Quote:
Originally Posted by elight
If Florida is producing so many tomatoes, is it for non-fresh applications (canned, commercial, etc.?) I see tomatoes in the supermarket from California, Mexico and Canada, but almost never from Florida. Would be curious why it's cheaper to ship fresh tomatoes from the places than to source them locally if they are being grown locally.
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The state of Florida is the largest producer of fresh market tomatoes in the U.S. and has been for many decades. It would appear to me that it is no accident that the University of Florida is so involved with fresh market tomato issues including breeding of better fresh market tomatoes. Previous to NAFTA south Miami Dade County, especially area around Perrine through Homestead, was the major producing area of Winter season tomatoes in the US. I’m happy to say I got to see it before it became mostly suburban neighborhoods. California produces more tomatoes but takes a much larger share of the process market for tomatoes. I took the liberty to copy and paste passages from an interested article by the USDA. The link to the article is here:-
https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crop.../tomatoes.aspx
Interesting points made in a USDA article are below:
Tomato varieties are bred specifically to serve the requirements of either the fresh or the processing markets.
Processing tomatoes, which accounted for 89 percent of all tomatoes produced
California and Florida each produce fresh-market tomatoes on 30,000-40,000 acres--almost two-thirds of total U.S fresh-tomato acreage
As they have for decades, Florida and California annually account for two-thirds to three-fourths of all commercially produced fresh-market tomatoes in the United States
Including processing, Florida is the second-largest tomato-producing State; except for 2008, it has been first in producing fresh-market tomatoes for decades.
California is the leading producer of all tomatoes in the United States, accounting for 96 percent of U.S. processing tomato output and one-third of the fresh crop.
California's share of national fresh-market output has remained between 25 and 37 percent since the 1980s.
Florida's winter crop is largely shipped to markets in the East, while the bulk of Mexico's crop is shipped to western States.
The percentage of U.S. fresh-tomato supply that is exported has slipped to about 6 percent this decade
About three-fourths of U.S. fresh tomato exports are shipped to Canada
The tomato season is now split into two periods--each with a separate reference price. California and Baja, Mexico, are covered from July 1 to October 22 ($4.30 per 25-pound box), while Florida and Sinaloa, Mexico, are covered from October 23 to June 30 with a higher floor price ($5.42 per 25-pound box
Americans consume three-fourths of their tomatoes in processed form