Too many tomatoes, not enough purchasers

Florida tomato growers are facing an oversupply problem. Marketplace consumption adjusted to meet low supplies and higher cost after the 2004 hurricanes so consumers are buying less, stores have smaller displays, and foodservice chains and other high-volume users have taken tomatoes off the menus. This leaves Florida tomato growers with lots of tomatoes to sell and no one buying them. Since all Florida tomatoes are hand-picked, this endangers the jobs of about 33,000 workers.

To help, the Florida Tomato Committee came up with a short-term plan to donate truckloads of tomatoes to Second Harvest food banks. Florida tomato growers will deliver the tomatoes to more than 20 cities on the East Coast for a total of about a million pounds of tomatoes.

Organizations such as Daily Bread Food Bank in Miami FL and Philabundance in Philadelphia PA will each receive a truckload of almost 1,600 25-lb cartons of tomatoes. That amounts to 40,000 pounds of fresh hand-picked tomatoes to each food bank. For more information, visit www.Floridatomatoes.org.