WORKING TOGETHER: Tomatoes being harvested on the Hobbs farm in Tipton County. Omar Deltora is the end of the line picking out bad tomatoes, mud or any other foreign objects.
Unlike the area’s corn and soybean farmers who are expecting a less than ideal harvest, local tomato growers are expecting a better-than-average yield.
This time of the year throughout central Indiana a common sight is a semi-tractor hauling open trailers loaded with tomatoes, most going to the Red Gold operation in Elwood. Noble Canning and Ray Brothers Farms in Hobbs is also sending tons of tomatoes to be processed into a variety of food products.
Noble Canning Co. has been operating in Hobbs since 1925, producing tomato juice, stewed and diced tomatoes for private-label companies in retail and wholesale sizes.
The planting of the tomato plants started in May and the harvesting of hundreds of acres should be completed by the end of October.
Tami Brown, secretary/treasurer for Noble Canning, explained in a field being harvested south of Tipton that the harvester includes a color sorter that removes the green tomatoes and returns them to the field.
She said color sorters have been used for approximately ten years and can be adjusted to harvest tomatoes in various shades of red.
The harvester picks up the vines, sorts the tomatoes and deposits the debris back on the ground. Workers sort out stones, vines and mud clods from the machinery, a long with a few green tomatoes.
Although the field in Tipton County looked littered with hundreds of green tomatoes, Brown said it’s normal for two to five percent of the crop to consist of green tomatoes.
“Tomatoes don’t get ripe at the same time,” she said. “Like with bananas we use nitrogen to help them ripen, looking for more consistency.”
It will take five days to harvest the 35-acre field. The crews work from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
“This year’s crop is better than expected,” Brown said. “Despite the drought, tomatoes like it dry, the crop has fared very well.
“This will be a good year for tomatoes,” she said. “We had an outstanding year in 2007. If 2007 was a 5, this year will be between a 3.5 and 4.”
Brown said the late summer rain has caused problems getting the equipment into the field to harvest the tomato crop, noting a tractor got mired in mud in a field near Rigdon.
“It would have been nice to have a little rain in June and July,” she said.
Next year the 35-acre field will be planted in corn and then in soybeans in 2014 before tomatoes are planted again in 2015.
Brown said the average yield is 27 tons per acre, compared to 35 tons in 2007 and 18 tons last year.
Steve Smith, director of agriculture for Red Gold, said it has been a year of two different seasons.
He said the first half of the growing season was impacted by the drought and hot weather and from the third week of July there has been rain and moderate temperatures.
“The crop has responded to the weather conditions,” Smith said. “It will be an average year, we’ve been pleased.”
He said there was no general rainfall early in the summer, but some areas experienced thunderstorms.
“If a field was under one of those thunderstorms, the farmers will be surprised with the yield.”
Smith said the average yield per acre is 33 tons and this year it is ranging between 14 and 40 tons.
Red Gold will process an estimated 400,000 tons of tomatoes this year. Smith said the harvest is about two-thirds of the way completed as of Friday.
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