Agriculture Policy and the Birth of Tasteless Tomatoes

Continuing with January reflections, this week we’re taking a look at just one aspect of agriculture policy and how we got where we are today. It’s an interesting opportunity to reflect on how things are connected and what happens when we make a change to just a few parts of a web.

The 1920 Census marked a change in agriculture policy in the United States. That year, the U.S. became a majority urban nation, with more people living and working in cities than in rural areas. This led to concerns about the ability of U.S. agriculture to be productive enough to feed its citizens. The decisions made about how to solve that problem were well-intended, but like all decisions, they included some unintended consequences. Today we’ll look at just one of those consequences: Tasteless Tomatoes.

The VF-145 Hybrid Tomato and the Mechanical Tomato Harvester

The VF-145 tomato was bred in the 1940s and 1950s to meet the needs of industrial-scale agriculture and processing. World War II, and the labor shortages that came with it as men went off to fight, provided the impetus for the work. Then, increased demand for convenient foods following the war in the 1950s propelled the work forward, and the end of the Bracero Program in 1964 cemented the tomato’s and the mechanized harvester’s place in our food system.

Supported by funding from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) plant breeder Jack Hanna and his colleagues at the University of California, started by developing a tomato that could survive the rough handling of a mechanical harvester. The VF-145 tomato was bred for firmness, uniform ripening, and disease resistance (the VF stands for resistance to Verticillium wilt and Fusarium wilt, common diseases that affected tomatoes).

The machine they created was a groundbreaking invention that could identify and pick ripe tomatoes while leaving unripe ones on the vine. Using conveyor belts, shaking mechanisms, and optical or manual sorting, the mechanical harvester could perform the work of many laborers, reducing the need for and the cost associated with workers performing that task.

Braceros

That last piece, reducing labor requirements for harvesting tomatoes, was particularly important because the Bracero Program was coming to an end. This program, begun in 1942, was a series of agreements between the United States and Mexico to provide contract labor for agricultural production and to maintain railroad lines. It began during WW II at the request of farmers whose workers were facing deportation and without whom they couldn’t harvest their crops. The agreements guaranteed worker protections and a minimum wage, though many farmers failed to meet those agreements. At least 4 million workers traveled to the U.S. during the program’s lifetime. When the program came to an end, farmers no longer had a reliable, affordable labor pool, so mechanization and standardization of crops became increasingly important.

The Consequences

The development of the VF-145 tomato was a turning point in both agricultural production and food processing. By meeting the needs of the canning industry and allowing for mechanized harvesting, VF-145 helped fuel the growth of large-scale industrial tomato production, particularly in California, which remains one of the largest producers of tomatoes in the world. It is also part of a food system that is efficient, and largely affordable thanks to an emphasis on large-scale, standardized, and industrialized agriculture.

But what we gained in efficiency we lost in flavor and variety. The heirloom varieties known for their exceptional flavor can’t survive the harvester. In addition, industrial farming methods have led to reduced soil health, which in turn has reduced the flavor and nutritional value that comes with healthy soils.

This system has also profoundly transformed rural communities, bringing both opportunities and challenges. The first was a change in the number and size of farms. As an example of this, in a recent Freakonomics episode, Stephen Dubner notes that “When the tomato harvester was introduced, there were around 5,000 tomato growers in the U.S. Within five years, 4,400 had gone out of business.” He adds that “the rise in agricultural productivity tended to favor larger, more industrial farms…As you can imagine, this began to put a lot of small farms out of business.”

As small family farms disappeared so did the communities they had supported. Local businesses and services left. Many rural areas now face declining populations, aging demographics, and “ghost towns.” Finding medical care is increasingly difficult and some communities find it difficult to support schools for their students.

Farm Labor Consequences

Finally, there is the ongoing issue of labor in agriculture. Despite our ability to mechanize, some jobs just have to be done by a human being, and many of those farmworkers are immigrants. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reports of the roughly 2.4 million hired farmworkers in the country, about 1.37 million of those workers are immigrants. Of those, an estimated 603,800 are undocumented.

With the current talk of large-scale deportations, I looked for information about the potential impact on our food system. What I found was that initially, without sufficient labor, crops would go unharvested, leading to significant waste and reduced availability of fresh produce. To avoid these losses in the future, farmers might transition to less labor-intensive crops, such as grains, further reducing the diversity of available fresh produce. That would lead to the U.S. importing more fruits, vegetables, and other labor-intensive foods from countries like Mexico and Canada. But that comes with challenges as well. Given the proposed 25% tariffs on goods coming from these two countries, costs to consumers would likely rise. Even without the tariffs, food prices would likely increase. Replacing undocumented workers with domestic labor could increase wages significantly, as few Americans are willing to perform the arduous, low-paying work of farm labor.

A 2017 report by the American Farm Bureau Federation estimated that removing undocumented workers would cause a 5–6% increase in food prices in the short term. For some crops, such as fruits and vegetables, prices could rise by 30–50% due to their high dependence on manual labor. Estimates of overall impact from a 2014 study by the University of California Davis suggested that a 50% reduction in immigrant farm labor could result in a 2–5% drop in overall U.S. agricultural output. If all undocumented workers were removed, the effects would be even more severe. We would see a 10–15% reduction in fresh produce availability and substantial increases in the cost of staple foods.

What’s Next?

Living just 90 minutes from the border with Mexico, I see how closely linked our two economies are and I’m interested to see what will be changing in the near future for our food system.

I’ve also learned a lot about the interplay between global politics and agriculture policy while exploring this topic. I hope to share some of that with you in the future too.

And if you need a funny…

Beefsteak Slicing Diagram