Tomato Essay

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A decade ago, the poor quality of eating tomatoes (see figure 1) on sale in Britain was nearly destroyed by the standard specimen on the market it was a tough-skinned, palli and greenish-pink water bomb also mushy and tasteless. Until the deep red, sun-sweet tomatoes were produced that were worth eating tomatoes come in all shapes, sizes, On the vine, beefsteak, cherry, yellow, black, gold, plum and many of them even taste good compared to a decade ago. Tomato growing methods have dramatically changed in recent years. The commercially grown tomatoes are usually cultivated in polytonal in a warmer country or in glasshouses like in the UK and Europe and these can range in size from a scaled-up versions of a traditional greenhouse to a massive constructions covering hundreds of acres like in Spain. The cultivation within these glasshouses is normally to plant the tomato vines in soil. But when tomatoes are cultivated on a large scale in soil, the soil needs to be sterilized regularly with chemicals to prevent disease, pest build up, and also treated regularly with herbicides to protect against weeds to promote good healthy growth. Also a controlled environment in a glasshouse can make for more environmentally-friendly growing methods. In the UK glasshouse the bumblebees are used as a pollinator and also a beneficial predator so insects are used to keep pests at minimal making pesticides more or less redundant to the grower. But The British Tomato Growers’ Association is aiming to eliminate all such use within the 10 year period. The UK also has reduced the amount of the nitrate used to grow deep red, sun-sweet tomatoes by up to 50% and also achieved an even larger reductions in the nitrate and phosphate discharge from the fertilize...

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...until October only. But heating can extend that season from around February until November which helps the UK compete with imports and exports around the world.
Environmentalists say heated glasshouses guzzle up dirty fossil fuels that are contributing to carbon emissions and climate change in the UK. In response of this the majority of UK tomato growers are harnessing some form of surplus heat generated for other purposes, such as sola power wind turbines, water energy and electricity production. This raises another question is it better to cut down on food travel miles grown only with the heat and light of the sun than to buy UK grown tomatoes under glass with an artificial heat or to fall back on tinned tomatoes or tomatoes that have preserved in the summer to last through the cold winter. My evidence of this perception is also agreed with the internet reference;

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