Branded fruit: How produce got “Honeycrisp-ified"

The produce aisle is changing. You’ve noticed this, I’m sure. It is now full of superstar fruits and vegetables: The Honeycrisp apple, The Cotton Candy grape, The Cuties mandarin orange. They stand out. They cost more. They have branding and sometimes trademarks and patent-ish kinds of protections. And now – it’s happening in the tomato bin too! Where once there were just plain old cherry or grape tomatoes, now there are Sugar Bombs, and Flavor Bombs, and Lolli Bombs and Sprinkles. Today, we are partnering up with Dan Pashman – host of The Sporkful food podcast https://www.sporkful.com/ – and heading to New Jersey where we hope to taste an up-and-coming competitor: Rutgers University's Scarlet Sunrise grape tomato. We talk to the inventors to understand why this explosion in branded fruits and veggies has happened and how you go about making a new piece of produce. Plus, we talk to Cornell agricultural economist Miguel Gomez about whether or not the fruits and veggies spread in our produce aisle are, perhaps, reaching the point of market saturation. Read: Our book: Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life https://lnk.to/i3AukBdD Our weekly longform Planet Money newsletter https://n.pr/3zrFvUBOur weekly Indicator round-up newsletter https://www.npr.org/newsletter/indicator Follow: Instagram https://n.pr/3FqLuwsTikTok https://n.pr/3sGZdrqYouTube https://lnk.to/iCVDaW3CFacebook https://n.pr/3h92GwS Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening. Learn more atplus.npr.org http://plus.npr.org/. This episode was hosted by Kenny Malone and Dan Pashman. It was produced by James Sneed and edited by Keith Romer. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered by Cena Loffredo & Jimmy Keeley. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money’s executive producer. Correction, Aug. 31, 2026: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that the University of Washington developed the Cosmic Crisp apple. It was Washington State University. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:15Speaker 01

  This is Planet Money from NPR.

• 0:20Speaker 02

  The produce aisle, it is changing. You've noticed this, I'm sure. It is now full of superstar fruits and vegetables. You've got the Honeycrisp apple. You've got the cotton candy grape, the Cuties Mandarin orange. They stand out. They cost more. They have branding and sometimes trademarks and patent-ish kinds of protections. To figure out why this change happened and to perhaps discover the next superstar, I hopped in a car and drove to a spot about 30 miles outside of Trenton.

• 0:50Speaker 03

  See, Kenny, look at how beautiful New Jersey is. It's very nice.

• 0:53Speaker 02

  I am in the car with Dan Pashman, host of the very excellent food podcast, The Sporkful. Dan's a friend of the show, a proud son of New Jersey and unapologetic booster.

• 1:03Speaker 03

  Rolling hills, farms, a whole bunch of cows huddled together under a tree to stay in the shade.

• 1:09Speaker 02

  Dan did not bring me here for the cows, though.

• 1:12Speaker 03

  So we're here in the great state of New Jersey to explore tomatoes, which is something New Jersey is famous for.

• 1:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17Speaker 03

  Jersey Fresh, New Jersey tomatoes.

• 1:20Speaker 02

  It sounds like a joke when you say it every time.

• 1:23Speaker 03

  Well, I'm here to tell you that it's not a joke.

• 1:25Speaker 02

  It is not. In fact, almost a century ago, a scientist at Rutgers University working with the Campbell Soup Company took the already famous New Jersey tomato and developed a new New Jersey tomato that became like the tomato. For like a couple decades, if you were eating a tomato, you were very likely eating a descendant of the plump, red, platonic ideal of a tomato that the Rutgers scientists had helped to perfect. That was a slicer-style tomato, you know, the big old kind that you slice. A century later, though, Dan has brought me to New Jersey to see a new tomato created at Rutgers. This time, though, a smaller tomato, a grape tomato.

• 2:07Speaker 03

  I have to be honest, as excited as I am to learn more about this new tomato, I am skeptical of being a grape tomato.

