouses around the world to increase the availability of healthy locally-grown food and to secure our food system for the future.
Just for the density of jargon, this is quite an amusing post. I just hope your project is actually working out, though I can't tell from what you wrote.
How many square meters will that facility be, and what is the cost to construct? At $100M I don’t see how it would be financially viable.
50k kg a day is approximately 600 acres of tomatoes with our yields. That much land in CA might sell for $6-30M depending on water rights and latitude.
You may be interested to know about Costas Group in Australia. They have gone the high tech route, cramming every bit of productive technology into their greenhouses. They are an established company listed on Australia's stock exchange (ASX:CGC), so can be taken to have proved the viability of such technology. I gather their share price and the size of their profit is a bit of a roller coaster ride, but they do make a profit each year. They mention yields of 70kg/m^2/year (=50000kg/day from 65 acres). I assume that's per square metre of greenhouse and not per square meter of growing bed.
Definitely a good opportunity for selling the higher value tomatoes restaurants and some upscale markets desire. I like the emission benefits of shorter supply chains too. Best of luck, I doubt our tomatoes will be competing with each other anytime soon.
I have been somewhat obsessed with the idea of floating greenhouses. The economics are different than operating a farm on land but with automation it could be possible to deliver superior produce directly to coastal population centers at lower costs.
Take everything we know from plant sciences as a starting point and then generate additional data through actually growing the crop and measuring impulse/response with sensors.
Are you optimizing for any experiential aspects of your tomatoes, like taste or texture? Personally, in my area tomatoes are cheap enough to not think about the price, but the products widely available from supermarkets taste like water
> Are you optimizing for any experiential aspects of your tomatoes, like taste or texture?
Yes - but this mainly comes down to the varieties that you grow. You can grow varieties that are very tasty and are usually sold in the premium tier. And you can grow high-yielding tomatoes with less taste.
>Personally, in my area tomatoes are cheap enough to not think about the price, but the products widely available from supermarkets taste like water
Where are you based? High-tech greenhouses already supply a lot of premium-tier produce in Europe but there is an undersupply in the US/Asia.
Interesting. I've always wondered why tomatoes in the US taste like shit. Why is there a trade off between high yield and taste? Is there not a high yield + great taste variety?
I think its largely about shelf life and bruising?
there is this kind of tomato I buy if there aren't any others. it always looks perfect on the outside...and seems to last forever sitting on the counter at home.
but if its old enough, the seeds will have sprouted when you cut into it.
I don't like the taste of tomatoes, however, this is only true for non-processed fruit. Dried tomatoes, tomato paste, ketchup, even tomato juice are completely fine, just not the fresh fruit. I have a hazy recollection of some blog post confirming I'm not unique in this with a possible explanation and will be grateful if anyone helps me find it or explains the fact.
is the unstated moral of the story that the higher yield in plastic crates may not be due to the crate, but due to not being strapped on a petrol tanker?
The cultivar of tomato determines how "stiff" it is, and somewhat how long until ripe. A different cultivar might result in a slight change in percentage damaged.
Heat ruining the crop? But tomatoes love heat. I know rot can set in much quicker as the tomato matures, if rot or nutrient deficiency was already an issue; for pristine 'maters, they can sit around for weeks at room temperature with no issue. Perhaps part of the issue is tomato health, and another part is ventilation / passive temperature regulation. So maybe someone could construct a cheap filler material that promotes airflow and put between the baskets.
The basket design could be altered to allow tighter packing of baskets. Currently they are circular, and so don't fit very tightly against the truck or each other. If they can be packed tighter, the baskets will help reinforce each other and prevent deflection. Square baskets may be best. There are many different designs for square woven baskets. In addition they can be made smaller which will provide more reinforcement material per pound tomato (this may increase the basket price somewhat but also reduce loss, making it a net gain).
Interesting fact about tomatoes: if you grow tomatoes for multiple years on the same field your yields will drop to zero due to fusarium fungus destroying the crop. We rotate one year tomatoes with one strand of alfalfa, which lasts 3-5 years and regenerates nitrogen into the soil.