Was wondering why there was such a dearth of good tomatoes in the grocery store. At least the shortage can’t be linked to corruption in the FDA and food corporations…
A shortage of tomatoes from weather-battered Florida is forcing restaurants and supermarkets to ration supplies amid soaring prices for America’s most popular fresh vegetable.
Fast-food restaurant chains such as Wendy’s have stopped automatically including tomatoes in sandwiches; now customers have to know to ask.
Even then, consumers might not get what they usually do. At Lloyd’s, a white-tablecloth restaurant across the street from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, signs went up this week warning that only plum tomatoes are available.
“People love having tomatoes in their salad and in sandwiches but we want people to know ahead of time that the quality just isn’t what they are used to,” said Sam Berngard, president of Taste America Restaurant Group LLC, which operates Lloyd’s and two Chicago seafood restaurants.
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Fresh tomatoes are in short supply because of the unusual spell of freezing temperatures that hugged Florida in January. The cold temperatures that dented citrus production also destroyed roughly 70% of the tomato crop in Florida, which is the largest source of U.S.-grown fresh tomatoes this time of year.
Reggie Brown, executive vice president of Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, a Maitland, Fla., trade group, said Tuesday that a 25-pound box of tomatoes is trading for $30, compared with $6.45 a year ago.
[Click to continue reading Florida Tomato Shortage Hits Restaurants, Supermarkets – WSJ.com]
Winter tomatoes kind of suck anyway, I can wait until locally grown varieties start appearing again. And climate change is thankfully not refuted in this article1.
Footnotes:- since it isn’t relevant, probably [↩]