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Richard Zobel (1960)
I woud like to follow up on Paul Aoki's comment about the impact of tomato harvesters on the farming economy, and on the Hard Tomato story. Paul's uncle's name came up a number of times at our house, he was one of the "good growers"! Anyway, to get to the story:
In the 50"s and into the early 60's tomatoes were hand harvested. I think the record was 17 boxes per hour for one worker. These were mostly seasonal mexican workers (called, unfortunately, "wetbacks") brought into California for the harvest season. In the early 60's local labor organized and forced (socially and politically) out the mexican, per box, workers in favor of hourly labor. {not to mention that the inexpensive mexican labor pool dried up - political decisions} This nearly killed the small farmers, because the costs per worker went up and productivity went way down (no stimulus when you are working per hour and not per box). Thus the big push for a harvester. The UCD harvester was in competition with one being developed by Buttons over in Winters. After Buttons died in an airplane crash, many of his novel ideas were incorporated in the UCD harvester. And, yes, when you change the technology, many other things have to change - big bulk trailers, bigger tractors,,,,!
The advent of a harvester paralleled the development of a tomato that could tolerate the abuse. The varieties coming out of UCD (the breeder was professor Hanna) were taste tested for quality as well a chemically tested for canning pruposes. Since Hanna's varieties were produced at UCD, they were provided to other breeders who took them and did further development work. I should comment that the results were not very positive for Yolo county farmers. Other than Hanna's varieties, the tomtoes became increasingly less well adapted to Yolo county soils and weather, as well as tasteless. Less adapted tomatoes means smaller harvests compared to other growing areas, and thus another negative economic factor.
The company growers, company canners, and company breeders were the ultimate beneficiaries of some very good Yolo County efforts to stabilize farming, and maintain production of tomatoes. Those who dislike "hard tomatoes" also need to point to UCD where the techniques for artificially ripening tomatoes were initially developed. This has lead to harvesting early and then ripening after shipping, result: hard tomatoes, even if the same tomatoes when ripened on the plant are not hard and are delicious.
If you like tomatoes, support the local small farmers and get them at a farmers market. Vine ripened, locally, is the best. I think you will find that true for many other crops, and even meat and eggs.
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. My Grandma and Grandpa lived in a "MOTRONI built house. That gorgeous brick house at 51 Pershing Ave in the Beamer park area. This was part of the paper bag that once held nails that I found in their garage. I wanted it because the phone number was "10", I thought that was so cool that Motroni's had the tenth phone in Woodland (I'm now not sure that was the case, but to little kid Greg, he thought that :-) )
