Why do tomatoes taste less and less flavorful? It took 40 years of growing them to figure it out
Text by Zhu Ming-fa (Moonlight Farm)
A scientific journal recently reported that tomatoes no longer taste as good as they used to; I started helping my father grow tomatoes at age 10, and later grew them on my own, and after 40 years of eating them, the flavor of tomatoes really is very different.
The "kam-á-bit" of 40 years ago (the way farming friends refer to tomatoes) was the most primitive kind, and its taste was hard to describe. I still remember that the first generation of tomatoes was called "Golden Kumquat," a kind of small red tomato. Here in Moon World we had no water, and we had to carry water 5 or 60 meters to water them. The gray-green limestone of Moon World has many trace elements, with a lot of potassium and calcium; it was very sour, very sweet, and the thickness of the skin and the depth of flavor were very substantial. No matter how I grow them now, I can never grow that flavor again.
Things without adversity have no flavor
The flavor of a plant comes from changes in variety, space and time. Tomatoes are now densely planted on a large scale, whereas before only a little was planted on one hillside. Space not only refers to the distance between plants, but also to the relationship between the plants and the external environment. This is also why many people who grow a few at home get much better flavor than from dense cultivation.
There is another factor in space, namely "adversity" (the difficulties that plants face when growing naturally, such as lack of water, nutrients or light). The tomatoes of the past were grown wild, without trellises, and all trailed on the ground; they had "adversity" they had to overcome. Today's plants have no adversity, and just like people, things without adversity have no flavor. It's true. I even have a genius friend who deliberately kicks over his tomatoes… (laughs)
For a crop to have flavor, it depends on sunlight, dew and grass, and protected cultivation blocks all three, so the flavor of tomatoes is bound to be lost. I am unwilling to do protected cultivation, also because it makes crops flavorless. However, farmland only makes money with facilities, and without facilities it does not make money, because tomatoes are very afraid of water, and after three days of rain the root system will rot. By using facilities you block out water and bacteria, so of course the harvest is more secure.
Also, everyone wants to eat thin-skinned ones. Many people say open-field ones have thicker skins. Of course, in the open field the sun shines all the time, just like me, my skin is very thick, and this is natural (laughs). But thick skin and thick flesh can still be very smooth to eat, with no obstruction.
Sweet and wild, that is when flavor comes out
Sweetness without flavor is very strange, but wildness with sweetness, that is wonderful! I use palm ash; wood and grass ash has potassium fertilizer, dissolved with glacial acetic acid, and sprinkle it a few times a week, and the sweetness comes out. Liking sweetness is a kind of natural instinct, but in the thinking of our whole body there is a feeling for primitive flavor, and perhaps only by growing the primitive flavor can it match with sweetness.
The variety grown now is called "Golden Roundness." Not many people may grow it. Its appearance is less appealing, but it is more wild.
But to be honest, I feel that no matter what, I can never go back to the flavor of the past. At first I only planted 3 fen of land, and every day I personally tended them in the orchard, and the fruit that grew really tasted of emotion. Now that I have expanded the area and hire workers to help plant, with the same procedures and the same fertilizer, the flavor is just different.
The connection between people and plants is invisible yet substantial. Now our connection is indeed not as deep, and I really do not have the strength to care for them the way I used to. The commercial system makes people lose a lot, and the connection to the world is different too; it becomes a very simple act of eating, and beyond eating, many things are abandoned.