If you're a fan of this show, then you know we already did a tomato episode. But
then I realized we needed to do a part 2. Why? Because I tasted these. Meet the
tomatoes with the genetic flavor advantage.
So we've already showed you how processing tomatoes grow - the kind that
go into sauce and soup; but there's a whole tomato world beyond the ruby red
ones that dominate the commercial tomato industry, and we're about to discover how
these other tomatoes are scientifically sweeter than any of those perfect red
ones. So these funny-looking tomatoes are not
bred in a laboratory and they're not new. In fact they're called heirloom tomatoes
or "heritage tomatoes" If you're in the UK. What makes them heirloom is that they
haven't been crossed with any other variety, at least not for a long time -
usually decades, sometimes centuries. Think of an heirloom like a thoroughbred -
a purebred. There are all kinds of fruits and vegetables that are heirlooms, but
just in tomatoes alone, there are more than 15,000 known varieties of heirlooms,
With only about 3,000 of them being grown today. Okay so most of us know
tomatoes that look like this: the classic red round. They're the ones that rule our
supermarkets. They're hybrids; they're the result of crossbreeding - an age-old
technique - nothing nefarious here, it's just humans moving pollen from one plant
to another. For example, say you get a tomato that has a thick skin and doesn't
bruise easily, and you cross it with a variety that's more disease resistant -
you get a new variety that hopefully contains both traits. Well, guess what,
that selective breeding has essentially brought us to one homogeneous product -
tomatoes that all pretty much look and taste the same. We've gone from that
incredible diversity of tomatoes to just this.
There are farmers who have gone against the tide like H.G. Haskell, a
third-generation farmer in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. He grows over 75 varieties
of heirloom tomatoes on one of the most beautiful historic farms I've ever seen
in this country - and I've seen a lot of farms.
HG - as everybody calls him - runs a farm stand that's like a cult favorite in
this area, but he doesn't sell to supermarkets because heirlooms bleed
money. Heirlooms are a nightmare to grow and a headache to harvest. The plants
don't even produce a lot of tomatoes. They're highly susceptible to disease;
the fruit is extremely fragile; they bruise when you pick them, they bruise
when you move them; and they crack at the first sight of rain.
(H.G.): They're like a water balloon with needles underneath them. No matter what you do, something's gonna go wrong.
(H.G.): yeah you can't pile (them) on top of each other; you can't bounce them around; but the flip-side of that is the flavor is fantastic.
(Nicole): So what percentage would you say do you actually sell of your heirloom crop?
(H.G.): On average 10 to 20 percent. (Nicole): So you're losing money with heirlooms.
(H.G.): Most likely yeah I mean unless you have the absolute perfect weather,
(H.G.): and everything sells the second it gets to the table but that doesn't... (Nicole): Ever happen...? Has it ever happened?
(H.G.): I...not yet... (Nicole): Fingers crossed for this year...
So now we get to the twist in the story: the only way for a tomato to flourish as
a commercial crop at all, was to become more uniform, more predictable, more
robust, and so about 70 years ago, crop breeders discovered a mutation that
turned the tomato a brilliant solid red - not like this thing. It was easy to know
when a red tomato was ripe. It was attractive to consumers - more attractive
than these gnarly-looking heirlooms, and so they started breeding that mutation
into all the commercial tomatoes - not with genetic modification, just classic
crossbreeding like we talked about earlier. But what breeders didn't know
until only a few years ago is that that mutation knocked out a gene necessary
for the full development of the tomatoes' sugars. Can you believe that? They
essentially sacrificed flavor for some stupid cosmetic ideal.
(H.G.): Like anything in this country, customers like perfect, and there aren't perfect heirlooms and you
(H.G.): know the the regular tomatoes that the grocery stores sell... (Nicole): The hybrids.
(H.G.): They've been bred so they don't crack. (Nicole): Super thick skin that you can peel off like leather.
