Tomato Harvest

Tomato Harvest

Tim Hammerich
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
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We’re now in mid-July which means for many California farmers tomato harvest will soon be in full swing. Winters-based farmer Bruce Rominger recently shared through Tomato Wellness how intense the process is to make sure our tomatoes are as fresh as possible.

Rominger… “In three weeks when these tomatoes are ripe, our crews are going to be out here and our machines are going to be out here, and we're going to run 24 hours a day. Just like the cannery runs 24 hours a day. And we're going to harvest these at peak ripeness. They will be in that processing facility, probably within two to three hours of when I pick them right here. They will process them right away and put them in cans and then they'll be ready to go to grocery stores. So some of them are immediately put in cans, some are put in bigger containers and then they're made into a pasta sauce or mix with different ingredients a little bit later. But they are put away and preserved at absolutely peak ripeness. We pick them a hundred percent red ripe and they're in that cannery right away and immediately processed and ready for consumption.”

California produces more than 90 percent of the nation's processed tomatoes and nearly half the world's total processed tomato tonnage.

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