Sustainable Solutions: The Tomato Lowdown with Dr. Steve Loewen

On this episode of Sustainable Solutions: From Guelph to Gainesville, UF students Lauren Cook and Will Krause sat down with Dr. Steve Loewen, a Research Professor from The University of Guelph who specializes in tomato horticulture. Agricultural Education and Communication undergraduate Lauren started the conversation with a deep dive into Dr. Loewen's life experiences and how he became one of the leading professionals in North America on tomato breeding. To end the show, UF College of Business graduate student Will delved into the complexities of implementing sustainable practices for farmers in the tomato industry and still being able to turn a profitable operation. We hope you enjoy and make sure to catch the next episode! 

Transcript

Will Krause:  All right. Well, thank you for tuning in today. We have a very, very special guest with us. Dr. Steve Loewen from the University of Guelph. He's a college research professor with his PhD in plant breeding and genetics. He has a special interest within tomato breeding and processing. And my name is Will Krause. 

Will Krause: I am a former AEC Agricultural Communications undergraduate student and a current master's student in the Real Estate Science Department.  

Lauren Cook: And I'm Lauren Cook. I am a current undergraduate student in Agricultural Education and Communications. So we're going to go ahead and dive right in.  

Hello, Dr.Lowen. Thank you for taking the time to speak with us today about tomato breeding. I want to start off by getting to know you and how you got into agriculture research. So my first question to kind of break the ice is what did you want to be when you were 10 years old?  Very interesting question and a great one. 

Dr. Loewen: So I grew up on a fruit and vegetable farm here in southern Ontario where I'm located. And we grew a variety of different vegetable crops like sweet corn and cucumbers for pickling. We grew some peppers some melons, and of course we grew some tomatoes for processing. And as a kid, I really loved growing the tomatoes, the tomato crop, and being part of that whole thing. 

I used to spend weeks at a time on the tractor cultivating. Now, not when I was 10 years old, I was a little bit older when I was doing that. But I certainly got to see the crop right from the very start, right through to the end at harvest. So that really captured my interest and I guess if I can add to there's even a little bit of a longer family connection. 

My grandfather also grew tomatoes for processing. Although of course the way he grew them and even the way my father grew them is quite different than our production systems that we use now.  So, so you were kind of when you were younger, you were more interested in being on like the field side of it, like being the farmer essentially.  

Yeah, I was. I really enjoyed that a lot,  but I, I also saw it firsthand.  a lot of the challenges that farmers face. And, you know, I'll never forget, there was a day it was oh boy, I think it was July, one summer, and we had worked really hard. We got the crop planted, we were cultivating, caring for it, nurturing that crop along,  and there was a storm came through. 

It was quite a severe storm. I remember being in the house and looking and watching the hail come, and, you know, In a matter of a few minutes, all of that work that we did was destroyed right before our eyes. And I still have a very clear memory and clear impression of that day. And that was not the only thing, but that was a big part in influencing me that if there was ever anything that I could do to help farmers to do a better job, and to really help them to do what they want to do, which is grow food to to feed our people. 

I thought that's something that I'd like to do. I'd like to contribute to.  And so over time, I mean, you asked before when I was 10 years old, I think when I was 10 years old, I probably didn't even know about this. But as I grew older, I learned that there are some people who are called plant breeders And they are people who work to develop new varieties or new improved varieties. 

And as I learned more about it, I realized, you know what? Plant breeders developing new varieties. We can't solve all the problems, but there certainly are some problems that we can solve. There are some things that we can do to make life easier, to help farmers be more productive. And so that's really where I set my sights and I'm delighted to say that I have been able to follow through on that.  

Lauren Cook: Yeah, that's amazing. So it sounds like that hailstorm that you mentioned was a pretty formative event that kind of made you realize, maybe I don't want to deal with all of the first hand struggles, but I want to do my part to make it easier for them so they don't have to go through everything that you did.  

That's amazing. So you came from a family of farmers. So what made you choose the University of Guelph? I saw that you're a three time, what's the mascot of U of G?  The mascot for the University of Guelph is a griffin. So you're a three time griffin. Three time griffin, yeah. So what did you study, like, all through every period of that time? 

Dr. Loewen: Yeah, so so I chose the University of Guelph because Guelph has a really strong reputation in agriculture, especially here in Canada and I think the, the reputation goes around the world. I think Guelph is fairly widely known in, in many regions of the world.  And so when I when For my undergraduate degree, I actually studied horticultural science. 

