Saving Ketchup: The Race to Breed a Tomato for a Warming World
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Summer here, the season of poor parties, beach days and cook outs. And for a lot of people, myself included, there is a certain condemn that hot dogs and hamburgers just aren't complete without catch. up.

thanks. Catch up, catch up is more than just a delicious edition to a backyard, but it's big money. According to statistic, global revenue for tomato catchup p amounts to almost thirty seven point seven billion dollars, but the changing climate is contributing to making major tomato growing regions hotter and drive. And that could have serious implications for lots of crops, including the tomato going into your catch up and pasta sauce.

The to industry is one example of how some of these protections raps could be under threat from a changing climate.

W. S. A reporter, Patrick Thomas, covers the business of .

agriculture of a steady decline over the years, which certain producer, certain seed companies attribute to possible long term trends of what we're going to see with climate change.

From the wall street journal, this is the future of everything. I'm danny Lewis. Today, we're looking at how scientists and sea breeds are trying to develop tomatoes that can survive harsher climates, and how agriculture companies and farmers are working to make sure all sorts of crops can thrive in a warmer, drier world. And of course, figuring out how to keep catch up on store shops that after the break, stick around.

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Patrick, of all the crabs that are vulnerable to drought, why did you focus on tomatoes? Like why not corner oranges?

Tomatoes are very specifically grown in places on the west coast, mainly california. But there are some pretty harsh drought that people may remember over the last few years at west, there was just a tonic stress put on various parts of agriculture, and tomatoes really felt this stress. The average of tomato crops grown in the united states were drinking.

And I mean, we need tomatoes for almost anything. Their water called processing tomatoes, and those are used in things like paste and sauces. Think, catch up, think, patience uce. Think the cans of tomatoes is not the ones necessarily and sandwich, but the ones in the animals.

How much farmland in california are we talking about here that, you know, just voted to tomatoes .

in one thousand nine hundred ninety one, there are three hundred and twelve thousand harvested acres of tomatoes in two thousand, one that already went down about two hundred and fifty thousand. And then in twenty twenty one, we're talking about two hundred and twenty thousand.

We're seeing the steady decline of harvested tomato, acrid, and it's important is harvested there because you can paint tomatoes, but if you're bad weather, you're gna lose that crops. So we're just seeing a steady decline at the amount of tomatoes that farmers are pulling out of the ground in california. And IT really raised the alarm bells. The long term trends tell us it's in trouble.

What's the difference between a processing tomato and some of the regular tomatoes you might see at a grocery store?

Processing tomatoes are meant to be ingredients are producing mass quantity is not necessarily like the easy to cut kind of tomato. They are bread for the specific purpose of being a little bit hard to year. They go through a lot of transport, lot, logistics, being produced the factory.

So it's a very specific type tomato, much like you see in korn, for example, you've korn specific for eating. You have corn mate for bio fuels was livestock feed gorn. So same concept for the tomato. This is the industrial version of the tomato. More of us .

are you. So you talk to vegetable breeding at bayer who are working on this problem of making this hard deer tomato, even hardee, how are they trying to make a climate proof tomato, so to speak?

Yeah, it's so this is where IT gets pretty interesting. And honestly, even to take a step back, this is not unique to the tomato. Agriculture itself is evolving to climate needs, and we're seeing this in terms of see breeding, biotech, I gene editing in the future.

But the point of this is developing drought resistant types of seeds for corn, soybeans, eat tomatoes, the bell peppers, and there are billions of dollars on the line. These are massive companies that the want want to be able to sell a product to the former that's going to be job resistant and survive effects of climate change as they come along over the next decade. And we actually have seen some of the ek changes that these companies make in the way they develop seeds.

For example, last year was extremely brutal in terms of heat and drought across the midst west. And you know what, the harvest came back, okay. We really did not see a big drop off in terms of what farmers are bringing in.

And a big reason for that, for people, the industry say the genetics have just got ten. That much Better cortex, for examples, get a hardier, drought ish resistant court crop. And one of these, in the stronger routes to survive, start pests that actually does a Better job retaining water.

So those kind of things are a premium. Much more important now to the tomato is tRicky S A little bit more new crop. But a company like bear, they have a dedicated research facility in willand, california, kind of a heart of this vegetable growing region. And they have teams of seed breeds, and if they basically made tomatoes, are they extract pollen from the flower of one of the plants, and they will place IT on the other one to create a new variety.

And they're trying to mix and match different tomato plants and then test that combination of, how does that do with twenty percent less water? How does that do fifty percent water? Will this turn? And all but travel tomato plans, if we give fifty of water, can we get something that develops harder? Your kid, right? It's all about genetics in this and breathing the right kind of tomato plant takes a lot of time, a lot effort, not a lot of testing. So these things do not happen overnight. And if they have some winners, they'll take them move on to the next round of testing with the winners from the other round of testing a reality T, V show where the .

winners all kind of meat. Who wants to be america's .

next big tomato tomo?

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, the the optimistic side is like a look. The typical growing season takes almost one hundred and seventy billion gallons of water, and drought resistant could take one hundred and twenty billion gallons of water. That's a lot of water that you save or a lot less water than you might need for these tomato crops.

