—Lancaster Farming. Saturda'
18
Tomatoes plentiful, prices 6 rotten 9
By DIETER KRIEG
THE BUCK - Tomato
growers have an above
average crop of tomatoes on
their hands and are faced
with “rotten” prices, ac
cording to B.S. Warfel and of
B.S. Warfel and Sons, Inc.,
who heads a tomato
brokerage firm here in
southern Lancaster County.
A broker with 44 years of
experience m the business,
Warfel flatly said “I never
saw the market so depressed
m my life.”
We can buy more than
what we want for 60 to 65
cents per % bushel basket
(20 quarts) but can only
place a limited amount at the
canneries. Farmers with a
contract have a limited
home for their product but
there’s little demand for
open market surpluses,” the
veteran tomato handler
added.
Warfel, who at one time
had seven tomato stations
along the East Coast,
claimed that affluence and
welfare policies have much
to do with the present
squashed state of tomato
prices and demand. Supply
and demand determine
prices.
“People are so affluent,
they eat steak instead of
tomato soup,” Warfel
quipped. Then he
unabashedly opmionized
that welfare programs which
distribute the working man’s
money to those who don’t
work are partially respon
sible for the development.
The weak demand for
tomatoes has developed in
spite of the thousands of tons
of fruits and vegetables
which spoiled m California
fields last month due to a
strike. Farmers in the
Golden State grow 87 per
cent of the nation’s tomato
crop and canneries there last
year hauled in three million
more tons of the crop than
they had originally counted
on. The result has been that
canning houses are working
with surpluses and growers
are faced with depressed
prices. This strike and low
price situation has prompted
one California grower to
open a 160-acre field of his
tomatoes to the public free of
charge, a California
newspaper reported. Ap
proximately 300 people
showed up for the free
harvest.
Warfel said he could only
handle “his own customers
this year, due to the bigger
than average crop and slow
demand. His clients are
scattered throughout several
Pennsylvania and Maryland
counties - as far as 75 miles
away. Two Schuylkill County
growers, among others,
were delivering their
tomatoes here while this
reporter was visiting.
With the tomato season
now in its peak, Warfel and
Sons are shipping about 12
truck loads per day - or
roughly 10,000 baskets. While
that may sound like a lot, it is
not, compared to the days
when there was still a strong
demand for tomatoes.
“Years ago,’’ Warfel
recollected, “we hauled 40 to
60 truck loads per day during
the peak of the season.
Prices have changed too.
Says Warfel: “You’d pay
five cents per basket to
pick’em and sold’em for 35
cents and up, per basket,
:ust 28. 1976
Approximately 10,000 baskets of tomatoes are loaded daily at the B.S.
Warfel and Sons tomato loading station, south of The Buck on Route 272.
delivered.” He also noted
that at that time (1932) there
were 14 canning houses m
Baltimore, compared to not
a single one today.
Warfel ships his tomatoes
in whatever way the various
firms dictate: bulk, boxes, or
basket. Trucks pick up the
crop as far as 75 miles away
and will deliver 500 to 600
miles away. Coreless
tomatoes is what the canning
houses are demanding
nowadays, Warfel explained,
pointing out that the Red
Rock variety is one of the
more popular.
The tomato picking season
began during the first days
of August and will continue
throughout the Summer and
Fall until frost arrives. So
far there have been no
On August 28, 1776,
at Birmingham, Eng
land, refugee Samuel
Curwen met a local
quaker and “found him
a sensible man and a
warm American, as
most of the middling
classes are through the
kingdom, as far as my
experience reaches ’’
Later in the day he
talked to a merchant
who had visited A
menca and “is her
steady and ardent ad
vocate ”
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significant problems. As
much as 20 per cent of the
fields may have been af
fected by blight, Warfel
estimated, but that was
more of a problem where
spraying was neglected. Jim
'Kessler, who was in Warfel’s
office at the time, noted that
the 40 acres of tomatoes he
and his brother, Charles,
work with at their farm near
Rawlinsville, were sprayed
five to six times - which
works out to just about once
every two weeks. The
spraying program payed off,
however, as Kessler
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acknowledged “very good’’
yields - “dam near twice
that of last year.” Blight
problems were avoided by
the Kesslers.
Kessler believed that if it
hadn’t been for storm
damage earlier in the year,
his tomato crop would have
been even better than the
“very good” crop he’s
picking anyway.
Warfel described thi!
year’s tomato growinf
conditions as being too wet, ;
condition which some of thi
fruit to be damaged right 01
the vine.
23.08
24.64
25 84
27.30
26.30
20.05
24.41
24.62
26.53
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23 95
24.65
26.07
23.51