• 2:15Speaker 02

  Really?

• 2:15Speaker 03

  Yes, I'm concerned about that.

• 2:17Speaker 02

  Now, you know grape tomatoes, oval, pop 'em-in-your-mouth-sized little guys that show up in veggie trays all the time. And Dan had heard about this up-and-coming, fancy grape tomato called the Scarlet Sunrise. Now, he obviously loved that it was from New Jersey, loved that Rutgers was involved again. He had, however, failed to mention to me that he thinks that they've chosen the wrong kind of small tomato to invent.

• 2:43Speaker 03

  A grape tomato, to me, is always very hard.

• 2:46Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 2:47Speaker 03

  Because it's like almost all firm, hard stuff, and very little pulp.

• 2:52Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:52Speaker 03

  To me, the cherry tomato, you bite into it, it pops. You get that rush of sweet tart juiciness in your mouth.

• 3:00Speaker 02

  Ideally in your mouth and not on your clothes.

• 3:02Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, if you're a professional, you put the whole thing in your mouth and close your mouth before you bite. I would take a cherry tomato over a grape tomato.

• 3:08Speaker 02

  So when we taste test this thing, are you just gonna like crap all over this tomato because you inherently don't like grape tomatoes?

• 3:16Speaker 03

  I'm open to my mind being changed. Maybe I just haven't had a good grape tomato.

• 3:20Speaker 02

  Okay. All right, well. Now, this all assumes we actually get a chance to taste the Scarlet Sunrise because I almost drive past the small Rutgers University Experimental Farm we're here for. In my defense, not the easiest sign and name to spot while driving.

• 3:37Speaker 03

  New Jersey Agricultural Equipment Station, Clifford and Melinda Snyder Research and Extension Farm.

• 3:42Speaker 02

  I was driven to the ditch while reading the sign. Hello and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Kenny Malone, joined now by New Jersey's most important export agriculturally, culturally, the one and only Dan Pashman. Hello, Dan.

• 3:57Speaker 03

  Hey, Kenny. You can't put me ahead of Bruce, but I'll take Tide with Jon Bon Jovi.

• 4:01Speaker 02

  That's fair. Maybe ahead of tomato. We will discuss. Because Dan is here to help get to the bottom of this trend that he and I have been calling like the Honeycrisp-ification of seemingly the entire produce aisle.

• 4:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, like with apples, you got Honeycrisp, and then came Cosmic Crisp and Pink Lady, all these fancy versions of fruit that are sold at much higher price points. And now it seems like the old tomato bin is in the midst of a similar kind of explosion.

• 4:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, and maybe you've noticed flavor bombs, sugar bombs, sprinkles in the tomato aisle. Well, today on the show, why this is happening now is a story of changing laws. I would say changing incentives, even.

• 4:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, and maybe also changes in us and what we want as food consumers.

• 4:46Speaker 02

  Plus, can two Rutgers farmers convince Dan Pashman to fall in love with a new and interesting-looking little grape tomato?

• 4:54Speaker 03

  Good luck. We'll see.

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• 6:13Speaker 02

  It's just a little after noon when we get to the Rutgers Experimental Farm.

• 6:17Speaker 03

  Is that... Are you Pete or Tom? All right, we found Pete.

• 6:22Speaker 02

  Pete Nietzsche and Tom Orton.

• 6:25Speaker 03

  Tom's a retired Rutgers agricultural professor and researcher.

• 6:28Speaker 05

  You hit the jackpot on the day. It doesn't get any better than this in early August.

• 6:32Speaker 03

  Pete helps run this experimental farm.

• 6:34Speaker 05

  How many acres is it?

• 6:36Speaker 06

  It's a total of 390 acres. We're not all cultivated. There's some...

• 6:39Speaker 02

  We can see a few barns here, a greenhouse over there. And in the distance, there it is, the star of the show, a small field of tomato plants.

• 6:47Speaker 03

  This is exciting, Kenny. Can we just stop and...