At that time, I was able to specialize in that. And in fact, at that time, they offered enough courses. I was actually able to specialize in fruit and vegetable production. So I took courses that covered production of all the different vegetable crops and all the different fruit crops really from Oh, at a fairly high level and and, and really approaching it from a scientific perspective and, and what's really the cutting edge. 

How can we really take what we know and, and really be most, most productive and, and sustainable. So that's that's where I started.  And then right after that, I really enjoyed my time in Guelph a lot as an undergraduate student. And then I continued on with a Master of Science degree in the same department of Horticultural Science.  

And there I, there was an opportunity available at the time. I did my Master's degree on asparagus. And so I spent a couple of years studying asparagus, which is a, a bit of a challenging crop for a master's degree  and the reason is that asparagus is a perennial crop and so it's a vegetable crop that we plant and then it's a couple years before we can actually get a first harvest so often we wait until maybe the third year certainly not until the fourth year that you actually start to harvest something so it's a little bit of a challenging topic but i looked at trying to assist with asparagus breeding and i looked at seedling traits And I was investigating, trying to figure out, are there some things that we could see in the seedlings that would help us to predict what the plants would look like a few years down the road in order to kind of help us  do the breeding a little bit faster, so that we didn't have to wait four or five years until we could tell if we had picked the right ones. 

So,  that's that's what I did there.  And that was a great learning experience for me. And it was kind of fun to be working in a crop that I didn't have as much experience in previously. So it really expanded my horizons into other vegetable crops and other horticultural crops too. Then I actually took a job right after my master's working for a seed company. 

I'm not sure if you've heard of Stokes Seeds. They are a relatively large mail order seed company. They retail across Canada and in fact across the United States as well.  And they service both home gardeners as well as commercial growers farmers. And, so while I was working at Stokes we were breeding several crops. 

We were breeding what we call fresh market tomatoes. So, tomatoes that are grown for eating fresh. We were breeding sweet corn Peppers, both sweet peppers and hot peppers, and a very, very little bit of work in asparagus. That was not a major focus, but so I had a  chance to work on a variety of different crops there.  

Following that, a position opened up where I work now, so I've been here for quite a long time. At the time, it was a, a provincial government research station and eventually it was turned over to the University of Guelph. So interestingly, I ended up actually working for the university and have been for quite a few years now. 

And in this position, my focus has been on tomatoes for processing, which is what I do. set my sights on when I was younger. So I've been delighted to be able to have this position and be able to contribute in the ways that I had originally hoped to.  And you had mentioned about Oh, three degrees, three times a Griffin. 

So I'm a little bit unusual compared to many people because many people will do their, their undergraduate degree, their master's degree and follow that usually quite quickly with a PhD. I actually waited for a really long time and I, fairly recently completed a PhD. So I didn't start a PhD until I was in my early 50s. 

And so I took a bit of a different path than many other people do, and there's lots of reasons why I made those choices, and I certainly don't regret it. So it's a little bit. No, that's really, you've had  a very full array of experiences already and for you to still pursue a PhD like later in life. 

I know a lot of people, they get so swept up in the everyday tasks of the workforce for you to go after that. That's really awesome.  So now that you're back at the University of Guelph can you tell us a little more in detail about what you're researching and teaching right now? Sure. Yeah, so my research really focuses on what we call processing tomatoes. 

So those are tomatoes that are grown and then harvested and most of the time they're canned. And so you can go into the grocery store and you can purchase a whole peel or a whole pack. We sometimes call them tomatoes depending on the market. Sometimes the companies will dice those tomatoes and can them as diced tomatoes. 

A great product, very convenient if you're making something like chili or or some kind of a sauce. There's another variation on that theme called Crushed Tomatoes, where they will crush them, as it is described, they do strain out some of the seeds, and then it's, it's not quite a sauce, it's not really concentrated at all, but again, another very useful product if you like to make your own pasta sauces or things like that. 

In many cases, though, processed tomatoes will be juiced or, or crushed and then they will be heated to remove some of the water and so then you get a concentrated tomato product, so something like tomato paste and then that tomato paste can be made into ketchup.  which lots of us like. It can be made into other kinds of sauces that are maybe a little bit thicker than just the straight crushed tomatoes for various kinds of cuisines.  

And so, those are some of the different ways that the tomatoes that I work on, so processing tomatoes, those are the ways that they are used and, and work their way into all kinds of dishes.  Whether it's even then further products like something like frozen lasagna or if you buy the canned tomato products and you like to cook at home and you like to make different sorts of things. 

