Tomatoe Tribulations

Uncle Entity

Tue Jul 01 16:53:29 -0700 2008

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Which begs the question how a perishable commodity delivery system would operate without 'fragile' JIT delivery?

Just kind of wondering...

Tomatoe Tribulations

President4242

Tue Jul 01 17:29:55 -0700 2008

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Locally or not at all.

JIT delivery systems work because of modern technology- but there were perishable goods in the marketplace before the milk run trains, and there will be after the last mechanical transport has rusted away. 

Why do you think most cities had open air markets at one time?

Tomatoe Tribulations

Uncle Entity

Tue Jul 01 18:33:29 -0700 2008

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Doesn't really answer the just in time question...

And you do realize some of us want tomatoes on our Whoppers no matter what the local growing season is for them don't you? Or not have to pay more for a greenhouse grown hydro tomato than the whole burger in some podunk town in N. Dakota.

Some of us don't have a 'local' don't ya know.

Tomatoe Tribulations

President4242

Tue Jul 01 18:53:55 -0700 2008

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Then perhaps you need to create one- and be the guy selling the tomatoes.

Greenhouse grown hydroponic tomatoes aren't very hard....and if they sell for that much where you are, perhaps a little bit of technical ingenuity can enable you to completely corner the market.

Wind and solar powered growlights, perhaps?

Tomatoe Tribulations

Uncle Entity

Tue Jul 01 21:35:09 -0700 2008

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Sounds expensive...

I'll send you may paypal account so you can give me the startup capital. Once I corner the market you'll be the first I pay back, promise.

Now to work on the homeless thing so I actually have a 'local' market to corner.

farm work

zogger

Wed Jul 02 06:26:43 -0700 2008

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Fairly easy to find housing with farm work. Here's a funny one from me past. Was riding around touring on my bicycle, taking a long summer vacation, stopped at a strawberry farm to get some berries. Poor guy came out, looked beat on, sold me some berries and we were talking, he was trying to do his whole harvest for himself, so I offered to help him. wham, ten minutes later he and I were cleaning out a shed to turn into instaapartment, he ran me an extension cord for lights, dragged out a bed from his house, etc. His wife cooked three meals a day too, stayed a few weeks there. That was just a small farm, small acreage, tons of berries though, he was doing well, large farms have year round action like that, usually with at least a camper or modular house.

Tomatoe Tribulations

Charles E Hill

Tue Jul 01 20:00:53 -0700 2008

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Everybody has a "local".  Even New York, Chicago and Los Angeles have farms just outside the metro area.

Not in season is a different issue.

Let us set the WayBack machine to the late 1800s, when the United Fruit Company was the primary financier behind the railroad system in Central America.  They did it to haul fruit to ports and then on to eager U.S. consumers all with 19th Century technology.

Central and South America have been the major food sources for the U.S. for quite some time.  If you want to change seasons, you have to go North-South.

If push comes to shove, trains run on steam or coal.  Food will be grown in Latin America and shipped by train or steamship to the willing consumers in the U.S.

And people have noticed that the rail systems in Central America have been decommissioned.

Tomatoe Tribulations

maethorechannen

Wed Jul 02 04:55:51 -0700 2008

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Not in season is a different issue.

That shouldn't be a problem, at least for tomatoes. Seeing as year round hydroponically grown tomatoes can be grown in southern England (and be commercially viable), I would think that there shouldn't be any issues growing tomatoes year round for somewhere as southerly as the continetal US.

Tomatoe Tribulations

ehrichweiss

Tue Jul 01 17:15:02 -0700 2008

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Even worse, they now think that it may not have had anything DIRECTLY to do with the tomatoes because there are new cases popping up despite having shut down the supposed problem areas. Now they think it's potentially other produce or potentially a distributor with a cross contamination problem. So harvest those tomatoes guys because mine aren't ready yet.