• 6:50Speaker 02

  Let's behold.

• 6:50Speaker 03

  ...reflect that we're looking at a bunch of rows of tomato plants?

• 6:57Speaker 02

  Five, six.

• 6:57Speaker 03

  Are these Scarlet Sunrise plants zero? Like, all other Scarlet Sunrise have been birthed from what we see before us?

• 7:06Speaker 05

  Well, they're derived all from the same source.

• 7:08Speaker 03

  Okay, but this is the birthplace.

• 7:10Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 7:10Speaker 02

  You're the proud parents overlooking your little nursery.

• 7:14Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, that's one way to put it. Yeah, we don't usually look at it that way.

• 7:17Speaker 03

  Right.

• 7:17Speaker 02

  Okay, I mean, this is what we're here for.

• 7:20Speaker 05

  We're gonna go take a look at them now.

• 7:22Speaker 02

  We begin a rather muddy trek over to the tomato fields. And one thing I learned about Dan Pashman, you do not waste a second when you have time with two tomato experts.

• 7:31Speaker 03

  Especially when there's a tomato-related question that has been gnawing at me for years. Random question while we walk. Are the tomatoes that still have some green vine attached in the supermarket actually better? Or is it just great marketing?

• 7:44Speaker 05

  I don't know. Why don't you cover that one?

• 7:46Speaker 06

  Well, I think it's more of a marketing thing.

• 7:49Speaker 03

  Well, I guess I don't need to spend more for those anymore.

• 7:51Speaker 02

  You're off the hook, Dan. Tom and Pete, they are very much part of this centuries-long tradition at Rutgers of scientists who are really nerdy about fruits and veggies and really interested in trying to make better fruits and veggies for farmers.

• 8:06Speaker 03

  Right, you know, like a huge part of what public research universities have always done is try to make things better for the agricultural industries in their states. For Tom and Pete, that specifically means doing things to help farmers in the great state of New Jersey.

• 8:19Speaker 05

  We're trying to give farmers new tools for them to be more profitable, trying to make the farmers happy by giving them a plant that grows vigorously, has resistance to as many diseases and insects as possible, and is easy to manage.

• 8:36Speaker 03

  Kenny and I start looking through the tomato plants, moving branches here and there to see if we can find some perfect Scarlet Sunrise.

• 8:43Speaker 02

  We should look for some ripees, right? Is that the word you guys use, ripees?

• 8:48Speaker 06

  Ripe fruit.

• 8:48Speaker 02

  Ripe fruit. Ripe fruit's good.

• 8:49Speaker 03

  Slow down with all the technical mumbo jumbo, Kenny.

• 8:52Speaker 02

  Unfortunately for us, Tom and Pete have timed this crop to be ripe at the end of August for a big, public, open house at the facility, clearly thinking about their, you know, New Jersey neighbors and not us tastemaking journalists, Dan.

• 9:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, that hurt a little bit, Kenny, especially, you know, knowing my history with the state. But anyway, we dig around, hoping for a few early ripees.

• 9:14Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 9:15Speaker 03

  Kenny, any luck finding a ripe tomato here?

• 9:17Speaker 02

  I should disclose I am red-green colorblind.

• 9:22Speaker 03

  Why are you in charge of this, then?

• 9:24Speaker 02

  Maybe you should do it.

• 9:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:27Speaker 02

  All right. Well, in the meantime, allow us to share some context for the tomato we are on our hands and knees trying to find and eat. Because Tom and Pete, they are doing plant research in a very different world than the Rutgers scientists were 100 years ago.

• 9:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, some huge things have changed that are at least part of the explanation for why our produce aisle has exploded with more and more of these branded superstar fruits and veggies.

• 9:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So let's quickly run through those changes. And I think we can argue that the first comes in 1970.

• 10:00Speaker 05

  As professional newsmen, we're called upon each day to do various assignments.

