Crop Rotation for Ugly Tomatoes

Tumbledown read with interest and appreciation Verlyn Klinkenborg's rip of winter tomatoes and riff on the tasty virtues of the UglyRipe. (NYTimes, Editorial Notebook, January 31, 2007, "Growing the Winter Tomato.") The editorial waxed almost poetical about casting aside the cardboard texture and bland non-flavor of the perfectly round, firm (hard as rocks) artificially colored (gassed) red balls usually dubbed "tomatoes" by the local supermarket produce aisle--in favor of lumpier, unevenly colored flavor bombs, a.k.a., the UglyRipes.

But Klinkenborg stops short of a full endorsement of this new tomato because the UglyRipe's growers (Santa Sweets) use "methyl bromide, a powerful, ozone-depleting pesticide, to fumigate the soil in which conventional UglyRipes grow." The point for Klinkenborg is that fresh tomatoes in winter--whether the terrible ones we are used to or the better ones we have yet to taste--are not worth the methyl bromide cost. Tumbledown would add that there are other unacceptable costs to be tallied. The expectation that Indiana residents should enjoy "fresh" winter tomatoes is dangerously irrational; the delusion is especially not worth the diesel fuel used to ship them. But if we continue pouring carbon into the atmosphere at the rate we have been in order to ship fresh tomatoes to Indiana in January, global warming may yet provide Tumbledown with ripe February tomatoes before he expires for good.

And what about the methyl bromide? According to Klinkenborg, "under the terms of the Montreal Protocol, the use of methyl bromide was supposed to be phased out completely by January 2005." Why? Because it depletes the ozone. According to the EPA sheet on the phaseout, the exemptions are allowed for "agricultural users with no technically or economically feasible alternatives." So, what pests are these Florida tomato farmers killing with this "indispensable" pesticide for which there are no "feasible alternatives"? The pests are the usual culprits for tomato growers, nematodes and Verticillium and Fusarium wilts. (See the whining by the growers on the USDA research site.) Every gardener contends with them. (See the entry on tomatoes in any of the most basic gardening books: e.g., IDG's Vegetable Gardening for Dummies or Rodale's All-New Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening; or any basic text about agronomy and crop management.) And the most feasible alternatives to methyl bromide have been known for centuries. What are they? Try crop rotation...and acceptance of naturally uninflated yields! (Every description of crop rotation for the past 100 years has emphasized its effectiveness against pests and diseases. See the Cyclopedia of American Agriculture, Vol. II; or Andrew Boss' Farm Management; or the concluding section of Wilson and Warburton's book on Field Crops for a history of crop rotation and a description of its practice.) So, why has the obvious--crop rotation as a form of pest control--the better alternative, been rejected? Because it would take 2/3 (in a three-year rotation) to 4/5 (in a five-year rotation) or more of the tomato acreage out of production in any given year and a reduction in artificially inflated yields. In other words, tomato production would become localized or highly regionalized, and seasonal, and places like Indiana would have to go without, or pay extravagant prices for, the "luxury" of "winter" tomatoes.

Could such be done in Indiana? Yes. It was done by Helen and Scott Nearing from 1932 in the much harsher climate of Vermont and Maine. (The Good Life) But it cannot be done without a change in the way we eat. Eat what comes naturally to your locality. I think that must have been Klinkenborg's point.

Tumbledown Farm