California Tomato
Farmers Dabble in Sustainable Agriculture
August 26, 2005 — By Jim Wasserman, The Sacramento Bee
California's Central Valley growers
want to make the humble tomato, the main ingredient of ketchup, pizza
and spaghetti sauce, into a dominant new player in a growing movement to
curb the use of pesticides and fertilizers on U.S. farms.
After years of unsteady prices and crop yields, farmers in leading
tomato counties such as Fresno, Yolo, San Joaquin and Colusa hope to
boost profits and keep consumers happy by dabbling in the burgeoning
movement known as "sustainable agriculture."
Central Valley farmers supply 95 percent of the nation's processing
tomatoes.
Tomato growers and processors hope special labeling will one day
generate sales for their produce, much as organic growers do for their
crops. Some industry representatives have begun teaming with a nonprofit
Maryland group known as Protected Harvest to use that moniker as a label
for "sustainably grown" tomato products.
Labeling could begin within two years for tomato juice, salsa, sauces
and ketchup -- more than half of a product lineup that grosses a
whopping $5 billion on grocery shelves.
"We're kind of putting our toes in the water and getting a feel for it,"
said Rich Rostomily, administrator of the California tomato industry's
largest processor, Woodland-based Morningstar Packing Co. "We do support
it."
Asked what percentage of the tomato crop currently is sustainably grown,
Rostomily said: "I'd be surprised if it's more than 10 percent. It's
just not very much at this stage."
Estimates are hard to come by because the industry has not yet defined
what sustainable agriculture means in the tomato business, but Protected
Harvest has a plan to do just that.
So-called eco-labeling represents the newest twist in a food labeling
movement that touts organic produce nationally -- "California-Grown"
food in the Golden State, "Healthy Grown" food in Wisconsin, and in some
instances, food and wine from California counties that ban genetically
modified foods.
Even as organic growers often criticize "sustainable agriculture" as
falling short of their environmental objectives of ending the use of
chemical pesticides and fertilizers, its boosters believe they can prod
more change on the farm with a gradual approach.
"We strongly support organic agriculture," said Erik Olson, senior
attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, a New York-based
environmental group. "But this can be an addition that can reach a much
wider swath of the economy and of agriculture."
Winters-based tomato grower Bruce Rominger acknowledged a need for
changes, saying: "We use pesticides that you can use at ounces per acre.
But we have some we need to phase out, realistically, and we're working
on that."
Sustainable farming is a 1980s label that has come to mean greater use
of predatory insects to control pests, less plowing to curb dust and
planting more offseason crops that replenish soil nutrients. It
advocates family farms, greater crop diversity, better farm labor
conditions and healthier rural economies.
The 4-year-old "Protected Harvest" logo, which already marks sustainably
grown potatoes from nearly 6,000 acres in Wisconsin, won both praise and
more than $500,000 in government funding Monday in Sacramento.
During a capital city appearance, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Administrator Stephen Johnson stressed that "sustainable agriculture is
very important to President Bush."
"Consumers want to know the food they buy is healthy for their families
and is grown responsibly," he said.
Johnson's appearance marked the agency's $78,000 contribution to the
tomato effort, alongside $425,000 from the California Water Resources
Control Board.
The money, given to Protected Harvest, will fund a book of mutually
agreed practices that specifically define "sustainably grown" for tomato
processors.
Only growers and processors that follow those practices can label their
product, said Carolyn Brickey, executive director of Protected Harvest,
based in Arnold, Md. The group has also received a $1 million U.S.
Department of Agriculture grant to eventually launch more sustainable
farming practices in the state's tree fruit industry.
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Source: Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News |