Dec 4, 2008

Northeast Growers Reach More Customers with Red Tomato

About 40 farms in New England, New York and Pennsylvania sell produce through Red Tomato – and none of them appear to have a bad word to say about it.

Some of them rely on Red Tomato to sell most of what they produce, and others sell some to Red Tomato but much goes elsewhere. Many use an amalgam of several marketing methods.

Richard Bonanno at Pleasant Valley Gardens in Methuen, Mass., is a good example – and an outspoken proponent of Red Tomato.

“It’s been a good marketing arrangement for us,” he said. “Red Tomato reaches higher-end stores that pay a fairer price, and that helps our bottom line. It reaches a high-end customer base of people who want to work with farmers who are doing a better job.”

Bonanno left his position as a weed scientist at North Carolina State University a decade ago to return to the 98-year-old family farm, where he discovered firsthand the struggle wholesale growers were facing. The farm sells romaine hearts and other kinds of lettuce, parsley, summer squash, eggplant, peppers, beets, rhubarb and other products including flowers and plants from a greenhouse. The Bonanno family field-grows 50 acres of vegetables.

The weak Canadian dollar of a decade ago put huge pressure on Northeastern growers, Bonanno said. Canadians could sell produce cheaper, and U.S. growers saw their share of the retail dollar fall from an average of 50 percent to about 30 percent.

“Everybody’s costs go up and prices rise,” he said, “but it’s easier to squeeze the farmers because they can’t hold their prices.”

Red Tomato, by appealing in diverse ways to consumers – buy fresh, buy local, know and support a local farmer you can trust – was able to capture better prices and pass those back to growers, Bonanno said.

The last year was the Bonanno family’s 10th with Red Tomato – and was “our largest sales year to date.”

Pleasant Valley Gardens also sells direct to a major supermarket chain, sells some through a commission house in Boston and sells to other farmers who operate markets. But each year, the percentage that goes to Red Tomato increases.

They intend to form a CSA in the next year. They are right in the middle of suburbia, with 50 “abutters” next to their land. They hire local labor but also hire H-2A workers from Jamaica, which they’ve done since 1991.

Bob Rigdon at Apple Acres in Lafayette, N.Y., has been selling Eco Apples through Red Tomato for two years.

“They came to us wanting Empire apples late in the marketing season. We were pioneers in the use of IPM, so our apples fit their program,” Rigdon said.

Apple Acres covers 200 acres and sells exclusively wholesale, but it has its own label and packs for other growers, supplying apples to chain stores in the East. The spreading “buy local” movement, which is being pushed by state government in New York, is “a very strong marketing tool,” he said, that is really helping New York growers sell apples.

Chris Clegg at Four Town Farm in Seekonk, Mass., combines farm market operations with wholesale sales in the fall, and sells only one product through Red Tomato – Macomber turnips. Among his 185 acres are 12 acres of these Northeastern specialties, bred in Connecticut 200 years ago – according to legend – from a cross between a radish and a rutabaga.

“It’s a traditional holiday dish from Thanksgiving to Christmas in the Northeast,” Clegg said. “It’s like an ordinary turnip, but whiter and sweeter.”

It’s a short-season crop, and Clegg has found a growing market. His acreage has increased every year for the last three years.

Nate Nourse at Nourse Farms, South Deerfield, Mass., has good things to say about Red Tomato and its leader, Michael Rozyne.

“It’s a good marketing avenue for growers who aren’t good at marketing,” he said. “He helps a lot of growers get access to markets they may not be otherwise able to get to. That’s part of the mission – to stand up for the little guy – like the fair trade idea.”

Before Nate returned to Nourse Farms, his dad sold strawberries through Red Tomato. But now that Nate is back and selling full-time, they’ve developed other markets as well.

“We’re in a pull-type market,” he said of the berry business.

Demand for strawberries and raspberries has been booming, so Nourse hasn’t needed much help from a wholesaler to move berries into the market.

Robert Jasse at Alyson’s Orchard in Walpole, N.H., was also a Red Tomato fan.

“Mike is a bright guy, a good guy, a straight guy,” he said about Red Tomato’s leader. (Jasse died a week after doing this interview with The Fruit Growers News.) “Red Tomato is motivated to help farmers produce and sell a good product – and Mike is very good at selling.”

Jasse, who bought the orchard after retiring in 1985, was 80 and said he depended on his orchard manager, Homer Dunn, to manage the 80 acres of apples and his wife, Susan, to run the farm market and agritainment business. They all believe in IPM and want their place to be a great environment for people to come to.

“Red Tomato is our biggest buyer of wholesale apples,” Susan Jasse said.

At Clark Brothers Orchards in Ashfield, Mass., co-owner Dana Clark said they have no farm retail market and are “off the beaten trail,” so they sell their 50,000 bushels of apples each year wholesale.

“We’ve been involved in IPM for many years,” he said. “A few years back, Mike (Rozyne) called Aaron (Dana’s brother) and we went from there. It’s turned out to be a very good thing for us. We’ve been doing business for three or four years, starting with 15 percent of our production and growing from there.”

Dana, who does most of the production work, likes the challenge of IPM – but adds, “we take some lumps.”

This year, Red Tomato took the step of eliminating almost all uses of organophosphate insecticides. In the Northeast, apple maggot is the one that’s hard to control without Guthion or Imidan. Plum curculio is also a problem insect, but some of the new, reduced-risk insecticides will control it.

Dana said the big challenge in selling IPM is that “many consumers don’t want to hear about spraying. Organic farming has the image that it’s done without sprays, and that’s not true. They spray different stuff. Some of it, like sulfur, is not too great for earthworms. In fact, our IPM program is better for the environment.”

So, the Clark Brothers are “very happy” selling under the Eco Apple label, and are happy Red Tomato is helping them do it.