LOS BANOS -- When you live in the valley, it's easy to eat locally. Chefs at area restaurants have shaken the hands that pick the produce they toss in salads and blend into bisques.
A Pizza Hut pie is a far cry from what foodies are referring to when they encourage people to eat locally, but chances are the tomatoes in the sauce on your pizza didn't travel far.
If you've driven west this summer along one of those country roads that seem to melt into the horizon with rows of low vinelike plants stretching out on each side, you might have glimpsed the key ingredient in your next meal.
This time of year, Roma-type tomatoes are being shaken from their vines and run though a system that churns out tomato paste for pizzerias and salsa for taquerias.
It's these hearty tomatoes that are used primarily by canneries, which process them into a wide variety of products. Here's how they get from the farm to the dinner table:
FIELDS -- California tomato growers harvested more than 12 million tons of processing tomatoes last year. They negotiated a price of $70 a ton with food processors this year.
That seemed like a good price when the deal was finalized in December. But oil prices continued to rise and water was especially scarce this year, driving up irrigation costs.
So farmers such as Aaron Barcellos also must consider how much water a crop uses and what it will cost before deciding how much to plant.
"We are forced to think that way to survive," said Barcellos, who farms 6,000 acres near Los Banos.
Processing tomato seedlings are planted by machines about four months before they're harvested. Some are grown straight from seeds plunged into the ground by planters as early as January, said Rodger Wasson of the Tomato Products Wellness Council.
HARVESTING -- Northern San Joaquin Valley tomatoes generally are harvested at the end of July. This year's cool spring delayed ripening, so they're being harvested now.
A machine the size of a small cabin collects the tomatoes and drops them into large tubs on two trailers pulled by a tractor that travels alongside the harvester.
Harvesters drive over the beds where tomatoes are planted and separate the plants from their roots with a cutting bar or clipper. The plants ride into the harvester on an elevator belt. The machine then shakes tomatoes from the plants.
Tomatoes are sorted for the first time just seconds after they're harvested. A stream of light is shined on the tomatoes as they pass by on a conveyor belt. The wavelength of light that bounces back indicates ripeness. Dirt and unusable tomatoes are discarded. About 5 percent never leave the field, Barcellos said.
Trucks hook up to trailers pulled out of the fields by the tractors. Piled high with tons of bright-red tomatoes, the big rigs leave Barcellos' farm and drive about five minutes to Ingomar Packing plant, which processes a million tons of tomato paste and diced tomatoes annually. The valley produces about 11 million tons of tomato paste annually.
PROCESSING -- Once at Ingomar, operators open the doors on the truck's tubs and spray water on the load. Then, the tomatoes are washed again, pasteurized and separated via machines and by hand.
A sizing machine separates tomatoes. The smaller ones become paste, which makes up 95 percent of the final processing tomato product. The larger ones are diced and shaken to remove pieces that are too large.
The others are peeled with heat and become paste. Evaporators use heat to remove water from the paste, which thickens it. Paste is sterilized by increasing its temperature for a few minutes. Then it's cooled in a flash and packaged in 55-gallon drums or 300-gallon lined boxes.
It takes about 2½ hours to turn freshly delivered tomatoes into paste in a drum that has a shelf life of more than a year, said Timothy Durham, Ingomar's director of operations.
VALUE-ADDED -- The paste and diced tomatoes are loaded onto trucks and sent to Kagome, a Japanese-owned tomato products distributor.
Different herbs and spices are added, depending on what the buyer wants. Pizza Hut, for example, has different preferences from BJ's Restaurant & Brewhouse, said Luis de Oliveira, Kagome's chief operating officer.
Diced tomatoes destined for Taco Bell are poured into 10,000-pound tanks and blended with onions, vegetables and spices. Cooked for sterilization, the salsa is shot down a tube, fed into bags and sealed -- all mechanically. The bags are dropped onto a conveyor belt, weighed for consistency, run under a metal detector and heated again for sterilization. Then, they are quickly cooled with water to below 110 degrees and plunged into boxes that hold two bags each.
The salsa later is ladled over warm refried beans and served up at Taco Bell. Pizza sauce goes through a similar process after it's reconstituted and before it's shipped to chain restaurants such as BJ's and Pizza Hut.
Bee staff writer Eve Hightower can be reached at ehightower@modbee.com or 578-2382.
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