• 10:04Speaker 02

  Now, full disclosure, I couldn't actually find coverage of our first thing that changed food history. Instead, I found these Dallas reporters who said they were given a particularly hard assignment from their boss.

• 10:15Speaker 05

  With your permission, we will attempt this assignment.

• 10:18Speaker 07

  We wish you a Merry Christmas. We wish you a Merry Christmas.

• 10:23Speaker 02

  So yeah, the event we're talking about did take place Christmas Eve, 1970. And so, you know, while these guys were singing "Wish You a Merry Christmas," somewhere in Washington DC, President Richard Nixon was signing into law the Plant Variety Protection Act.

• 10:38Speaker 03

  Which clearly wasn't that big of a deal at the time. But in reality, it was huge. Because before this, it was a lot harder to monetize a new hybrid crop grown plant. But now, breeders could basically own the rights to all kinds of fruits and vegetables that they couldn't before.

• 10:53Speaker 02

  That's big change number one. Giant change number two happens 10 years later.

• 10:58Speaker 07

  And that's the news. Merry Christmas to all. Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho.

• 11:05Speaker 02

  All right. This one, okay, fair enough. This one did not actually happen on Christmas Eve. It was, however, December 12th, 1980. It was another undercover new law.

• 11:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, the Byd-Dole Act, named after Senators Birch By and Bob Dole, which gave federally-funded researchers the default right to own whatever they create with that federal funding.

• 11:26Speaker 02

  And public universities, you know, lots of federal funding. Now, they could control and monetize their medical breakthroughs, their developments in computers, and the new fruits and vegetables they created.

• 11:38Speaker 03

  Which brings us to what I think is probably the most important moment in the produce aisle brand explosion.

• 11:43Speaker 02

  Of course, that is the 1991 release of the Honeycrisp apple.

• 11:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, the Honeycrisp was kind of the first big breakout produce star that came out of these changes. It was developed at the University of Minnesota. And in 1991, they started licensing out Honeycrisp trees to growers for a one-time fee of around $1 a tree. And they have now made north of $20 million from it.

• 12:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, and a couple decades later, Washington State University did even better with their Cosmic Crisp apple. They've made more than $30 million. And the lesson clearly was, if universities funded the right agricultural breakthroughs, those could become major profit centers for the school.

• 12:24Speaker 03

  Would you say that it's easier now to get support from the university for the kind of research you do because it has a potential to bring a return for the school?

• 12:32Speaker 05

  Well, I'm retired, so. Pete can tell you the bad news.

• 12:37Speaker 06

  It certainly helps. You know, if it brings in money to support our work and our program, they're going to more likely to support it.

• 12:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, the agricultural research game has dramatically changed as a system. For researchers like Pete and Tom, their incentives have maybe changed a little. They do get to share in the revenue from their inventions, something like 35%. But Pete told us they're not getting rich inventing the Scarlet Sunrise for Rutgers. In a lot of ways, they are still just like those old Rutgers plant nerds from 100 years ago, geeking out, tinkering, and just trying to help New Jersey farmers.

• 13:17Speaker 03

  That's right. So all that, that's the context for Pete and Tom and this fancy new tomato they decided to create at Rutgers.

• 13:24Speaker 02

  And that story? Well, Pete says that starts about 14 years ago.

• 13:29Speaker 06

  We grow tomatoes here for our open house. And I noticed in the field, there was one cherry tomato called Isis Candy.

• 13:36Speaker 02

  A cherry tomato called the Isis Candy. And it had some pretty good traits.

• 13:41Speaker 03

  It was sweet, which we know people like. And then it also had this cool color situation.

• 13:45Speaker 05

  So they have that, it's like a little red blush on a kind of yellow background. That's why we call it a bi-color.

• 13:51Speaker 02

  Bi-color, yeah. Like mostly yellow, then with this elegant, like streaky gradient into red.

• 13:58Speaker 03

  So it tasted great. It looked beautiful, but it had a problem.