So those are some examples. So what do I do with these processing tomatoes? So I am a plant breeder.  I'm a little different though than most plant breeders.  I am a bit typical for a plant breeder who would work at a university, in that I don't always focus on releasing new varieties per se. So what that means is farmers don't always see a variety that I named.  

What happens is that I try to develop enhanced, sort of elite lines, might be a way of thinking about it. And these lines, breeding lines with these elite traits or special traits, I release those to seed companies. And then the private sector seed companies take those lines that I release and they evaluate them, they will develop them further into varieties that then the farmers get to see in their fields. 

So my path is a little bit more indirect, but in a way I support the other plant breeders who work for the seed companies.  I still get to have that impact, but in some ways it's even broader because of the, the way our, our process works. And so, that's kind of how my output gets to farmers fields, in terms of, so what am I actually doing? 

For many years, my focus was on tomatoes for peeling and canning, and  When we, when we look at tomatoes for peeling and canning, there are a number of traits that are important. One of them is really good color. So once you take that peel off, what does it look like without the peel? And there's a lot of variation. 

Do you know there are some varieties that They have a beautiful red color before you take the peel off. But you take that peel off and the color is terrible. It doesn't always follow that if they look nice on the outside, that they also look nice on the inside. Those are two different things. So I have to look at what's that peeled color look like? 

And does the plant produce  tomatoes that are all pretty much the same size and pretty much the same shape and Maybe they, they may not be the very reddest red, but are they all kind of about the same color red? So that when you open that can and you look at those tomatoes, they look like somebody has sorted through and really pulled out the nicest quality ones for you, for the consumer. 

And so, another thing I look at is, how easy is it to get that peel off? Some varieties are very difficult to peel. Other varieties, those peels just come right off. Without any trouble with just a little bit of heating and other processes. So those are some of the things that I've worked on in the past. 

A real big theme of my work has been increasing genetic diversity in tomatoes for processing. And so,  you know, I hate to admit it, but it's a fair criticism that in some cases we have really, reduce the genetic diversity of our crops in modern agriculture. And what I am happy to say is that My work directly addresses that, and I have been working for over 25 years to increase genetic diversity in processing tomatoes. 

And I, one of the things I'd mentioned before that I've been working on a PhD, one of the things that I wanted to do is ask the hard and admittedly a little bit of a scary question, have I actually been doing what I claim to be doing? And we have the genetic tools now to be able to answer that question. 

And I'm happy to say that I was able to  gather enough evidence to make the case that, yeah, I really am increasing genetic diversity compared to what's been available in the past. So that focus on sustainability and productivity and, and  all that good stuff, we're, we're really, I think about that a lot and, and really working to address that.  

Lauren Cook: Yeah, no, that's very cool. So what would you say are the long term anticipated effects of your research on the agriculture industry? Because I know you said, like, we go to the grocery stores, you're not necessarily working on those big, red, aesthetically appealing tomatoes. You focus more on the,  I guess, processed tomatoes. 

ones that are  used for processing, so How is your research gonna continue to improve the agriculture industry overall?  

Dr. Loewen: Yeah, so I think it's gonna improve Really for all kinds of stakeholders who are involved and who love tomatoes  so one of the things that I'm continuing to do that benefits both the  processors, the processing companies or canning companies and the growers is I'm always working to improve the quality. 

So that those tomatoes are redder, and so that sauce that we make, or the paste that we make, or those canned or diced tomatoes, when, when the consumer opens that can, and they're making something in their kitchen, they know that they're using a really good product that is very deep red in color. It's gonna, it's visually very appealing, right? 

That's, tomatoes add not only flavor and nutrition, but they add visual appeal to the things that we cook as well.  So there's that. Something else that I'm continuing to work on, and it's always in the back of my mind, is how can I improve the nutritional quality of tomatoes? And that actually is tied a bit to the color. 

Your listeners may know that lycopene is the name of the compound in tomatoes that gives them their red color. And it just so happens that we've learned that lycopene  is incredibly healthy. It's a very powerful antioxidant.  And it's really good for us. And so the redder those tomatoes are, the more lycopene is there, the stronger antioxidant effect they have for us. 

So nutritionally, that's something I'm, I'm really thinking about.  For farmers, one of the things that actually a project I'm working on this, this coming season there are diseases that come along that maybe haven't been a problem in the past. And. For whatever reason, they're starting to become more of a problem for us now. 

And so I'm I've got a proposal in, I don't know yet if it's been funded, but I'm hoping to be able to address an emerging disease problem. So that's something that my work addresses.  And,  oh things like yield, really important. And so,  in Ontario, in Southern Canada, our yields are certainly on par with what you would find in the Midwest . 

