Oh my. Everyone who cares about tomatoes grows their own, supermarkets are for the rest. They are not demanding and will grow anywhere there's sun, including in pot on balcony.
I have to disagree on this one. They are prone to a myriad of diseases, mainly fungus: Phytophthora infenstans, Fulvia fulva, Botrytis cinerea, Mosaic Virus, Stolbur disease, and if you don't spray them with the right substances you'll lose a substantial part if not the whole crop, oftentimes lose it even if you spray them.
Other than that I agree that home grown tomatoes are better. Of course you mustn't be stupid and buy some supermarket seeds, those are awful. Use local varieties, several of them as there are subtle differences in taste and flavor. Like "oxheart" for instance: https://gomagcdn.ro/domains2/planteieftine.ro/files/product/...
Although I can buy local varieties from the grocery market and I do, they might not be just as good as a fresh one from the garden. Part of the reason is the difficulty in storing them, if you stack them one over another they will get crushed and you won't sell crushed tomatoes to the customers. So farmers tend to pick them when they aren't fully ripe and I freaking hate unripe tomatoes. Still they tend to be way better than supermarket "plastic tomatoes" offering.
One tip, pick the smaller tomatoes, they tend to be sweeter. Or at least that's what I noticed.
I had success with mycorrhizal "good" fungi (brand Symbivit), they were keeping bad fungi away with visible difference between treated and untreated plants.
A bit unrelated, nowadays my mother was telling me a memory from her teenage years in the 60s. In early summer she'd come home for the weekend from boarding school in the city and her mother (my grandma) would greet her with lunch and a salad made from fresh cucumber and onion (add salt, oil and vinegar). It would be too early for tomatoes but she still remembers the taste of that early salad.
Heh, brings back trauma memories :) But I guess it's countryside vs city life. I see my city-boy kid and his friends, bored, staring at screens whenever they can and generally having a hard time figuring out what to do with their free time. Having grown in the countryside, the answer to that was easy "tend to the crops". It's not backbreaking work but can take huge chunks of your time and it's not exactly enjoyable, I mean I'd definitely have done something else, even staring at a wall but that wasn't an option. And it wasn't just me of course, everyone I knew was doing that. I recall with some amusement a friend of mine, in the context of summer vacation (hence lots of crop tending to do), exclaiming at some point "man, I can't wait for the school to start so I can get some relaxation".
Tomatoes are a bit hit and miss for me, hence trying something new this year. Usually I just grow strawberries and tomatoes at home. Other stuff gets grown on a 10m x 10mx patch of land nearby.
Companion planting aromatics may help control pests as well - I usually plant as many of basil, rosemary, parsley, and cilantro as will take in the vicinity of the tomatoes.
In Texas no one I know has ever had their tomatoes survive into August. Blight and the heat kill the plants usually by mid July. You can plant new ones around this time for a fall harvest if you want, but most home gardeners I talk to are pretty burnt out by this time of the season. The heat contributes to that too I'm sure :-)
If people aren't willing to pay the premium needed, then the revealed preference is for the easily harvestable varieties. Farmers markets and local producers that sell to fewer people who will pay that premium are likewise capitalism's answer to this problem (i.e. saying "Industrial agriculture can't meet the consumers' needs, but local farmers can.")
Capitalism need not be industrial-scale, it just needs to fill consumer demand somehow (which is why small business are so crucial)
Anecdotal is when an anecdote is used.
The difference between store bought tomatoes and home grown is the cultivar. Mine are heirloom tomatoes. They’re much uglier and softer than store bought beefsteak tomatoes, but way tastier. There’s no way these would ever ship because they turn ripe for a few days and then turn to mush. They also bruise incredibly easily.
Those chains must serve very large number of customers so they must focus on produce that is easy to pick, store and sell. Looks good and survives (even gets ripe during) transit. Taste is often secondary.
You wanna fight that? Fight all regulations for small and local producers, even if it sounds like it’s well intended (hygiene, quality standards, subventions). Talk to your representative about it too. Finally, buy local and from smallest producer you can find.
The closing of the small grocery store and producer can be mostly attributed to regulation.
Big chains can offer what the average consumer wants in greater variety and cheaper, at more places and longer hours. They can gauge prices, do better marketing, have better stock, and wage price wars. They have more power, and what's the purpose of that if not abusing it?
Less regulation would just mean even worse food and less small shops.
I get my groceries from a tiny neighbor market here in Eastern Europe. Usually from women of surrounding villages. Their main worries are in this order: raising market space fees (these go to the city) and new checks and rules they need to follow.
Making deals with every local small-time producer would be a big pain. Why do that when you can make a single deal with a giant monster of a tomato producer, and sell their tomatoes (especially since as the sibling comment points out, local tomatoes won't be as pretty and as uniform in quality)? There's economies of scale, prices are lower, the supply chain will be simpler, it's all better for the supermarket chain.
Otherwise we’d have plenty of boutique retailers and producers charging more for better quality produce optimized for different factors.
For supermarket produce there isn't a good way to judge product quality before buying. There is some quality improvement with paying more but usually the improvement is very little compared to the price increment. For instance, a supermarket might sell tomatos at 2.99 for regular tomatos and 4.99 for a premium/organic variety. The taste will only marginally differ so that only few people buy premium. This prevents economies of scale for the better product to drive down the price.
Very little about this is about regulation.
A chile pepper optimized for mechanical harvest, because right now the fruit needs to be cut from the stem, but if you can shake it off you can spare yourself the farmworker.
The problem is not capitalism, it is the preference of the consumers in your area.
It can't even bring housing and healthcare for all, tasty tomatoes is way down the list lmao
Conversely, the reason American healthcare is such a disaster is because of really bad regulation. Developed nations have shown that good healthcare systems require strong regulation, but not shitty regulation like the US has.
It definitely is more than partially brought by capitalism and what comes with it: greed, speculation, &c.
The flat I'm renting right now in Germany is owned by a company who owns 200k flats, the main shareholder in this company is Black Rock. Now explain to me why my german salary paying a german rent benefits private shareholders in NYC ? Rent doubled in ten years...
It's simple supply and demand. Your city doesn't allow building many more units even though demand is high and growing; this greatly increases property values, and creates a potential for big profits for investors. A company of private shareholders in NYC sees this investment opportunity and buys properties up so they can reap the profits. You probably also have some relatively weak tenant legal protections, making it easy to raise rents.
If you don't like it, your city should allow more construction. But western cities don't want to do that, because of NIMBYs, "neighborhood character", shitty zoning laws, etc., so we get what we're seeing here.
Can you give an example of the sort of regulation making our health systems a disaster?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41060621
>Why the Wisconsin pizza farm movement is an idea whose time has come
(UPDATE: sorry to the Croatians being overrun by tourists.. guys .. Croatian food is so-so ;)
tomatoes, olive oil, cheese, it's nice to be reminded that Croatians (and their Yugoslav brothers, secretly,) gave the middle finger to Stalin et al