Tomatoe Terrorism

maethorechannen

Wed Jul 02 15:38:55 -0700 2008

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Even worse, they now think that it may not have had anything DIRECTLY to do with the tomatoes because there are new cases popping up despite having shut down the supposed problem areas

 

I'm surprised the media isn't discussing (or if they are discussing, more loudly discussing) the possibility of it being a bioterrorist attack. I'd swear I saw an item on one of the US Evening news programmes a couple years ago describing what a bioterrorist attack might be like and one of the scenarios is not that dissimilar to what's going on.

Tomato Terrorism

ehrichweiss

Wed Jul 02 15:51:31 -0700 2008

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Maybe so but salmonella isn't exactly the deadliest disease on the planet. It'd take a lot to actually kill you; you may WANT to die but the chances of doing it are slim.

Tomatoe Tribulations

Eric Howe

Tue Jul 01 18:11:22 -0700 2008

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Wouldn't turning them into tomato sauce, tomato paste, cooked salsa, etc. kill the salmonella? I thought we were having a global food crisis.

Tomatoe Tribulations

Charles E Hill

Tue Jul 01 19:38:29 -0700 2008

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Yes, except...

That market is filled and the demand isn't there for all the stuff that would normally go to "fresh".

Flooding the cooked tomato market with all the surplus would drive the prices down as to not be profitable.  That is if they could find buyers at all.  Most probably have fulfillment contract already. Yes, they aren't profitable now but I think the choice boiled down to:

1. Hire pickers, packer and shippers; negotiate with buyers who already have fulfillment contracts; lose money.

2. Let it sit and rot; lose money.

Tomatoe Tribulations

atrius

Wed Jul 02 09:47:21 -0700 2008

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Shouldn't option two read 'lose less money'? :)

Tomatoe Tribulations

President4242

Wed Jul 02 11:33:36 -0700 2008

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3.  Go ahead and can the tomatoes and get some charity organization to ship them to China, North Korea, and Africa where the food shortage is the worst to take as a charity loss on your taxes.

Not everything has to be about profit.

Tomatoe Tribulations

Charles E Hill

Wed Jul 02 12:02:44 -0700 2008

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It isn't necessarily about profit.  The farmers who routinely sell fresh tomatoes may not have the connections to can them.

If they do, the loss they would incur on the labor of picking, packing, canning and shipping may be too great.  They flat out might not be able to afford it.

And, on a side note, North Korea can rot until they decide to sit at the big people's table.  They have the fourth largest military in the world -- FIRST if you count reserves -- and have enough food if it wasn't all allocated to the military, politicians and cronies.  They are a self-made, self-imposed disaster.

Tomatoe Tribulations

President4242

Wed Jul 02 12:39:00 -0700 2008

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In case you missed the news (I caught it on The Daily Show of all things, it wasn't widely reported) N. Korea has actually decided to, in face of a recent famine affecting more than a half a million people, "sit at the big people's table"- at least to the extent of opening up their nuclear program to international inspectors, begining to reduce their military, etc. 

If this gives you a clue- the first load of Mercy Corps wheat arrived in North Korea yesterday, and even President Bush (much to the merriment of Jon Stewart in The Daily Show broadcast I saw) has given North Korea 45 days to live up to it's new promises, at the end of which he fully intends to ask Congress to stop labeling them as a terror-supporting country.

I'm hopeful, but in the mean time it makes sense to keep these people alive.

Oh, and as to the original topic- I can't imagine any agricultural area which grows tomatoes wouldn't also have cannaries available to send them to, even if most go to the fresh market.  The area I grew up in had, between Norpac and Agripac, 26 cannaries in a 25 mile radius.

Tomatoe Tribulations

Charles E Hill

Wed Jul 02 12:44:28 -0700 2008

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I saw a blurb about them blowing up the cooling tower, which I thought was symbolic but meaningless.  Given their history, I wanted to see some verification that they weren't going to revert to their old ways right after they got a shipment or two of wheat and oil.

I hope it is the beginning of their opening up and just chilling out in general.  Maybe ship them a few metric tons of weed, some rolling papers and a containership full of Doritos...

