Jacob Kremple

And so, yeah, it's a much more savvy buyer than maybe the traditional American retail consumer.

I can't say I haven't tried that before.

It doesn't work.

Oh, interesting.

All right.

I do complain to the head produce clerk at our store every once in a while about the price.

Like, come on, guys.

Yeah, for sure.

And I think that created some, I'd say, pre-freeze impact in general on the tomato industry, where acreage and production was probably slightly down overall, mostly in greenhouses.

They were dealing with a couple of different viruses that were sweeping through the more traditional greenhouse varieties of mostly your snacking tomatoes, right?

that they were not used to and didn't really expect to have to deal with.

And those viruses were decimating those greenhouses where they'd have to tear everything out, soil included, and just replant and start everything from the beginning in these greenhouses.

So tomato pricing, especially on more of the snacking or high flavor variety things that you would see in a grocery store, have been pretty volatile for a while now because of this.

They've introduced some new varieties that are very promising and have slowed the impact of this already.

But it's mother nature at the end of the day, right?

And like it's a continually evolving mother nature that you're always gonna be dealing with something new as a grower.

Yeah, they all interplay with each other a little bit.

I would say you do have more complimentary or substitutable tomatoes, right?

So if you think of like a round tomato, like your New Jersey beefsteak and a Roma tomato, those are pretty interchangeable.

So in Florida, what happened was it was a huge wipeout of