Tomato Harvesters

A scarcity of laborers willing to hand pick tomatos, along with university work on firmer tomato varieties with more uniform ripening, was causing local farmers to consider mechanical harvesting.

The mechanical tomato harvesters in use in California’s sandy soils were unsuitable for a number of reasons: they were too large for the smaller Pennsylvania fields, they were too expensive for local farmers’ budgets, and they were unsuitable construction for the rocky soils and hills here.