Original topic... it may be just the labor cost is too much.  Or maybe that no one would accept the potential salmonella-tainted tomatoes -- cooked or not.  Look at the reaction in S. Korea to U.S. beef imports.

Tomatoe Tribulations

President4242

Wed Jul 02 13:15:04 -0700 2008

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The cooling tower IS symbolic and meaningless- that specific plant has been in the process of being decomissioned for more than a year.

Far more meaningful- is the releasing of documentation on their nuclear installations to China.

On the original topic- if people are hungry enough, they'll eat anything.  And there are something close to 15 million unemployed Americans right now- I give up some of my unemployed time for charity, I can't imagine you couldn't just go to any employment office/career center right now and pick up a truckload of volunteers.

Tomatoe Tribulations

Thomas Lord

Tue Jul 01 20:05:27 -0700 2008

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F'ing Berkeley: the price hasn't dropped an inch except maybe at the very high end ($2-$3+ for fancy varieties -- of which we see some real beauties). Buck a pound at the level I buy, mostly. Sometimes spring for *a* tomato of the fancy sort.

-t

Tomatoe Tribulations

Gailin

Tue Jul 01 21:52:46 -0700 2008

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That's why I love this site. There have been a few articles on how far removed we have become from being able to do the basics.  One article that sticks in my mind was about baking bread being a lost skill.  Those articles inspired me to learn how to do more of the basics, and provided an abundance of bread during my experimental phase. 

This year, we decided to have a garden and planted tomatoes. This has proven to be an instance where curiousity has paid off, as I have been ?lucky? enough to have baskets and baskets of great tomatoes that I have to cook up into salsa, sauces, etc.  I'm going to miss them when the season changes and I go back to the store.

give us this day our daily...

Thomas Lord

Tue Jul 01 22:43:13 -0700 2008

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Bread is freakin' fun. Berkeley (obligatory, Berkeley-snobbish "pfffft" goes here) is wealthy in bread. And there seems to be a story there that I've only partly so far reconstructed.

So, back during the Viet Nam war, S hit fan in Berkeley. You might have heard about that. Mario Savio and all that. Funny pictures can be found of the national guard (thanks gov Reagan) lining our main street, locked and loaded. Not quite Kent State but also not quite not -- a little darker and more subtle in some ways. And, hey, from that period comes "People's Park" -- a square city block of (according to some, disputed by the putative owners) unowned, common land -- "People's" indeed -- the entire extent of territory claimed by the revolution.

Well, anyway, during that time there were two things going on. There was the Liberal (in a classical sense) revolution: free love, drugs, all that. And there was the politics. Really, the C.P. thought for a time they had a serious strong-hold. And, in this town, from way back, there's the very very wealthy and the... er... not so much. And the very very wealthy are traditionally Liberal, in that classical sense -- and so they had a lot of sympathy for the hippies even while they weren't so enthusiastic about the communists.

What's a Liberal to do? Lead by example, of course. Whence we get what is today called "Gourmet Ghetto", at least that's my take on it. Namely, some youth favored by the elites chose the craft / zen path and got amply rewarded -- whence we get Chez Pannise, Goines, Peete's Coffee (and it's spin-off, Starbuck's), and much else not limited to but including....

I was starting off to talk about bread. Well, there's the "Cheese Board Collective" and a collective is, indeed, what it is though I'm given to understand that in recent years they've upped the number of employees (as opposed to members). And, what's that? Well, a cheese importer for one thing, sure -- but also a baker. And bread to die for. And that's where the bread story is.

There's a guy. I guess I won't mention his name but his first initial is Eric. Anyway, by rumor, he started it all. The starter, that is. You see, here in (cough cough) the Ess Eff bay area we don't go for any of that commercial yeast stuff, no sir. Sourdough (which doesn't have to be sour -- just means a cultivated formerly feral yeast) all the way. So many little craft bakeries all from Eric's little first "starter."