We are not quite there with California. California is certainly a powerhouse when it comes to producing beef. Processing tomatoes. But if you compare us with Indiana, Ohio,  we're right in there. And so our yields run around average, maybe 40 tons per acre, which is really good. That's double from the time that I started.  

And now I'm already thinking, how can I help our industry? be even more productive. Can I help to push us up to 50 tons per acre? We have a few growers who are able to achieve that, but they can't always get it reliably. So I'm asking myself, Okay, how can I help our growers to reliably Achieve a yield of 50 tons per acre on it. 

It's just gonna help everybody. It's gonna mean more efficient use of land. Less input costs, more productivity. It's gonna help us to maintain the value of of a crop like tomatoes and  I know you didn't ask this, but I'm going to add this in because it's one of the things that I always like to talk about and that I really like about working on tomatoes is that,  you know, I'm sure it's the same for consumers in the U. 

 as it is for Canada. Right now, we're going through this phase where inflation is quite high and food costs seem like they're just going up and up and up and it's becoming harder for many people to be able to afford it. Healthy food. And one of the things that I always really like about processing tomatoes or canned tomato products is that you don't have to compromise on nutrition while buying relatively inexpensive food. 

So these canned tomato products, in fact, are very nutritious, but in the grand scheme of things, they're not that expensive. And so these tomato products, you know, they help, like I said before, with the visual appeal with palatability, like we use tomatoes to, I mean, we combine tomatoes with beans quite often in various sorts of dishes. 

And what does that do? It just kind of helps things to taste better, but it also helps to supplement the nutrition of the, the food as well. So, it's, for multiple reasons, a really fun crop to work with.  Interesting. So this is just kind of like a side question I had from that. So I know how a lot of people, a lot of consumers are like, Ooh, fresh fruits and vegetables are always the way to go. 

So what's kind of like, how could you debunk that myth? Like canned vegetables aren't as good for you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a great question. And it's one that I've certainly thought about. And so I would say, That if your goal, at least with tomatoes, I'll,  I'll talk about what I know most. If your goal is to get vitamin C, then absolutely fresh tomatoes are your first choice. 

And so those, whether they're fresh field grown or fresh from the greenhouse or in whatever form, fresh tomatoes are going to be higher in vitamin C.  But, if your goal is to get lycopene, which is also a very powerful antioxidant, and not only lycopene, but also beta carotene,  Tomatoes have a lot of that as well.  

Canned tomato products are really your friend. They're the ones that are going to give you much higher levels of those nutrients. And so probably it's best to combine both. And, I mean, the other nice thing, you might be aware if you enjoy Italian style cuisine, often we're cooking with tomatoes and we'll add a bit of olive oil. 

And, in fact, it's been found that combining lycopene with a little bit of oil, it actually helps our bodies to absorb even more lycopene. We, we, our bodies can actually use the nutrition in that food that we eat even better.  So, What are the next steps in your research journey, and how do you plan to integrate sustainable practices and strategies into your future work? 

Because our kind of overarching theme for this is sustainability, and I know you touched on it a little bit earlier, but I kind of want to know what that looks like for the future of your research.  Okay,  yeah, so  one of the things that I mentioned earlier is that  I've had this long term focus on genetic diversity. 

in tomatoes and in cultivated tomatoes especially. And the way that I do that is I take cultivated tomatoes, so the ones that we would grow in our, on our farms or in our gardens, and I hybridize those or I cross those with wild tomato species. So the wild tomato species, all of them, yeah, all of them are native to South America, kind of the north northwest corner of South America, where they occur naturally.  

And  for many years people have been visiting those regions where those wild tomato species are native. They've been collecting some that they, where they observe that they see some traits that might be of interest,  or not, in some cases they're just collecting them. For the sake of preserving that that the different species and I am able to get access to those types. 

And so I hybridize what I get is this really kind of junkie looking intermediate stuff. It doesn't look like something you'd want to see in a field. It doesn't look like. doesn't really look any more like the wild species. And so what I do is I  continue to cross that back is how we describe it or hybridize it back to a cultivated tomato to try to re domesticate it in a way to make it look like something that a farmer would want to see in the field, but that pulls along or pulls across some of this genetic diversity from the wild species. 

So I've been doing that.  For many years. I am continuing to do that work since I've had the chance to study in a little more detail. Now I understand a little bit more about what's been happening where I have been successful where I haven't been so successful, so now I can be a little more deliberate and a little bit more strategic in some of the combinations that I put together so that I can achieve even greater genetic diversity in the newer material that I'm going to release.  

