Organic growers must use other controls- one can not sell a blemished crop that one has not done anything to control these pests. Harvest - Tomatoes are picked green to allow shipment while firm. Treating tomatoes with ethylene gas at the destination or during shipment will induce ripening. An average harvest is 35,000 pounds per field. Harvesting costs 14 cents per pound.
Seed companies focus on providing seeds of certain new varieties of crops to growers.
These varieties have been bred for combining favorable characteristics, such as high yield, ability to survive machine picking and packing, and resistance to certain diseases. B. Domesticated crops have much less genetic diversity 1. Selective breeding of crops results in uniformity because traits that are not of obvious value to the farmer at that time are lost in selection. Only a few varieties of a crop are often used by many farmers accross a wide region. When a new strain of disease breaks out in a uniform domesticated population, all of the population may be highly susceptible 3.