• 14:01Speaker 06

  The Isis Candy also cracks. The cherry was cracked a lot.

• 14:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, Dan, your beloved cherry tomatoes, cracking up tomatoes.

• 14:10Speaker 03

  Well, you know, that's why I never had an Isis Candy, I suppose.

• 14:14Speaker 02

  I guess that's probably true.

• 14:15Speaker 03

  Look, that's a big problem for a tomato. No matter how good it tastes or looks, it's got to be transported and it has to be able to stay fresh.

• 14:22Speaker 02

  Yes, but you know, for Pete and Tom, the lightbulb moment was, what if they, you know, they took that bi-color Isis Candy cherry and then crossed it, you know, bred it with a hardier red grape tomato?

• 14:35Speaker 06

  So in talking to Tom, we got together and we were like, wouldn't it be interesting if we could get some of the sweetness of Isis Candy in there? So can we get some of the firmness of the red and combine those traits together and get something worthwhile for the market?

• 14:50Speaker 02

  Tom says that red-yellow bi-color mix, like that could help their sweet grape tomatoes chance of success.

• 14:58Speaker 05

  We figured people could identify it in the marketplace and therefore connect the flavor with the appearance and go back and there'd be repeat purchases of specifically this product.

• 15:10Speaker 03

  So in a sense, you made a very early branding decision.

• 15:13Speaker 05

  More or less, yeah, because we wanted it to be unique.

• 15:15Speaker 02

  Right. You know, Pete explained to us that the market has become flooded with red grape tomatoes. You know, some of those are good, some are not. Some get packaged up and refrigerated for veggie trays, and that makes them taste bad.

• 15:26Speaker 03

  Don't refrigerate tomatoes, Kenny.

• 15:28Speaker 02

  Yes, this is your public service announcement from Dan. You end up with a situation, though, where a consumer, Dan, might taste bad red grape tomatoes and decide that they hate all red grape tomatoes.

• 15:40Speaker 03

  Hate is a strong word, Kenny, but yeah, like maybe this is my issue. Maybe I just never tried a good one. And it makes sense to me that if Tom and Pete are going to create a good grape tomato for New Jersey farmers to grow and sell, it would be helpful for it to look different from all those other ones to avoid confusion.

• 15:57Speaker 02

  So Tom and Pete, they get to work. Step one, you might remember this from your old Punnet Squares days in biology class. You cross-pollinate the two tomato plants. And then you have to wait like six months and you see what kinds of tomatoes grow.

• 16:11Speaker 05

  And they all kind of look the same because they're all half Isis Candy and half Seminis.

• 16:17Speaker 02

  Seminis. He's talking about the specific red grape tomato they chose to use.

• 16:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, and when you're going through a process like this, it takes a long time. You don't fix the problem on the first generation of hybrid plant.

• 16:28Speaker 05

  It's the next generations after that. The traits start to sort out. So you have some that'll have like the red color and the good flavor.

• 16:37Speaker 03

  So they select the plants that are closer to what they want. Breed again, repeat.

• 16:41Speaker 02

  This is a slow process. To grow a new generation of plants, you need a whole growing season. Now, Tom and Pete had access to a greenhouse, so they could squeeze two growing seasons in per year, but still, slow.

• 16:53Speaker 05

  So you get this big menagerie of different plants that you go through and look for what you want, which is this color with the, you know, with the flavor and plant architecture and resistance to, you know, insects and diseases and things. That's also taken into consideration as you're going.

• 17:10Speaker 02

  Now, do you taste them also along the way?

• 17:12Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 17:13Speaker 02

  And if you taste one that's like the greatest tomato you've ever eaten, are you like, oh, spit the seeds out, spit, we need to save these seeds? Like, how, what do you?

• 17:21Speaker 05

  Well, you don't really take it that seriously because, you know, the chances that you picked one fruit that, you know, that, oh, this is the one that's got all the crown jewels in it are pretty low.