So those are some things. Other things that for sustainability that is increasing in importance  is disease resistance, which we talk about often, but really we use this term stacking. So kind of stacking different resistances or many different resistances within a single  within a single variety. So many years ago for example, if any of your listeners like to grow some tomatoes in their garden at home, they might see the name of the variety. 

And then after the name of the variety, there would be a V or V F or V F N T. In some cases, those letters were signifying what different diseases those varieties were resistant to.  And so many years ago, That list of maybe two or three or sometimes four diseases, that was enough.  Now,  we need to have a much longer list of disease resistances. 

And so a lot of my work now is focused on stacking not only those four, but adding in three or four or five more resistances to even more diseases. And so that's really going to help us. Everybody. It's going to help us to be more productive. It's going to help our crop to resist stress, especially stress by, um, diseases. 

And as we see changes in our climate and our, our growing seasons become a little bit less predictable, a little bit harder to know what's coming in advance, this disease resistance is going to be really important.  I mentioned earlier that I am hoping this summer to launch another project looking at a new disease and this new disease is emerging as an issue because of, we think, possibly because of some of the changes that we see in our long term weather patterns.  

Lauren Cook: Very interesting. That all sounds very exciting. I definitely look forward to hearing about it once you get that launched. You definitely have had a very full career so far. So you've done so much incredible work already. It's very impressive. But well, it's going to take it from here to discuss your perspectives on balancing sustainability and farming finances.  

Will Krause: All right. Well, thank you for that conversation with Lauren. We found that very interesting right now. We're going to take a little more of a pivot into the side of your research that really affects the farmer on the front end, you know, of the business and industry.  And the first topic I'd like to start off with is that there seems to be a divergence or competing factors between sustainable practices within agriculture and the farmer's ability to have a profitable operation that he can continue for generations to come. 

And so just from a 30, 000 foot view, how do you see this bridge being gapped between research like yours and the actual application in the, in the real world?   

Dr. Loewen: Oh, that's an interesting question. And yeah, we could talk about that for a long time, but just to give you a real overview of that,  I wonder if in the past,  some of the research that was done, and there were reasons why it was done this way. 

Tended to look more at kind of short term or sort of individual effects on the growing system.  And I'm gonna make the case that I think more recently  we've realized that we need to look at  the growing of a crop like tomatoes as a system. We we can't necessarily look at individual parts, although that still has a place. 

I don't want to say that that there should be none of that work because I think it still has a place, certainly in in preliminary studies. But when we've got a new practice or a new way to grow tomatoes that's showing promise, then I think we need to  Run that research. It's more expensive to do. That's partly why it hasn't been done so much in the past. 

You've got to run bigger trials, much bigger trials over longer periods of time. Takes a lot more. It's a lot more cost involved just to do the work,  but by taking more of a systems approach,  we start to see that, you know what? It doesn't really hurt profitability. In fact, there were some projects that I've been involved with. 

And in the past couple years where we've actually seen that some of these new and sustainable practices really do make a difference and they offer a benefit over the long term for productivity and for yield and for sustainability. So I don't think they have to be competing. I really think that they can work together.  

Will Krause: Yeah, no, I totally agree. I feel like I've always held the belief that the more sustainable your operation is, you're probably not only increasing the longevity of the soil and your production within the states, but, you know, also increasing yield. So that kind of dives into my next question. And you spoke on this a little bit earlier about the regionality of tomato production and how that can vary from region to region and state to state here. 

And so can you explain  kind of each region's products in use, you know, whether one place specializes in tomato paste, the other is wholesale tomato, and what the difference is and yields that you'd see between those regions.  

Dr. Loewen: Okay,  I'll do my best.  So,  I was talking before about we sometimes  use the term market class to describe the different types of or different classes of tomato that fit into different markets or different end uses. 

And so, one example is a type we call fresh market tomatoes. And so the fresh market class, those tend to be tomatoes that are the big round, people sometimes know them as a beefsteak type tomato. Beefsteak is actually a very old variety but it was a really good one and that name got attached to a whole bunch of very similar varieties.  

And so these are tomatoes that are grown often in the field, sometimes in greenhouses too, for fresh eating. These are the ones that if you go to a fast food restaurant, you have a slice of tomato on your sandwich or on your hamburger, this is, this is that type of tomato. It's fresh market, it's meant to be eaten fresh.  

