Ethnobotanical Leaflets: The pomme d'amour - the Tomato's acceptance by Europeans as food was very slow, lasting more than a hundred years

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The pomme d'amour - the Tomato's acceptance by Europeans as food was very slow, lasting more than a hundred years

The current popularity of the tomato as a food and as a cash crop belies its cool reception in Europe. About this crop, Ruben Villareal (1980) states, "Production of the tomato can be an especially profitable way to utilize limited land resources and abundant labor. It can be grown in a household garden, it can contribute substantially to the family's income on an extremely small area of land, or it can be grown on a large scale for urban markets and for processing. The tomato fits well into many cropping patterns and may bring in needed cash during periods when cereals and other staples cannot be grown and when labor is surplus.

Today the processing tomato supply chain in Europe includes a large sector in the Mediterranean countries and to a lesser extent in new member economies such as Poland and Hungary. The European tomato processing industry processed more than 11,000,000 tonnes of raw tomatoes in 2004. Italy is by far the most important producer of processed tomatoes in Europe with a 53% share of European production followed by Spain (22%) and Portugal and Greece (10% each). The production of processing tomatoes still grows fast, notably in Spain and Italy. Processing tomatoes are produced on relatively large farms specialized in extensive production of arable crops and vegetables.