Speciality tomatoes succeed with fewer inputs

Simply Salads farms cherry and mini plum tomatoes in 3,5ha of greenhouses in Barberton, Mpumalanga. The location has two key advantages: a warm climate, which reduces the need for heating, and its proximity to a sawmill, which delivers the sawdust that the tomatoes are planted in.

‘USING FREE SAWDUST FROM A LOCAL SAWMILL IS A HUGE COST SAVING’

Nevertheless, with their narrow profit margin, tomatoes are not regarded as a lucrative crop, and careful management of inputs and output is required to make a success of producing them. Simply Salads follows a short cropping programme where two crops are planted annually, each on a six-month cycle, from January to June, and July to December respectively.

Peter Bakker, owner of Simply Salads, admits he would prefer a long cropping system of only one crop a year, as it would reduce input costs, but the expense makes it unaffordable.

“It would require significant investment to modify our greenhouses