(H.G.): Yeah which you don't look forward to it at all...? (Nicole): No...no you want it out of there. Whereas this I just want to eat it like an apple. (H.G.): Yep.
Unlike hybrid tomatoes, heirlooms have true seeds. That means you can take the
seeds out of an heirloom, plant them and they will grow the same tomato. You
can't do that with a store-bought hybrid. H.G. reserves a portion of his heirloom
crop each year just to harvest the seeds. Those seeds will become a future crop of
tomatoes. One thing that strikes me about H.G.'s farm is that the heirlooms haven't
been planted in tidy rows of single varieties. Pineapple tomatoes are
interspersed with giant Peruvians; pink Brandywine's next to Rabbit Feet. Wait, Rabbit Feet?
(Nicole): Oh my god this looks like a pepper!
(H.G.): Yeah, but it is really a kind of plum tomato. Somebody gave me the seed about 25 years ago, and I forgot who it
(H.G.): was and I found the seed; and the first year I grow it, I said it looks like a rabbit's foot so I called her a Rabbit's Foot.
(Nicole): So wait, you've named it Rabbit's Foot? Oh I love it! So this is an HG special right here. (H.G.): Yeah.
(Nicole): You know being in your fields, looking at varieties I've never seen before, it just
(Nicole): blows my mind at the diversity that we don't see in our grocery stores.
(H.G.): and that is all to do with profitability, because I mean...and you know nothing against the
(H.G.): grocery stores but they have to grow stuff that they can make money on it if they want to stay in business.
(Nicole): Absolutely. (H.G.): and we grow a lot of heirloom tomatoes, but it's only 5% of what we grow.
H.G.'s farm is not certified organic, but his work is guided by solid
sustainable principles. After starting his heirloom plants in the greenhouse, he
transfers them to the field, where he feeds them expensive organic fertilizer.
He also shields them in open-sided high tunnels to create the kind of warm dry
environment tomatoes love. Those desert like conditions come with their own
challenges. like spider mites. H.G. says he uses pesticides as a very last resort.
Instead he combats the spider mites by introducing his own predatory bugs, which like to feast on the spider mites.
Because HG sells his tomatoes right at his own farm stand, his customers get a
rare treat - tomatoes that are truly picked ripe right from the field next door.
(Nicole): So when I go to a supermarket and it says "vine ripened" is that like vine ripened that you have here?
(H.G.): No, the tomato industry has a term they call "vine ripened", that means when the tomato starts to show color - any color
(H.G.): other than green, it's considered "vine ripe", so they can pick it, and then off
(H.G.): the vine it will eventually ripen, but it hasn't fully ripened on the vine like we
(H.G.): pick ours - red or depending on the heirloom, whatever color it's supposed to
(H.G.): be. And so you have another four or five, ten days of ripening, than you would for
(H.G.): "vine ripe" that you might find in a supermarket.
(Nicole): And ripening equates to flavor.
(H.G.): Correct - and nutrients - so they say...the tomato industry would dispute that with
(H.G.): you but there are studies that say it's more nutritious if it's vine ripened. I
(H.G.): mean if it's ripened on the vine...correct. (Nicole): not "Vine Ripened"...yeah...
We're talking of course about the fresh market here. The tomatoes grown for cans and sauces as we learned in our episode on
processing tomatoes are indeed picked ripe from the vine.
I have a confession to make: I used to wonder whether some people's obsession
with heirlooms was really just a romantic fantasy - you know - that old trope
that things were better in the good ole' days.
Well since immersing myself in this world of agriculture I've realized that
heirlooms represent a diversity that's being lost in modern agriculture.
75% of the world's crop diversity has disappeared in just the last 100 years.
That's staggering. It's because our food system focuses on monoculture and
uniformity. Now I get the business angle - it's scalable, it's predictable, its
profitable. I get it. But the reality is, we've lost so many foods - foods that are
way more nutritious, way more flavorful than anything being grown today. Foods
that you and I will never get to eat - unless you're lucky enough to live near a farm like this.