Ahhhhh, the cooler weather is nice for working in the field, a little rain is sneaking into the forecasts – in general, a little bit of gloom produces positive mood changes on the farm. Yesterday I got a first-hand look at agriculture on the other end of the spectrum—size wise. Matt Bamrud, a long-time family friend, invited my cousin Josh and me to tour the packing and harvesting operations for the Morningstar Company which is the State’s largest tomato processor.
We toured the “Liberty” plant on the outskirts of Gustine on the West side of the San Joaquin Valley—a plant that processes more tomatoes each year than the entire counrty of Spain. In one hour they can turn up to fifty double semi trailer loads into diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, or tomato paste. The bulk of the paste is stored in either 4’ x 4’ bins or 55 gallon barrels that are sent out to countless other companies and turned into everything from BBQ to pizza sauce.
The scale of this operation is truly mind boggling. The lot where they store the filled bins and barrels is in itself larger than all of our farmed acreage. Driving down the aisles between blocks of bins stacked as high as four story buildings feels like being in a large city. The place is bustling with activity—a constant stream of trucks bringing tomatoes in out of the field, trucks being loaded with finished paste, trucks bringing in shiny new food service cans and forklifts zipping around in all directions. From early July, when the plant starts up, through the middle of October, when things begin to slow down, the plant operates 24 hours, seven days a week.
In order to feed the plant and to keep things going, harvesting operations also have to keep going 24/7. Matt drove us out to a nearby field that was being harvested and, from a point of view of efficiency, it was an impressive sight. The self-propelled harvesters move through the field at up to four miles an hour. Everything on the bed top is undercut and sent up a conveyor belt and into the harvester where it automatically separates most of the leafs, stems, weeds and dirt clods from the tomatoes. Four people worked sorting out excessively green fruit and other impurities before the tomatoes go up a final conveyor and into a trailer being pulled alongside the harvester. The leaves, stems, weeds and everything else is returned to the field.
Matt’s main job at the morning star company is to add value to what were previously considered waste products—seeds, skin, pulp and water—some of which they had to pay others to dispose of. The waste water is now used to irrigate hay fields that surround the plant. Much of the cut hay is mixed with tomato waste, bagged and sold to nearby dairies as silage. He is also experimenting with pressing the seeds for oil to be used in cosmetics or as nutritional supplements. The meal that is left after the oil is pressed out has shown great promise as a fertilizer.
Whether or not you believe it is healthy for agriculture to be practiced on such a massive, regionalized scale—I do not—I came away from the tour impressed in some ways, and even encouraged in others. Organic production is an increasingly important part of what Morningstar does. A large portion of the Liberty plant was recently converted to 100% organic production. Because of improvements in varieties and farming methods, yields in some organic fields are starting to rival their conventional counterparts. And when it comes to crops that are appropriate for what very well may be a drier climate, tomatoes would have to be high on the list. Compared to the fields of silage corn, almonds, cotton and sweet potatoes that surrounded the field we witnessed being harvested, tomatoes use relatively little water. And what water they do use is applied very efficiently through buried drip systems that put the water right in the root zone and minimize evaporation.
I enjoy touring other agricultural enterprises. Not only is it good to get away once in a while, there is almost always something to be learned—not matter how dissimilar they are to my own farm.
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