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market-farming - tomato squeezers

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Subject: Market Farming

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  • From: Leigh <lh AT pressroom.com>
  • To: market-farming AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: tomato squeezers
  • Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2001 21:23:31 -0400


My biggest peeve are tomato squeezers. While I don't do markets, but instead do subscription vegetables, I encountered much the same problems with both corn and tomatoes. People don't act toward the vegetables as though they were food, but instead treat it as just another commodity like hammers and nails (except I haven't recently seen anyone ripping open the keg of nails while in the store and hammering one into a board to make sure it works).

Usually, during the height of tomato season I tell people to take 'all you can eat in a week, tomatoes', and then I would let them pick out there tomatoes out of the tote boxes.

I also found that I had about 20% spoilage. This went on for several years, no matter how carefully I packed the tomatoes for the trip into the city, I would be hauling home 20% of the tomatoes to feed to the chickens and pigs (this also meant that I had to pick 20% more tomatoes than I calculated people would take).

And then I figured it out. One evening I watched several subscribers pick out there tomatoes. They would pick one up, give it a little squeeze and then put it back down.

What happens when you squeeze a tomato?

I have changed my practices. Now, I distribute the tomatoes myself. When it is all you can eat I say 'how many do you want?' and I give out the tomatoes. And guess what? The spoilage is way down. Just one or two percent.

Obviously the answer is either customer education or keeping the vegetables away from the customers until the vegetables have been safely deposited in their box or bag. Obviously, an educated customer is better, but how do you do it?





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