'Exceptional’ Arkansas tomato crop expected

Arkansas is known for its tasty field-grown tomatoes, and grower-shippers say this year’s crop should put a smile on the faces of produce buyers and consumers alike.

The state has about 2,000 acres of tomatoes, according to the Arkansas Farm Bureau, making the commodity one of the state’s largest specialty crops.

“The crops at this time look exceptionally good,” Gary Margolis, owner and president of Hamburg, Ark.-based Gem Tomato & Vegetable Sales, said in mid-May.

Arkansas tomatoes are among the nation’s first field-grown vine-ripes to be harvested each year.

“Arkansas has a significant following for vine-ripe tomatoes early in the summer,” Margolis said.

Some growers could be picking as early as the first week of June this year.

Gem Tomato offers round, roma, and for the past few years, grape tomatoes. The grape tomatoes are picked red-ripe, so they have a high sugar content and superior taste, Margolis said.

“The customers recognize that,” he said.

Round tomatoes are the company’s bestseller, but demand for romas has increased each year since they were added to the product line more than 20 years ago.

Hermitage, Ark.-based Harrod & Hensley Tomato Co. in Bradley County, known nationally as a prime tomato-growing region, offers   round, grape, heirloom and roma tomatoes, said Joshua Hensley, operations manager.

Harvest should start at the end of May this year with full-blown production underway by the first week of June.

“We normally get the first tomatoes out of the state of Arkansas,” Hensley said.

Hensley is the fifth generation of the family-owned company, which has only four full-time employees most of the year but as many as 100 workers for the five-week tomato harvest.

Volume should be about the same as last year, he said.

The company also sells tomatoes for four or five other growers.

Despite their popularity, it seems that marketing Arkansas tomatoes can be a challenge these days.

The field-grown tomato segment has been affected by the “exponential growth in greenhouse production” from Mexico and Canada, Margolis said. Competition got so tough that he recommended that his grower, Hamburg-based Triple M Farms, gradually reduce its acreage.

Gem Tomato now focuses on customers in the Midwest who recognize the value of field-grown Arkansas tomatoes and are willing to pay a bit more for them, Margolis said.

Margolis thinks that while greenhouse tomatoes used to be a specialty item, they’ve become a mainstream item, and field-grown tomatoes now fall into the specialty category.

“Field-grown, in our view, is now the specialty,” he said. “We’re growing a limited-production product in a limited window, and we still have customers who are totally committed.”

Greenhouse tomatoes may look good on the produce shelf, he said, but field-grown product still has a loyal following.

“I firmly believe that a tomato that is grown outdoors in that climate is superior to the greenhouse product,” Margolis said.

He also touted the size of Arkansas field-grown tomatoes.

“We strive to grow a big tomato,” he said.

Inflation is another challenge U.S. tomato growers face, Hensley said. Prices probably have tripled on fertilizer, chemicals and fungicides, he said, and the Arkansas hourly minimum wage has risen by $3 over the past three years.

“If you pay 100 people $14 an hour for eight hours a day, and you produce 3,000 boxes, and you can only sell those boxes for $13, you don’t make any money,” he said.

“Realistically, the produce market is probably the most supply-and-demand market there is,” Hensley said. “We have no choice but to sell at whatever the m