The California Tomato: Less an innovation, more a complete sensory sensation | Opinion

It’s an early August morning 30 miles north of Sacramento. The sun is still low. But the heat stored in fertile soil lifts an early fragrance from a field covered in Christmas reds and greens. I pick one from the vine, round and warm and dusted with dirt. I’m here to understand the California tomato.

I joined Sacramento Bee Opinion Writer Tom Philp on his journalistic journey to explain this agricultural marvel. He came away understanding the tomato as an innovation, a multitude of red orbs grown and processed in miraculous quantities through one clever California breakthrough after another.

But me? As a Sacramento Valley-born and -based artist, I discovered something quite different

Yes, how we grow 30% of the world’s tomatoes on a tiny fraction of the state’s agricultural landscape is impressive. But the tomato’s true essence is not an innovation, it’s a sensation. It’s breathtaking to all my senses: sight, smell, sound, touch. These tomatoes are our living art. After my time in the fields and in frenetic processing plants, I came to no other conclusion.

Let’s not merely admire and understand the life of California tomatoes. Let’s savor them with every sense at our disposal.

The tomato field: a sight to behold

On farmer Frank Muller’s tomato field on the outskirts of Esparto, the landscape’s vast openness dims any sound of trucks or cars passing in the distance on Highway 16. The smell of the earth is a fragrance stronger than the tomatoes and its vines, undisturbed (for now) by human intervention.

Perfectly straight rows of tomatoes, with tractors guided by satellite, stretch out as far as the eye can see. The plants’ lush green canopies hide millions of treasures. Under an umbrella of green, they grow to vibrantly warm and ripe perfection.

Karen Ross, secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture, talked about the tomato as humble. She’s right. So are its ingenious farmers, in their uniforms of blue jeans and boots. Muller is one of many farmers in a Sacramento-area cooperative to grow and process tomatoes in the Pacific Coast Producers’ facility that dominates the main street of Woodland.

In the tomato field, I envision its future: Its peaceful life will soon be interrupted. We see tomatoes on our highways, red globes launched, lining the side of the road with an occasional, magnificent red patina. What most Californians never get to see, however, is the tomato’s journey from farm to fork.

On Muller’s tomato field, the show was about to begin.

Tomato harvesting: a riot of sound

I jump on the side of a harvester to witness the gathering of these beauties up close. Engine noise destroys the silence. This is the first phase of separating fruit from dirt, plants and bugs. I’m glad I’m not a tomato, sucked up and spat out onto these very trucks we see on the highways. And I’m glad I’m not a bug.

The scene is stunning, a poetic motion of crop and machine. On this hot summer day, I can smell a strong fragrance of the plants with a hint of the tomato itself.

But harvesting is first and foremost a study of sound. There is the droning noise of the diesel engine of the harvester as it slowly makes its way straight down laser-planted fields. Its companion is the hauling truck, with two empty trailers to be filled.

The harvester is a mystery machine guided by one driver. In the back, a solo worker picks the last of the greens as the harvester spits a spray of discards back onto the soil. To the side, tomatoes appear like brave soldiers rising on a conveyor belt, to drop into trailers soon loaded to the brim with red bounty.

Tomato processing: a shock of sights and smells

Muller’s tomatoes, a hybrid perfect for skinning and dicing, head to the Woodland cooperative. Though there are bigger players in the business, Pacific Coast is old school. By no means is this family in the minor leagues, with stellar local farmers like Bruce Rominger, Eric Schreiner, Neil Dougherty and Mike Turkovic.

Visually, a tomato processing plant is infrastructure galore. We walk past stacks of shiny empty cans reflecting the sun, like skyscrapers on this flat valley floor.

Pipes belch steam. It’s both a horizontal and vertical world of industry. These impossibly red spheres provide a stark contrast to a monochrome world of steel, both engineered by man. In water-filled channels, tomatoes float, roll and careen onto conveyors, lifted toward the sky, and then down again.

Cooking tons of tomatoes in a factory on a 100-degree Sacramento day is the scorching chapter of this journey. The noise of the maze-like process of conveying and cooking makes conversation impossible. This is sensory overload. Imagine flying over the largest multi-layered freeway interchange in Los Angeles at rush hour. Now speed it up, and paint it a pungent tomato red.

All sensations pale in comparison to the smell of the process of heating tons of tomatoes before canning. I’m not prepared for the overwhelming fragrance that assaults me. Pacific Coast produces a line of diced, roasted tomatoes, in a process that can only be described as a wall of fire. An overwhelming, relentless, oppressively sweet, flame-roasted pungency invades my nostrils and every cell in my body for days.

Homegrown tomato artistry

These tomatoes have a tolerance for punishment. They get plucked. They bob, bounce and boil before ending up in a tidy aluminum can — or a 300-gallon plastic bag of paste. Its life is a three-ring circus that entertains and stuns the eyes, ears and nose.

Uniquely ours, everything about the California Tomato is picture perfect.