So you will tend to see,  Those kinds of tomatoes, that market class, Florida, is a really important production area for fresh market tomatoes. I think a big part of that I mean in Florida you've got good soils, you've got really excellent climate, and, and a very long growing season, and a season that is a little bit different. 

Then some of the other regions. And so you're able to produce in Florida when other regions are not able to just because of seasonality. And so I think that's part of the reason. I'm sure it's more than just that, but that will be part of why Florida has become a real powerhouse for fresh market tomatoes.  

You'll also see areas like North Carolina And the mid Atlantic area  and maybe to a lesser extent, the Northeast,  you'll tend to see significant fresh market production in those regions as well. I think what may be driving production there is partly history. Partly climate, rainfall, that sort of thing. 

But maybe the biggest thing is proximity to markets. It's just closest to where there's really big population centers. And so when those tomatoes are harvested, they can get to the end user really quick, without having to travel very far.  So those are, those are some of the big areas really. I mean, and they're produced in many other areas as well, but those are a couple that really stand out for the fresh market class.  

Then there's what I focus on, and I've been talking a lot about what we call processing tomatoes, or tomatoes for canning.  And  there are a couple of things that impact the regions or, or have resulted in kind of why we produce those where we do. So California is, as I mentioned before, really on a worldwide basis, California is, is, is the powerhouse for tomatoes for processing.  

And there it's going to be climate. California has a Mediterranean climate and tomatoes just seem really well adapted for growing in a Mediterranean style climate. And so California has all those advantages. I mean, sometimes this is a problem, but it can also be a benefit in that rainfall in California sometimes is not so heavy. 

It's maybe what we sometimes call an arid rainfall. region or kind of a dry production region. And so in a region like that, you don't have nearly as many problems with diseases because it's just not as humid. The foliage isn't wet as much. And so it's easier to grow the crop because you don't have to deal with all these other problems.  

And then the thing that kind of builds on that is then you start to get more of the canning factories. Established in those areas and with tomatoes for processing, tomatoes for canning, you'll always see them produced in close proximity to where the the canneries are, where they can get those tomatoes peeled or, or crushed and, and concentrated whatever the process is gonna be in order to get them into the can really fast.  

Then the other region that stands out for tomatoes for canning or for processing would be the Midwest. So, Indiana. Ohio, Michigan a bit in Pennsylvania New York State has certainly had a part in that too and so and, and that's where I am in, in Southern Ontario in Canada. We really consider ourselves part of that same Midwest region. 

We're kind of around the Great Lakes Basin is, is kind of how we see ourselves, even though there's a political border, but from an economic agricultural border. There really isn't one. And so we, we're part of that same kind of environment. It's a little more humid. And so we do tend to deal with more diseases, but the other benefit though, we do have more reliable rainfall through the growing season. 

And so we don't have to worry about irrigation as much. And then the other thing that again, gives us a little bit of a benefit and, and means the industry tends to focus here is that. We're close to markets. We're close to those big population centers in the Northeast. And so especially for products like canned tomatoes, canned whole tomatoes, they're kind of heavy to transport. 

And if you've got to transport those any distance, even in the can then you, they have to be more and more expensive to cover that transportation cost. And so if you don't have very far to move those to the large cities in the northeast, then that helps to make the product production a little more efficient from a, a  profitability standpoint.  

And then of course again, you get the canning companies that tend to focus in these areas and that tends to keep these areas the production in these areas.   

Will Krause: Awesome. That was a great answer to that question. so one of the papers that I saw of yours that really caught my eye was regarding cover crops and especially with the focus in tomato fields and how that impacts yield. 

And I was wondering just Kind of from a financial standpoint, I don't know how privy you would be to the cost of, you know, implementing these cover crops and maintaining them over the years. But would you say that over time with the the soil benefits that you gain from using these cover crops, do you think that that outweighs the initial costs and upkeep of implementing cover crops into your farm? 

Dr. Loewen: Yeah,  it does. And we have enough evidence. I've been part of a research collaboration with others who, who are looking at cover crops in tomatoes for processing specifically.  And it kind of goes back to what I said before about looking at working into cover crops in a, as a systems approach. So rather than just looking at the cover crop alone and not really  figuring out how does it fit in the whole system? 

We had a hard time for many years really showing that there was much benefit, and it wasn't until we started to look at kind of the whole piece. Then suddenly those benefits, those financial benefits of profitability really starts to show up.  And so, I mean, one of the fears of including cover crops was that,  you know, are we gonna compromise fruit quality? 

