[HN Gopher] Campbell Soup turned New Jersey into a tomato-growin...
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Campbell Soup turned New Jersey into a tomato-growing state
Author : samclemens
Score : 51 points
Date : 2022-01-18 03:42 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com)
| cwal37 wrote:
| Perhaps similar, the US doesn't harvest a ton of eggplants, but
| of eggplant producing states New Jersey is #1 in terms of
| acreage. About 20% more acres than the #2 state of California.
| I've idly wondered in the past if it's a cultural artifact as the
| distribution of acreage in the US is New jersey, then CA, then
| FL/GA, so some pretty different climates, so this article is
| interesting!
| AlgorithmicTime wrote:
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Also cranberries. New Jersey was the world capital for
| cranberry production with the headquarters of Ocean Spray
| juices.
| InfiniteRand wrote:
| Does our state smell like urine? Yes, yes it does, clean
| bacteria-free urine
|
| https://www.cc.com/video/u11ezi/the-daily-show-with-jon-
| stew...
| c0balt wrote:
| Argh, I got geoblocked. Only for the USA?
| xeromal wrote:
| This is just a wild guess, but New Jersey had/has a large
| population of Italian immigrants and I believe eggplant is a
| pretty popular ingredient in Italian dishes. I'm sure that
| drove some of the demand.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| That would cover farms selling to local buyers (restaurants,
| super markets and direct to consumer), but that's a tiny part
| of the market. Most are going to wholesale distributors &
| production on this level would need more of an explanation
| than that. New Jersey is nicknamed the garden state for a
| reason. Despite it's population density, it's got a ton of
| farm land and grows a lot of food for the NA east coast &
| beyond. I'd guess that they found a niche where eggplants
| grow well in NJ soil/climates and probably catch more at
| market than other alternative crops.
| fedreserved wrote:
| madcaptenor wrote:
| Hard to see it as a cultural artifact, though, because those
| are also pretty different places culturally. (As it happens
| I've lived in New Jersey, California, and Georgia.)
| cwal37 wrote:
| Ah, I meant in New jersey specifically as its climate feels
| like more of an outlier to me in that list.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| I can see that, maybe if you figure that Italian-Americans
| eat more eggplant than the average American?
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| I live about 10 minutes from the Campbell's headquaters. Every
| one I know has grown tomatoes at least once in their life. As a
| kid I remember my cousins having the "Campbell's tomato seeds" as
| if it were a big secret. This was before we had the internet to
| just look this stuff up.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| I mean, the knowledge that Campbell's invested in agriculture
| research and went as far as breeding its own varieties of
| tomatoes is not really common knowledge. So in that sense it is
| a bit of a thing to have the Campbell's seeds, since they were
| never sold for other people to grow on their own.
|
| Tomatoes are a very easy plant to grow, which explains the
| prevalence.
| quercusa wrote:
| When I had only been around NYC and the Newark airport, I used to
| laugh at the license plates that said "New Jersey - The Garden
| State". But South Jersey is an amazingly lush and productive farm
| area.
| cpascal wrote:
| It is really a shame that most people's experience of NJ is
| only the Turnpike and the refineries around EWR.
| thehappypm wrote:
| Imagine if every state was judged on its character for the
| aesthetic of the area by its airport and highways. NJ gets a
| horrible rap! It's a beautiful state in so many places.
| MrApathy wrote:
| Shhh, quiet on the NJ-is-nice front, please. NJ doesn't
| need more people, let's all pretend the bad rap is true.
| toast0 wrote:
| It's ok, I could never live in NJ, I want to pump my own
| gas and turn left.
| reaperducer wrote:
| And get a free bobblehead with a minimum eight-gallon
| purchase.
|
| When I lived in New Jersey, the gas stations in New York
| would offer spiffs with a fill-up, and there was always a
| disclaimer "offer not valid in New Jersey," which made it
| seem like the spiff wasn't available at all in New
| Jersey. For those who knew, the rule was actually that
| gas companies couldn't _require_ a minimum purchase to
| get the spiff in New Jersey, so if you knew what you were
| doing, you could put a gallon in and still get whatever
| the free item was.
|
| But I haven't lived in New Jersey since gas was priced in
| C/, and not $.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| What do you mean by "spiff" here? Google doesn't give me
| any clues, and the only Spiff I know of (as opposed to
| the word "spiffy", meaning well-dressed) is Calvin and
| Hobbes' Spaceman Spiff.
| AutumnCurtain wrote:
| A spiff is a free giveaway attached to a sale,
| historically a bonus for salespeople for making the sale
| but colloquially also for customers getting a freebie
| item with a purchase.
| hw-guy wrote:
| I always thought it was a joint (what the New York Times
| calls a marijuana cigarette).
| reaperducer wrote:
| Also used to describe anything given away for free by
| salesfolk hoping to land a sale.
|
| Think of the big bags of crap that used to be given away
| at CES, or when a Microsoft rep would show up in the
| office and hand everyone new mouse pads.
| thehappypm wrote:
| What's the "turn left" thing you're referencing? I'm from
| Morris County and have no idea what you mean.
| vbhavsar wrote:
| The prevalence of jughandles in the state.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| I think you're good. Everyone I know in both tri-state
| areas who think of moving to Jersey largely complain
| about the property taxes & stay put.
| r_klancer wrote:
| The northern part of the Turnpike corridor and the Sopranos
| give a misleading picture of the whole state.
|
| My grandfather was a South Jersey farm boy who grew up to
| become a professor of entomology in the Rutgers ag school by
| the 1930s. He saw the postwar suburban expansion eat up much of
| that farmland first hand in his work with the ag extension
| program's pest control officers, and he often lamented how much
| first-rate farmland was being "wasted" growing a crop of
| houses.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Not so much anymore. That really changed from the late 70s
| onward with tremendous development of suburbs and very little
| protection. The word "open space" hadn't enter the collective
| conscious yet.
|
| The drive east/west between Philadelphia and Atlantic City
| before the Atlantic City Expressway was mostly all farm, pine
| forest, and farm stands. The pine forests are still there (the
| ones that were state forests, anyway), but not the farms and
| not the pine forests that were on private land.
| sparcpile wrote:
| US-40 from I-95 to Atlantic City is still very rural. When I
| lived in the DC area, I would take US-40 from I-95 to go the
| FAA's Technical Center at the Atlantic City airport because
| it was nicer drive and you get to see interesting sites.
|
| Among them:
|
| 1. The Cowtown Rodeo in Woodstown, NJ with the giant cowboy
| statue at the cowboy supply store across the street.
|
| 2. An ancient Radio Shack store
|
| 3. Many road-side fruit and lunch stands.
|
| 4. A car repair shop with a painted stack of tires.
|
| 5. A store named 'Ted's Taxidermy' across the street from an
| airpark in Buena, NJ.
|
| (edited for formatting)
| reaperducer wrote:
| _The word "open space" hadn't enter the collective conscious
| yet._
|
| I guess you've never heard of the Pine Barrens --
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_Barrens_(New_Jersey)
|
| 1,100,000 acres of forested land, most of it preserved by the
| federal government for emergency use. In the event of a
| catastrophe, it contains 17,000,000,000,000 (that's 17
| trillion, with a "T") gallons of the most pure water in the
| nation.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| I know them very well. And they were never called "open
| space". They were called state forests.
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