Morning Star Tomato Bites – August 2025

Strong Yields, Steady Ripening, and Quality Define the 2025 California Crop

Morning Star colleague Aaron Giampietro is back with another TOMATO BITES by Morning Star update. In this edition, he shares how California’s 2025 tomato crop is shaping up with strong yields, steady ripening, and quality that’s exceeding expectations. From near-perfect growing conditions to factory deliveries running ahead of the five-year average, this update highlights how balanced maturity and consistent grading results are defining the season.

Hello everyone, this is Aaron Giampietro with the Morning Star Packing Company with your August twenty-second, two thousand twenty-five Tomato Bite Update.

We are a solid month into the season, and crop performance has been remarkable in many ways.

Late June brought nearly ideal growing conditions — warm but not excessively hot — and fields showed exceptional vigor. July followed as the sixtieth warmest in one hundred thirty years, with only a few days above one hundred degrees Fahrenheit. That balance of mild daytime highs and cooler nights created near-perfect fruit set conditions.

With the next National Agricultural Statistics Service contracted processing tomato tonnage report due in August, we expect the May figure of ten point three million short tons to be revised higher, as yields continue to run above contract and should hold through the end of the season barring any major weather events before harvest wraps up.

As harvest advances, weekly deliveries to California factories are already outpacing the five-year average, with a million-plus short-ton week on the books and more ahead. Even with intentions to moderate production in two thousand twenty-five, the natural strength of this year’s crop is delivering more than expected — a reflection of California’s ability to produce sustainably at scale.

Each of those weekly deliveries is measured through California’s state-administered grading program, run by the Processing Tomato Advisory Board also known as “PTAB”. Every load of processing tomatoes delivered in California is inspected under this state-administered program.

A representative fifty pound sample is extracted from each tub in the trailer set for inspection. That sample is then divided in half on the grading table for a physical inspection of greens, mold, insect damage, and foreign material by weight, while a smaller subsample is processed in the lab for chemical analysis of color, pH, and soluble solids. After grading, the tomatoes are returned to the truck. The program is funded jointly by growers and processors, which ensures independence and fairness. This system creates a uniform statewide baseline of quality and provides the transparency that supports California’s reputation in domestic and international tomato markets.

Processors can use this information not just for accounting purposes, but also to sequence unloading in ways that maintain consistent quality, ensuring tomatoes are directed toward the right specifications and applications.

Our analysis of PTAB weekly deliveries through week six shows quality this season is meeting or exceeding last year. Cumulative season-to-date greens are down more than five percent versus the five-year average, and limited use is running about forty percent lower, pointing to an orderly ripening process with factories keeping pace with harvest. Color scores are three to five percent stronger and the season’s weighted-average cumulative pH is slightly lower than recent years – which supports color and flavor stability.

Taken together, these traits reflect balanced maturity across the crop — steady ripening without signs of heat or water stress disrupting fruit quality.

There’s still plenty of time to come visit California to see these factors firsthand, and we invite to reach to our team with any questions or comments. Our website is regularly updated with the latest crop information and market pricing, and we will be back in late September with another Tomato Bite Update and our thoughts as we get close to concluding the 2025 season.