You may be very surprised to know that your F1 hybrid tomato came from a seed that is not found in nature. Breeders make F1 hybrids by causing plants to reproduce using the plant's own pollen. The resulting seeds are genetically identical, a trait desirable for industrial farms, which grow thousands of acres of one kind of food. The seeds are bred for large-scale food production, prizing yield per acre, uniformity of color and consistency, and pest resistance. There are a number of important problems hidden in the story of F1 hybrids.
Farmers have to buy new seeds every year, posing a serious problem for poor countries.
Second, because the tomato you bought is most likely genetically identical to the tomato you will buy the next day and for the rest of the winter, you will not be getting the variety of nutritional benefits you would if you were eating different tomato types. Third, if all industrial farms around the country are growing F1 tomato plants, they are forcing out of the market the thousands of diverse tomato varieties that have, over the course of the centuries, adapted to withstand drought, freezing, and blight. Without preserving diversity, our food supply is vulnerable. The Irish potato famine, which killed thousands of people and caused millions to emigrate in the 1840s, was caused by reliance on one kind of potato that turned out to be vulnerable to a fungus that grew in a damp spell. According to Seeds of Change, a company that sells heirloom seeds, we now lose three plant species per hour.