Now, the craft bakeries have some serious advantages over the ambitious amateur. They get tastier flour. They have that damn starter. And yet, even the home-cook, constrained-to-shop-at-the-grocery-store bread maker can learn a trick or two.

Two things to learn, per my suggestion: (a) Mild fermentation -- let your sponge go over 24+ hours -- especially for pizza dough; (b) Water doughs -- 50%+ water by weight -- NO KNEEDING just a few folds -- very long rising time (the outgassing of the yeast develops the gluten as the bubbles stretch the dough). Either case or both combined there's the third of the two things: high temperatures. For pizza you can't much beat a 900 degree oven (nor can the average person produce one at home). For water doughs, a hellishly high, home-obtainable oven temperature is essential.

Goes good with tomatoes.

(No, the above isn't intended to parse easily but locals might get a chuckle.)

-t

duck and cover

zogger

Wed Jul 02 09:11:41 -0700 2008

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Growing up being told every few weeks in school you were gonna get nuked and going through the duck and cover (cringe and giggle at the same time) under the desks action sort of fed my generation on some doomer stuff. Then the sci fi guys ahold of it and we had a slew of end of the world doomsday scenarios and what life might be like. Fast forward through blizzards, icestorms, poverty, hurricanes, riots, grid collapses, environmental disasters, high stakes global geopolitics even being worse now than before, the universal rise of the big brother state in all nations (no exceptions, just matters of degree at any point) and so on, add in the y2k worries which gave us our second wakeup call on tech scarcity threats after the first one which was the opec embargo, you get to today, with peak oil, climate change, peak this, peak that, food shortages, exploding governments and popping bubbles all over and nervous sweating bankers with generic currency collapses/rapid inflation because they are all based on hot air and wishful thinking, which bring it all back to cheap energy and how our modern way of life which is so dependent on it, and if that goes..which it looks like it is... knowing about how they did things way way back is sure looking like a good viable backup plan B. And that's why we here "evacuated in advance of all the emergencies" back out to the countryside, it just helps mitigate immediately a lot of the potential and looking more like probable threat scenarios we are seeing.

The 20th century gave us technological man in spades, but it was because of a big enough to have a lot of shared knowledge but still low enough population with still abundant natural resources easy to get at, cheap energy, and until the extreme last part of the century, zero environmental worries or concerns of any lasting note. All that has changed, all of it, the old ways we used for the past century won't work like they did then for us now, we-society we- are older and more knowledgeable humans, so it pays to learn from the past and to develop your work arounds in advance of needing them, when it is still possible and at least semi affordable. And sad to say though, it appears a lot of people just can't grok (or really don't want to because it immediately looks scary) how looking at the past and the present will help you extrapolate the future. It *changes* so the best you can do is really run the odds with your societal changes modeling thoughts in a sober fashion, erring on the caution side for security, and go from there.

My best guess is if we as humans want to maintain a late 20-th century styled life for everyone, all six billion and growing, we will have to take some from the 17th through the theoretical 22nd century to pull it off. The biggest thing right off the bat is to throw away the 20th century culture aspects of waste and abuse that became common just from wanting to get fast results. that's the most important, all these ways of doing business are based on cheap energy, cheap environmental costs and are based on the demand for this quarters profits AND ever continuing growth for EVERY corporation out there. that's crazy and has been obviously crazy! Its nutz! That just ain't gonna happen, them guys are looney tunes out to lunch if they think they can do it. Dang if I can understand why so many people think it is possible to keep pouring six economic gallons from a five gallon bucket and just keep firing and rehiring new bucket pourers to keep trying that business model. It is never going to work, it is collapsing in front of our eyesa right now, but they keep trying, which means they are clinically insane. And these are our largest leaders and businessmen, and that is the fairy tale they keep selling to us. There is no theoretical economic bucket pouring technique that can be developed to solve that problem, I don't care how many "quants" they throw at it or what they call it. You only have as much as is there, the only way you can get six gallons is to adjust what you call a gallon, and that is the best them guys can do now, just keep calling it six gallons and hope the dumb clucks don't notice.