So IT can make a big difference to help survive these climates or use that water further purposes or just if you don't have that same supply, IT also has a consumer impact. If you have more tomatoes around, that means there's Better supply. And if there is Better supply when demand isn't went around, that means Prices stay low, right? So catch up won't go to ten dollars.

We won't see tomato inflation elsewhere in agriculture, like chocolate, a source set of west africa, for example, they had a bad weather year, and that crop is really suffering. Truck out demand is prefer that, that crops destroyed. The Price of coca right now is absurd, and that's what the tomato people do not want to happen.

What's the process for breeding these new varieties that is a different from traditional plant breeding? And you know that the classic greggor medel moving poland from one plant to another kind of thing right now.

they are in the process of the traditional plant rating. So you hit the nail on the head with that in the future. They're hoping to eventually delve into things like gene editing. There are some mustard seed plants that have been gene edited, not as bitter, let us. But IT hasn't hit the big leaves.

Is that because of legal or regulatory chAllenges around genetic ted crops.

the big issue has been regulation in places like europe, certain countries in the E. U. Have been or strict, and what they allowing in terms of the plants, and the companies have been lobbying them to relax those restrictions on and get sold.

Very selective in U. S. Domestic markets for years. It's kicked up in conversation. And this certainly a need for IT as the climate of all.

But for now, traditional plant reading is a wave companies going and they hope to start rolling out. Tomatoes grow under after growing commissions are using less matter. Breeding is still effective in finding the next round of those kinds of tomatoes that can survive, at least for now.

Coming up the race to breed drought resistance tomatoes is but why might new varieties be a Better solution than growing them in new locations that after the break.

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Drought and rising temperatures have taken a heavy toll on agriculture in recent years. Twenty twenty three was the hot year on record, according to NASA patric. What time frame our agriculture companies Operating on right now when IT comes to developing .

drought resistant crops, it's hard to say because that varies. But in the world of crop seed and pesticide companies, R N D pipelines tend to have a longer tale that bears talk about. Some of their technology for the future is not tilt twenty twenty seven, for example.

The next front of testing on this tomatoes is this half this year, once that, that are candidates that they have or testing and they going to get things proved and come over the right marketing, you're labelling what they can cannot say. So they still have some time. The tomatoes is not going anywhere right now. This is a long term focus for these companies to .

build Better crops. So why not just move? Why not just grow? Me know these crops in weather regions where you don't have as much of a threat of drought and just do you have that instead of making a whole new breeds of tomato?

I think that's the first reaction is like, okay, if the climate is changing theoretically for the north, should be able to just have the crops that we're growing out, right, like you just put just move things around. Why can't we just move the tomatoes to ira or washington up in canada? Um but IT is more complex um just the infrastructure that's been built around certain crops.

There is a logistical infrastructure of harvesting, of transporting these where their ship to. You can't move grain elevators and tomato processing plants you would have to tear them down and build multi million dollar facilities somewhere else or hall them across the country. And in the case of protos, that might go bad, you know and also you'd be displacing whatever crop is already there.

So move tomato. I well, you're taking on corn um if you move a tomato crop to a country in south amErica where a growing pineapple, you then you ve got to another crop and crisis, right? Certain things are already located there for a reason and have the infrastructure built up around them to hold them hundreds of years of infrastructure, especially in the midwest. So that's why tweak the genetics has seen as much more feasibility.

And also at the same time, I mean, there's all the farmers who are actually growing these crops. How would having these new climate resistance varieties affect their livelihoods?

Yeah, besides the infrastructure and the money, it's the people, right? This is their livelihood and they've had some tough years. One of the farmers spoke to said it's been died with how little water they've had in how much of the crop he's lost over the last couple of years.

And there's an old saying if if you're in an elenora farmer, you won't drop naoh because IT will raise the Price of your crop for somebody else to have a bad day. In the case of tomato farmers though, but doesn't quite apply, they all benefit from having more of crop that that they can sell. So it's very important for these farmers to have a good crop and not lose IT and can get every dollar possible from their fields.

These agricultural companies are, like he said, just now, putting on the gas to develop these new climate resistant varieties. How long will this take for them if they work out to hit the fields and find their way into grocery stores?

Well, depends on products. And the science around this is just gotten so much Better than IT was twenty years ago. If you had to draw, like what we had last year were so much of the grain belt wasn't drought, that was one of the worst years in decades, you would have had a much more destruction of U.

S. harvest. Akers, but people in the industry say that because of Better genetics, that didn't really happen.

These more significant water deficit type tomatoes, we could start seeing those in the next couple of years. But it's also something the summer might not notice if it's a success. But you know, if IT doesn't work, you'll definitely notice the Price increasing for tomatoes. The consumer will know and the Price won't be happy, but that does. Then you will happily continue having your catch up along the side of your fries.

Patrick Thomas covers agricultural business for the wall street journal.

Thanks for joining us. Thanks so much for me. Really appreciated.

The future of everything is a production of the wall street journal. This episode was produced by me, danny Lewis. Thanks for listening.

Amazon q business is the new generative A I assistant from A W S, because many tasks can make business slow, as if waiting through mud a help.

Luckily.

there's a faster, easier, less messy choice. Amazon q can securely understand your business data and use that knowledge to streamline task. Now you can summarize quarterly results or do complex analysis in no time.

Q got this. Learn what amazon q business can do for you at A W S dot com flash. Learn more.