Is are we going to get that nice, deep red color that we need in in canning tomatoes if we're also growing a cover crop amongst the tomato plants? Or is it going to delay our maturity? So in other words, are we not going to be able to harvest as soon? And so is that going to be a problem? Because in, in this part of the world, in many parts where tomatoes are grown, we have a limited growing season. 

There's a limited window of time when we can harvest and we don't want to  lose any of that. We want that harvest season to be as long as we can possibly make it. And so we, we don't want to compromise that. And that was the fear as well. Maybe if we're putting in cover crops, maybe they're gonna mature later. 

We won't be able to harvest as soon. And what we found is that  It's not a concern. It's not a worry. It doesn't change it. We found that, you know what, it had no negative impact on tomato quality. So color and other important characteristics was fine.  The other thing that we looked at as part of our collaboration  was insects and diseases. 

If there's more foliage around, so not only the leaves of the tomato plants, but if we've got leaves from these other cover crops, and all the good stuff that they're doing, is that going to increase the humidity? Around the plants, is that going to increase our risk of disease? Or maybe insects are going to hide in the cover crop and then come out and attack our tomato plants. 

We found out that that was not a problem. We didn't need to worry about it.  So this is kind of just building off the point you made there about cover crops potentially affecting the quality of the tomatoes or maybe the timing of harvesting. Do you ever see the cover crops that are put in there kind of compete for space with the tomatoes? 

And is that what you're referring to whenever you're saying that it could affect the quality of the color or the harvesting season? Is that due to the added competition?  It's that's a really good question, and I understand why you're asking that. But no, it's not so much about the competition because the cover crops that we choose And the way we manage those cover crops, we want to make sure that that doesn't compete with the growth of our tomato plants. 

It's probably as much as any, well there's a couple things, it's, it's a number of factors, but one of them would be so it's not competition for light or anything above ground, but it's more a concern what's going on below ground, and are those cover crops using too many nutrients? that, in fact, really the tomato plants need to have available. 

And so,  by choosing our cover crops well choosing the right ones, and the ones that have kind of the right sort of growth cycle, we're able to choose cover crops, one or two of them that we're recommending. Actually we plant them in the fall.  They can actually tolerate quite a bit of cold weather. 

They'll even grow quite late into the fall until the soil freezes up.  And then they will sort of be there doing their job, but then they'll die as soon as it warms up in the spring. And as soon as we're ready to plant our tomatoes. So we've got these cover crops that the leaves are there, but they're actually all brown because they've died because of the cold winter. 

But that's, that's okay. We can plant into that. And they're still doing their job of protecting the soil surface from wind erosion, for example, and those nutrients that the cover crops absorbed from the soil, they're now, as they're, as the cover crop plants have died, they're going to release those nutrients back into the soil for our tomato plants as we're just putting our tomato plants in. 

And so, in fact, we're able to kind of complement.  our tomato growth cycle with, by really judicious choice of, of the cover crops that we're using. So, so they're not actually competing with each other. They're really complementing each other.  Okay. Cause that's always been my biggest question in regards to cover crop. 

Cause I've always thought that was a fascinating.  Sustainable way to try to increase the yield and the longevity of the soil that you're using because I know that's a pretty huge problem today. What kind of cover crops do you see that are the most effective with the tomatoes that you guys are growing in your region up there?  

So of the ones that we recommend, it's one called oilseed radish. And so it's, it's a type of radish, but it's a very specialized type that's really grown more for the seed and the high oil content of the seed, but it turns out that some of these oilseed radish varieties also have very big root systems, and  so you were talking about sustainability, and I alluded to it a little bit, but I want to kind of dig into that a little bit more.  

That one of the concerns is that if we're putting nutrients on for our tomato plants to grow, it's a good thing.  If the crop doesn't take full advantage of all those nutrients there, or if, once we get to the end of the season, our crop is done, we've harvested, but the roots, the old root systems, the old stems and leaves, they're gonna decay there in the field. 

They're gonna release those nutrients back into the soil. Well, Hey, wait a minute. That's that's a waste of nutrients. Is there some way we can capture those nutrients and retain them and keep them and somehow make them available for our next crop? And especially what we're concerned about, too, is  on sandier soils where if you get a lot of rainfall, those nutrients can get washed down through the soil. 

And in in the worst case scenario, they can actually contaminate groundwater.  And so we want to stop that. We just can't let that happen.  And so the benefit of a cover crop, especially a cover crop like oilseed radish, oats, another, of course oats are grown as a grain crop,  but they also work really well as a cover crop. 

