Harvesting Tomatos in Ruskin

Photo of tomato harvesting. Growing tomatoes was expensive, forcing many, including Paul Dickman to abandon tomato crops in the early 1950s in favor of cattle ranching and salad vegetables. This is one of the reasons. Tomatoes were handpicked which required expensive labor at harvest time. (Even today, tomatoes designed to be sold as fresh, whole tomatoes are picked by hand. All other tomatoes designed for process, e.g tomato juice or tomato paste, are not picked by machine. The expense of staking, handpicking etc. was one factor that led to the decline of the tomatoes in the Ruskin area.