Bigger Harvests on Small Fields

Tomatoes in India
India grows its tomatoes in a very different way to other regions. Although India is the world’s second largest producer of the fruit, its tomatoes aren’t cultivated on large swathes of agricultural land, but by millions of smallholdings across the country. Due to a lack of access to the necessary expertise, cultivation methods were suboptimal for a long time, meaning that the fields only produced moderate harvests. Bayer addressed the problem by running large-scale training projects that introduced tens of thousands of smallholders to improved cultivation technologies. Yields have since multiplied.

India is also becoming more aware of the importance of healthy, high-quality foods. It is therefore crucial that farmers use crop protection products properly. Thanks to the training projects and cultivation expertise, things have greatly improved in this area, too. That means supermarkets and consumers are benefiting from increasingly high-quality tomatoes.
Intense Tomato
Dutch tomato farmer Corné Smulders can’t praise the Intense highly enough: “This is a very special tomato because it retains its juice even when you squeeze it. That makes it ideal for fast-food chains, where the last thing you want is a tomato slice that turns your sandwich or burger soggy.” Smulders began growing the Intense in 2008. It is now a permanent feature of the range of high-grade tomato varieties that he produces in greenhouses on about three hectares of land on his farm close to Eindhoven.
Improved Quality
In North West Europe Intense tomatoes are always grown in greenhouses. This method of cultivation has the advantage of allowing farmers to grow and breed their crops under optimized, standardized conditions. It also makes it easier to protect the plants from pests and bad weather. These benefits have also convinced producers in sunny Mexico, which has recently begun to see a steady rise in the number of tomatoes being grown in greenhouses. Within the space of just a few years, the surface area covered
by tomato greenhouses has risen from almost zero to over 10,000 hectares – that’s ten times more than in the Netherlands. Harvests in some regions have increased from an average of 50 tons per hectare to between 250 and 600 tons. “And it’s not just the yields that have improved; the quality of the tomatoes has too. They taste better, they’re firmer and larger, and they look better,” says Ricardo Ramos, crop sales manager Protected Crops for the Bayer Vegetable Seeds Business in North America.

Another advantage of greenhouses is that the water used for irrigation doesn’t evaporate as it would out in the open. Although farms in hot regions now use automatically controlled drip irrigation systems on their open-air fields, they still can’t reuse the water. In a greenhouse, though, the water use is more efficient. Many growers collect rainwater, filter, disinfect it and pump it into their drip irrigation systems. Liquid that seeps into the beds is collected, recycled and fed in the system, too. Additional water savings are possible by condensation of the water evaporated by the plants. The high-tech systems that make this possible are also impressive – even if not every greenhouse has robots whizzing around harvesting tomatoes.
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