And we found that those two will do a good job of pulling those excess nutrients out of the soil in the fall. As they're planted right after tomato harvest is finished. And then those plants will be ready. They'll tie up the nutrients temporarily over the winter and then release them for the next crop. 

Or  if we're doing this for the tomato crop, it's whatever crop we have. Prior to tomatoes the year prior to tomatoes will put in the cover crops and then those cover crops again will tie up those nutrients temporarily keep them from washing away in places we don't want and they'll be available ready for our tomato crops. 

So it not only it's sustainable in terms of it's good for the soil, it improves the soil. It presents or prevents loss and waste of nutrients and, and other concerns. And in fact, it helps us to reduce our fertilizer input costs because it gives us not a lot, but there are some nutrients that we can take advantage of from the previous year.  

Will Krause: Awesome. That's great.  Really cool way to implement the cover crops into the systems that I was not familiar with at all. I'm sure most of our viewers won't be either. So that was a great tidbit to put in there. Yeah. And so I, I guess I kind of wanted to, to dive into a little bit of your research and you touched on this a little bit and besides, you know, implementing cover crops and whatnot,  what have you found? 

Within developing more resistant and stress proof tomatoes for different regions, I mean, especially years that, you know, you guys have a much shorter growing season. So what are some things that farmers in your areas can implement to take advantage of that shorter window?  

Dr. Loewen: Yeah, that's such a good question. 

And as I mentioned before, about our limited growing season, that's really important to us. And, and to, to growers really anywhere, but certainly in the Midwest and Northeast.  is how can we maximize our number of days that we can harvest. And so there's a, there's a number of strategies that we use. 

So one of the things that I'm always looking for when I'm making selections in my field is can I select varieties or, or breeding lines that mature earlier? Can I gain one day? Can I gain one or two days or three days? That actually can have a real big impact. It doesn't sound like a lot, but it can actually have a big impact over time. 

And so there are a few genetic traits that are known that will help to advance maturity so that we can start harvesting sooner. So that's the one thing. Can we, can we start earlier at the beginning of the season? Then the other side of that. I'm always looking for traits that will help us to be able to harvest a little bit longer. 

Now, there's not much I can do about a killing frost. That is going to end our season. But, one of the things that often happens is that as we go from kind of middle of September in towards the end of September, first part of October, as we go through that transition from summer into fall, we tend to get up more rainfall.  

more rainfall, more disease. And the other problem that a lot of rainfall can give us is we get cracking. in the tomatoes. And once they crack, you lose quality right away. You can't use them. At least we, we can't. In a home garden situation, there's nothing wrong with them. It's just, but you have to eat them right away. 

So I'm always looking for ways that I can extend the season, at least up until our first killing frost. So can I incorporate more disease resistance? There's something that we call field holding ability. And what we mean by that is once the tomato is ripe, Can we choose types where they will retain their quality until we can get in there to harvest them? 

Because with tomatoes that we grow for canning, it's a once over harvest. So we've gotta maximize the number of tomatoes that are ripe. For one time through  and it's not like we can go through multiple times and get some and then wait and then go back through and get the others. We get one one time through so so we're looking for those first ones that ripen. 

It would be ideal if they could retain their quality if they won't crack if we get some extra rain if they won't be subject to diseases as we get later and later into the season so we can extend the harvest. later into the fall as much as we're able. And then third thing that's can be an issue. 

Some years is it can be a tough one to deal with is  when the tomatoes flower.  Ideally, we want them to flower all the flowers on a plant to bloom about the same time, because that's going to mean that all the tomatoes that develop from those flowers are going to ripen all pretty much the same time. And again, because we've got this one chance this once over harvest, we want to maximize the number of tomatoes that are at their optimum. 

For that one time. And so, there is variation for that trait. There are some varieties that really spread out their flowering and really spread out their fruit ripening. Those kinds are actually really good for people who want to grow tomatoes in their garden at home. Because often you want to have a few tomatoes today and a few tomatoes later in the week and a few the week after and the week after and the week after. 

Those are perfect.  But again, with Tomatoes for Canning, we got that one, one chance to harvest with the harvester. And so we want all of them, ideally, all of them to be ripe and best quality at that one time.  

Will Krause: Well, Dr. Lowen, thank you so much for your time today. We had a really great conversation with you and we really hope our viewers enjoy it just as much as we did.  Do you have any closing words or any final thoughts for our viewers before we let you go?  

Dr. Loewen: Oh, you know what? Thank you so much for your interest. 

I really appreciate it. And you know what? Tomatoes, tomatoes are a healthy, economical, great product. You know what? Enjoy them. Enjoy them.