Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-15T05:47:51.306Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A Tomato for All Seasons: Innovation in American Agricultural Production, 1900–1945

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2014

John Hoenig
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Economic and geographic centralization are typically seen as critical components of the industrialization of food during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The development of the fresh- and processed-tomato industries during this period offers an important counterexample to this dominant narrative. Between the late nineteenth century and World War II, the most salient characteristic of both fresh- and processed-tomato production was economic and geographic decentralization. This article argues that the emergence of sites of tomato production and processing in virtually every region of the country played a vital role in fulfilling the long-standing quest for year-round access to both fresh and processed tomatoes.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 88 , Issue 3 , Autumn 2014 , pp. 523 - 544
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Arthur Allen, “Rotten Tomatoes: Scandal Strikes the Tomato-Paste Industry,” Slate, http://www.slate.com/id/2248288/. Dan Mitchell, “Finally—An Indictment in the Massive Tomato Conspiracy,” http://www.thebigmoney.com/blogs/daily-bread/2010/02/19/man-center-massive-tomato-fraud-indicted; P. J. Huffstutter, “Ex-Owner of SK Foods Indicted in Tomato Scandal,” Los Angeles Times, http://latimes.com/business/la-fi-tomato-scandal19-2010feb19,0,3396464.story. For information on the tomato shortages in Florida, see David Koeppel, “Tomato ‘Outage’ Due to Freeze,” Slash Food, http://www.slashfood.com/2010/02/25/tomato-outage-due-to-freeze.

2 The literature on tomatoes has addressed a number of issues raised by the growing power of the corporate tomato industry, including the growing economic strength of processing companies, the cultural symbols of tomatoes provided by advertising and marketing, factory and field workers' attempts to organize and the transnational implications of migrant labor in tomato fields, and finally, the physical reconstruction of the tomato to serve the needs of the processed-tomato industries. See Estabrook, Barry, Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit (Riverside, N.J., 2011)Google Scholar; Smith, Andrew, The Tomato in America: Early History, Culture, and Cookery (Columbia, S.C., 1994)Google Scholar; Smith, Andrew, Souper Tomatoes: The Story of America's Favorite Food (New Brunswick, N.J., 2000)Google Scholar; Sidorick, Daniel, Condensed Capitalism: Campbell Soup and the Pursuit of Cheap Production in the Twentieth Century (Ithaca, N.Y., 2009)Google Scholar; Allen, Arthur, Ripe: The Search for the Perfect Tomato (Berkeley, 2010)Google Scholar; Barndt, Deborah, Tangled Routes: Women, Work, and Globalization on the Tomato Trail (New York, 2002)Google Scholar.

3 For an example of the importance of canning, see Boorstin, Daniel, The Americans: The Democratic Experience (New York, 1973)Google Scholar, 309. For the general work on the American food industry and food culture, see Strasser, Susan, Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market (Washington, D.C., 1989)Google Scholar; Levenstein, Harvey, Revolution at the Table: The Transformation of the American Diet (New York, 1988)Google Scholar. For the centralization and standardization of lettuce, see Petrick, Gabriela, “‘Like Ribbons of Green and Gold’: Industrializing Lettuce and the Quest for Quality in the Salinas Valley, 1920–1965,” Agricultural History 80, no. 3 (2006): 269–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an example of an argument based on the homogenization of food and taste in modern America, see Vileisis, Ann, Kitchen Literacy: How We Lost Knowledge of Where Food Comes From and Why We Need to Get It Back (Washington, D.C., 2008)Google Scholar. Some of the strongest work in the field has focused on industries modeled around economic concentration, including Cronon, William, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York, 1991)Google Scholar; Stoll, Steven, The Fruits of Natural Advantage: Making the Industrial Countryside in California (Berkeley, 1998)Google Scholar; Soluri, John, Banana Cultures: Agriculture, Consumption, and Environmental Change in Honduras and the United States (Austin, 2005)Google Scholar.

