Florida Tomato Industry

Ever since Florida farmers have been growing tomatoes, they’ve picked them by hand or hired laborers. It’s painstaking work that might be made easier soon with machine-harvestable tomatoes developed by University of Florida scientists. Now that the varieties are available, growers in Florida’s $400 million-a-year industry hope they can use mechanized harvesting, but doubts remain. Large-scale trials this spring – using the new varieties -- will tell growers and scientists a lot more. The new varieties were decades in the making, said Jessica Chitwood-Brown, the tomato breeder at the University of Florida Gulf Coast Research and Education Center (GCREC).

The Fair Food Program, the signature creation of Coalition of Immokalee Workers, is expanding internationally.

Scientists at the University of Florida’s Southwest Florida Research and Education Center have taken tomato research to the skies. An agricultural…