New variety helps growers meet high-dollar niche
markets
Tomatoes
are the Type B’s of the vegetable world: Laid-back, creative, collaborative.
Newswise, August 22, 2016— Want a slice on a burger? Fine.
Chopped into a salad? Great. Pureed and slathered over a pizza crust? Yum.
Steeped in a winter stew? Ahhhh.
But fresh is what most consumers covet, and that’s what Dr.
Kevin Crosby, Texas A&M AgriLife vegetable breeder in College Station, had
in mind when he released a new variety called Hot-TY.
“It’s very heat tolerant, so if you plant it now from San
Antonio to College Station south, it will start flowering within a month,” Crosby
said. “And you can harvest from late October until after Thanksgiving or until
there is a frost.”
The fresh frenzy is tempting Texas tomato growers statewide,
serving up potential for the industry to recoup some of its steady decline over
the past 50 years, Crosby believes.
In 1960, Texas growers harvested 28,500 acres of tomatoes
valued at almost $7.7 million, according to the National Agricultural
Statistics Service.
Only an estimated 300
acres are grown in Texas now for commercial canning, Crosby said. But last
year, Texas fresh tomato yields from about 900 acres were valued at almost $4.9
million.
Here’s the catch, according to Crosby: Tomatoes are coming
back for the small-scale and backyard farmers and organic growers, not
large-scale commercial growers. And they are selling to grocery stores and
farmers’ markets for consumers who want fresh, vine-ripe tomatoes.
“It’s growing in those areas because the value of the crop is
very high in that sector, especially around metropolitan areas,” he said.
That can be seen when adjusting the 1960 price for inflation
to 2016. Tomatoes in 1960 sold for $5.27 per hundredweight which would equal
$42.09 in 2015, the latest year for which production figures are available.
But the price per hundredweight in 2015 was about $60, almost
40 percent higher than what farmers were receiving more than 50 years ago when
adjusted for inflation.
Crosby noted that vine ripe, organic tomatoes can gross
$50,000 per acre these days.
Interest was obvious recently when Crosby invited Texas tomato
enthusiasts – be they commercial, niche or backyard growers – to a workshop to
learn the most recent tips for producing the high-dollar fruit.
Crosby said that in working on a joint tomato project with the
Texas Department of Agriculture, he found growers had lots of questions.
More than 50 growers came to learn about the new variety, how
to graft onto rootstock, what diseases are on the horizon, how to combat them
and what researchers are finding about the human health aspects of tomatoes.
“Flavor and quality – that’s what people want in a vine-ripe
tomato,” Crosby said. “Maybe that kind of tomato is less than 10 percent of the
market, but it’s very lucrative. So theoretically, though the acreage may be
less than 1,000 acres, I guarantee you they’re making a lot more per acre than
when there were 40,000 acres.
“And there is a lot of interest in not just quality but in
better farming practices when you’re making a profit. There is no question
tomatoes are one of the healthiest vegetables, and we consume a lot of them.
They deliver a lot of nutrients and minerals and are important to a lot of
cuisines, so it helps that you can add that to your diet and benefit from it.”
Among the most recent research on the health aspects of
tomatoes is the potential to prevent prostate cancer, according to Dr. Bhimu
Patil, director of the Vegetable and Fruit Improvement Center at Texas A&M.
“Some vegetables might be slightly higher in levels of
phytochemicals, but you may not like them as much,” Crosby said. “Think about
mustard greens. I mean, they are very nutritious, but I think people like
tomatoes better.”
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