4 Cronon, William, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (New York, 1983)Google Scholar. For the persistence of a seasonal diet in New England, see McMahon, Sarah F., “‘All Things in Their Proper Season’: Seasonal Rhythms of Diet in Nineteenth-Century New England,” Agricultural History 63, no. 2 (Spring 1989): 130–51Google Scholar.

5 Allen, Ripe, 13; “On the Cultivation of Tomatoes (Solanum Lycopersicum),” Southern Agriculturalist and Register of Rural Affairs (Feb. 1829): 79Google Scholar; Genesee Farmer, “Hot-Beds,” New England Farmer, and Horticultural Register (20 Apr. 1831): 317; “On Plantation Gardens, and the Culture of Vegetables,” Southern Agriculturalist and Register of Rural Affairs (Feb. 1831): 79Google Scholar.

6 Smith, , The Tomato in America, 132–48Google Scholar; “From the Northumberland (Pa.) Public Aspect,” The New England Farmer, and Horticultural Register (28 Nov. 1832): 157; D., “Turkish Preparation of Tomato,” (Oct. 1836): 299. For early-nineteenth-century fresh-tomato recipes, see for example, S., “Letter,” New York Farmer (Feb. 1830): 47; “Uses of the Tomato-Cookery,” Western Christian Advocate (27 Sept. 1839): 91.

7 H., “The Best Way of Preserving Fruits and Vegetables,” Horticulturalist and Journal of Rural Art and Rural Taste (1 Sept. 1851): 417.

8 See A. W. Livingston with a foreword and appendix by Smith, Andrew F., Livingston and the Tomato (Columbus, Ohio, 1998)Google Scholar.

9 See footnote 2.

10 U.S. Department of Agriculture (hereafter, USDA), Bureau of Agricultural Economics (hereafter, BAE), Consumption of Food in the United States, 1909–1952, Agricultural Handbook 62 (Washington D.C., 1953)Google Scholar, 117, 119, 121, 142; USDA, BAE, Supplement for 1961 to Consumption of Food in the United States, 1909–52, Agricultural Handbook 62, supplement 1961 (Washington D.C., 1962)Google Scholar, 25.

11 For examples of scholars' focus on processed, particularly ready-made, tomato products, see Strasser, Satisfaction Guaranteed; Smith, Souper Tomatoes. For data on tomato consumption, see National Canners' Association, Canned Food Pack Statistics: 1950, Part 1: Vegetables (Washington, D.C., June 1951)Google Scholar, 22.

12 McCue, C. A., “Tomatoes for the Canning Factory,” Delaware College Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin 101 (1912): 56Google Scholar; Arthur, Charles M., “Marketing Tomatoes in New Jersey,” New Jersey State Agricultural College Extension Bulletin 1, no. 6 (1915): 1–12Google Scholar.

13 May's Tomato Seed Ad: “The Earliest in the World,” Market Growers' Journal (5 Feb. 1908): 3.

14 For consumer demand for out-of-season tomatoes, see E. V. Wilcox, “Are Vegetable Growers Meeting Consumers Half Way?” Market Growers' Journal (15 Oct. 1925): 5, 7. For the economic need to produce early tomatoes, see “Secrets of Success with Early Tomatoes: A Summary of the Experience of Thirty-Six Growers,” Market Growers' Journal (9 Mar. 1912): 5, 19; C. A. U., “A Farmer's Report on Tomato Growing,” Market Growers' Journal (5 Feb. 1908): 9; W. H. Harris, “Earliest Crops in the Vegetable Garden,” Market Growers' Journal (15 Jan. 1925): 32. For farmers reporting the prices received in the first two weeks of the season, see “This Week's Topic,” Market Growers' Journal (9 Mar. 1912): 13–19; and “This Week's Topic,” Market Growers' Journal (16 Mar. 1912): 12–19.

15 U.S. Census Bureau, Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900, vol. 6, Agriculture (Washington, D.C., 1902)Google Scholar; U.S. Census Bureau, Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1920, vol. 5, Agriculture (Washington, D.C., 1922)Google Scholar. James, Henry A., “Tomatoes for Market and Canning,” University of Maryland Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin 248 (Feb. 1922): 154Google Scholar; Frank App and Waller, Allen G., “Costs, Profits and Practices of the Can-House Tomato Industry in New Jersey,” New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin 353 (Apr. 1921): 13–14Google Scholar.

