Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
the same period. People weren't buying the little gems just because they were cute; they
were buying them because they tasted better.
Most miniature tomatoes are naturally sweeter than their bigger brothers. Whereas reg-
ular tomatoes have a sugar content of 4 or 5 percent, cherry and grape tomatoes reliably
sweeten into the 8 to 9 percent range, and sometimes even higher. Because they're so
small, they ripen much more quickly than regular tomatoes - a real boon in cool, cloudy
climates - and they last longer after picking than do other tomatoes, so they can be picked
nearly dead ripe and still be delicious a week later when you get them home from the su-
permarket. In fact, one of the biggest hurdles tomato farmers faced was teaching crews
how to pick them. Rather than harvesting tomatoes at the slightest sign of a blush, pickers
needed to be taught to wait until the colors develop fully.
The original grape tomatoes belonged to a single red variety called Santa, but they now
come in a dazzling assortment of colors and shapes. Some are round, some are grape-
shaped, and some look like miniature pears. They are every color in the tomato rainbow:
red, green, yellow, white, even purple-black. Sungold, a yellow, is well on its way to be-
ing an established favorite, as is Juliet, a red oval. Candy looks like a miniature German
Pineapple tomato, and Tigerella is striped red and yellow. Taste an assortment of them,
and you'll realize there is no such thing as one single "tomato flavor." Rather there is a
spectrum, running from almost lemony to nearly beefy.
Fresh tomato consumption, which was less than 121/2 pounds per person through the
1970s and early 1980s, now stands at more than 19 pounds. Total sales have increased to
more than $1.3 billion - behind only lettuces in the commercial vegetable hierarchy. Even
Florida, so battered by the initial flood of imports, has rebounded. And of the 1.5 billion
pounds of tomatoes it grows every year, fully 7 percent are the high-flavor, high-profit
grapes. Much more important for consumers, what once stood as a symbol of everything
that had gone wrong with commercial agriculture now represents a promise of what can
be accomplished with a return to the simple values of flavor and variety. Although Adam
Smith would no doubt be dumbfounded at a world in which so much attention is paid to a
single fruit (and so much money can be made from it), it's hard to imagine that he would
not be thrilled by the result.
