California Grown Tomatoes

California tomatoes are big business. Last year they grew 95 percent of tomatoes for processing in the United States. These tomatoes are made into tomato paste, sauce, ketchup, and canned tomatoes. They also grow 50 percent of tomatoes for processing in the rest of the world.

Tomatoes can grow in any of the fifty states, but conditions are better in California. With a longer growing season and the dry sunny summers, California is ideal. Over the last twenty years other states have shut down their tomato processing plants.
There are about 277,000 acres of tomato farms in California. With 225 growers, these crops have contracts with one of 16 different tomato canneries.

The farmer actually only makes about 3.5 cents per pound for their processing tomatoes. Farming is very expensive, with the cost of fuel forever rising. It costs the growers about 2,700 dollars per acre to grow tomatoes.

On the other hand, California only grows about 30 percent of tomatoes that are sold fresh. With Florida having 40 percent of this market. California provides fresh tomatoes to all states west of the Mississippi, as well as Japan, Mexico and Canada.

They dodged the bullet, so to speak, with the salmonella scare a few months ago, because their tomatoes were not yet harvested. Still, it has taken a toll on tomato growers. Grocers pulled tomatoes off the shelves, and even though the salmonella scare is past, the growers will never regain what they lost in revenue, which is estimated at 100 million dollars.