16 App and Waller, “Costs, Profits and Practices,” 6. USDA, BAE, “Vegetables for Commercial Processing: Acreage, Production, Value; Revised Estimates, 1918–50,” Statistical Bulletin 132 (June 1953)Google Scholar; Beattie, James, “Tomatoes for Canning and Manufacture,” U.S. Department of Agriculture Farmers' Bulletin 1233 (Oct. 1921): 5–6Google Scholar.

17 Canners' Directory, 1925 (Washington, D.C., 1925)Google Scholar. It should be noted too that the Canners' Directory did not list every cannery in operation. I discovered this omission while researching canning in northeast Pennsylvania and working on the Pennsylvania Agricultural History Project led by Sally McMurry. Often, the directory did not mention smaller canneries, especially in areas that were not dominant sites of food production.

18 USDA, BAE, “Commercial Truck Crops: Revised Estimates of Acreage, Production and Value, 1928–1941, under New Seasonal Groupings,” Statistical Bulletin (Oct. 1943): 4–5Google Scholar.

19 USDA, BAE, “Shipments and Unloads of Certain Fruits and Vegetables, 1918–1923,” Statistical Bulletin 7 (Apr. 1925)Google Scholar; USDA, BAE, “Car-Lot Shipments and Unloads of Important Fruits and Vegetables for the Calendar Years 1924–1926,” USDA Statistical Bulletin 23 (Apr. 1928)Google Scholar.

20 See “Mexican Vegetables for American Trade Increasing Yearly: Home Growers Should Get Busy,” Market Growers' Journal (1 Nov. 1925): 13; “Vegetable Imports Jump $3,000,000 over Totals of First Half of 1924,” Market Growers' Journal (15 Oct. 1925): 3, 12; “Vegetable Exports of the United States,” Market Growers' Journal (1 Apr. 1925): 53.

21 “Tomato Growing in Tennessee,” Market Growers' Journal (17 Feb. 1912): 5; Essary, S. H., “Notes on Tomato Diseases with Results of Selection for Resistance,” Tennessee Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin 95 (Jan. 1912)Google Scholar.

22 “Mississippi Tomatoes Have Wide Distribution,” Market Growers' Journal (15 July 1925): 24; USDA, BAE, “Shipments and Unloads of Certain Fruits and Vegetables, 1918–1923”; USDA, BAE, “Car-Lot Shipments and Unloads of Important Fruits and Vegetables for the Calendar Years 1924–1926.”

23 Sando, Charles E., “The Process of Ripening in the Tomato, Considered Especially from the Commercial Standpoint,” U.S. Department of Agriculture Bulletin 859 (Sept. 1920): 2Google Scholar; W. F. Massey, “Timely Topics,” Market Growers' Journal (18 May 1912): 6. Beattie, James H., “Greenhouse Tomatoes,” U.S. Department of Agriculture Farmers' Bulletin 1431 (Dec. 1924): 2Google Scholar.

24 E. V. Wilcox, “Are Vegetable Growers Meeting Consumers Half Way?” Market Growers' Journal (15 Oct. 1925): 5, 7.

25 Beattie, “Greenhouse Tomatoes,” 1–2.

26 Ibid.; C. W. Waid, “Growing Tomatoes under Glass,” Market Growers' Journal (1 Jan. 1908): 8.

27 Waid, “Growing Tomatoes under Glass”; C. W. Waid, “Packages for Greenhouse Tomatoes,” Market Growers' Journal (18 May 1912): 9.

28 E. E. Adams, “Packages for Hothouse Tomatoes,” Market Growers' Journal (29 June 1912): 2.

29 “Airplane View of the Zuck Greenhouses,” Market Growers' Journal (15 Mar. 1925): 45; “Davis Gardens, with 29 Acres under Glass, Gives Indiana World's Biggest Range,” Market Growers' Journal (15 Apr. 1925): 22, 35.