I know I've said this previously but I'll repeat it, we folks alive today are living in the last of the good old days, we will most likely go through a century of dwindling stuff and maybe a lot of serious bad news until such a time as we get cheap replicator tech up and running good and really harness the Sun. Man made in a sealed case blinkenlights mr fusion is still way too far away, we need to use practical fusion power, solar power basically. Some say nuke fission, I just can't agree, although it looks good and sounds tempting, there is just too much potential for abuse, and the more we use it the higher the odds become. The more of that built, the more of the used stuff from there is available, leading to eventually nutcases getting their hands on lots of that stuff and starting huge wars after they set off a few small ones, because they will spiral out of control if that starts happening with fission-stuff. That is exactly what will happen too, I have zero doubt.

That and we really need to rethink massive genetic engineering until humans psychology gets more mature, we need to grow up more as a species, that tech has the potential to be far worse than even abuse of uranium. Go real slow and carefully with those two techs, too fast, we'll screw up bad, we couldn't even handle relatively simple chemistry advances, we have half polluted the planet already. That's my best guess. I mean, we are already looking at a HUGE threat in the mideast over who gets to use nuclear tech or not, we very easily could see a big war over it now, like this year some time,so think if it was 90 more nations all getting into it, ain't enough "inspectors" on the planet to deal with it. And I also have to say I have serious worries over man made bad biocooties, real bad feelings, it is becoming way to easy to mix and match parts to make ..whatevers...and then there's the ultimate, something we doomers whisper about..the idea that the big controllers have figured all of this out as well, came to the same exact conclusions, so they are going to use the "great cull" theory as the simplest easiest and fastest solution *for them*.

If we can beat this century I think humans will make it, but I have serious doubts at this time just looking at today's reality. I still see a lot of hope and things are OK now, just can see the dangers that are readily apparent and I am not seeing much in the way of leadership out there, we have a reactionary society, it needs to be proactive, but it has barely begun to change in that direction, and it is still slow, real dang slow, because it is interfering with that 20th century fast buck mindset and business climate. those people are just going to have to come to grips that everyone can't get rich with few people working. the cat is out of the bag with that exploitation deal, people will only put up with it for so long, we have electronic communications now so even the poorest slobovich over yonder will find out he is getting shafted and just demand more, and we just slap don't have enough stuff for everyone to keep having more at this time.

Tomatoe Tribulations

President4242

Wed Jul 02 11:35:18 -0700 2008

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$30 of PVC pipe and 6 mill poly will extend your growing season 2-4 months.

Tomatoe Tribulations

pyro9

Wed Jul 02 13:40:19 -0700 2008

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I'm looking forward to the tomatoe harvest here. We have a couple that will become BLTs in the next few days and many more to come.

What about irradiation?

pyro9

Wed Jul 02 13:20:38 -0700 2008

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I realize that irradiated foods make some people needlessly eorried, but they certainly don't give you food poisoning.

 

Meanwhile, I can understand growers being bitter towards the FDA. After many weeks with the news screaming "TOMATOES WILL KILL YOU!", the FDA isn't really sure which tomatoes, if any, are a problem. It might be something else entirely that has no warning messages at all. Especially considering that even if only 1 in 100 cases are reported, the total number is not even significant compared to the number of people who have consumed tomatoes without harm. No deaths at all have been reported. The same cannot be said for the number of deaths that have happened on the way to or from the store to buy tomatoes.

This from the same FDA that routinely approves drugs for non-fatal conditions that carry a documented mortality rate, in spite of safer (and now generic) older drugs that are very nearly as effective.

At the same time, I do wonder, if demand HAS dropped off so much why aren't tomatoes on sale? Since tyhe FDA has clearly stated that the ones sold with part of the vine still attached are OK, why not harvest them that way (I realize that's not an option for all farmers given different equipment)?

 

Other pecautions might include ordering packagers to batch tomatoes by origin as much as possable, even add tracking tags to packages. That would make matters a lot simpler when someone does get sick.