• 17:31Speaker 02

  After 12 generations of growing, so six years of breeding and selecting, they felt like they had nailed it. A tomato that was sweet and colorful, like the Isis Candy, but sized like the very popular and hardier grape tomato. It was time for the agricultural industrial complex to step in.

• 17:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, universities have teams built to handle staff inventions, new medicines, semiconductors. Like those, tomatoes need trademarking and other intellectual property protections. They also need marketing plans.

• 18:01Speaker 02

  In 2019, Tom and Pete reached out to Rutgers Office for Research to say they were ready to hand off their baby.

• 18:10Speaker 03

  How did you feel making that call?

• 18:12Speaker 05

  Well, just thank God we got somewhere. Well, I think that's really one of the most gratifying parts of being an inventor and including a plant breeder is to have an idea that, you know, seems kind of harebrained because we're looking at this Isis Candy back in 2011 and thinking, well, that's unique, but it, boy, it has an awful lot of problems. So yeah, it's a great feeling to see that the principles that you learned in plant breeding and apply the skills, that they actually do work.

• 18:45Speaker 03

  Ultimately, it was the Rutgers business folks who named Pete and Tom's tomato, the Scarlet Sunrise. Color of sunrise, scarlet, like Rutgers, the Scarlet Knights.

• 18:54Speaker 02

  Amazing. But also, after the break, how many new kinds of tomatoes do we need, Dan? Too many? Too many fancy tomatoes?

• 19:02Speaker 03

  Well, Kenny, we talked to an expert who can help us with our supermarket saturation questions.

• 19:06Speaker 02

  And yes, we, most importantly, grape tomato skeptic Dan, finally gets his first taste of the Scarlet Sunrise.

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• 20:43Speaker 03

  Okay, so we've seen an explosion of branded fruits and veggies, and we've talked about how the incentives that universities have to create new products have changed over the years.

• 20:51Speaker 02

  But it is more than just that. And to understand what else has changed, we called up Miguel Gomez of Cornell University.

• 20:58Speaker 06

  I am an economist specializing on specialty crops, supply chains from genetics to consumers in fresh produce in particular.

• 21:07Speaker 02

  Do you have a favorite vegetable or fruit?

• 21:09Speaker 06

  Artichokes.

• 21:10Speaker 03

  Hey! Oh, that's a curveball. Are you buying fresh artichokes and then peeling them and taking them apart by hand?

• 21:17Speaker 06

  Absolutely, and putting them to steam, and then doing them with butter, and then eat them.

• 21:23Speaker 03

  I don't know, artichokes are an awful lot of work for me. But anyway, first order of business, a gut check with the professor. We aren't imagining that our grocery store has exploded with all this superstar branded produce, right?

• 21:35Speaker 06

  You are absolutely right. If you look at any fresh produce category, there is a race for differentiation in the fresh product category. The market is going toward this crazy amount of new options in each product category.

• 21:56Speaker 02

  Yes, we're right, Dan, of course. But, okay, why is this happening? Well, part of the story has to do with growers trying to escape this classic economic pitfall known as the commodity trap.

• 22:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, so if you grow soybeans for human consumption, for example, you're growing a commodity crop. To an everyday consumer, a soybean is a soybean. And so, the only way for you to compete with the other soybean growers is by selling your soybeans at a lower price. And that sets up this race to the bottom, and it's a really tough way to make a living.

• 22:30Speaker 02

  Sure, but to escape that trap, you need to find a way to differentiate your product, make your thing special somehow, and then ideally you can charge more for it.

• 22:41Speaker 03

  And Miguel told us there are a number of ways to differentiate. On one end of the spectrum, take a boring old commodity vegetable and be really clever about how you package it.

• 22:49Speaker 06

  Here is my favorite one, Love Beets.

• 22:52Speaker 03

  Love Beets is like a brand of the vegetable beets.

• 22:57Speaker 06

  Something that is as a commodity as you can find that are beets, Love Beets.

• 23:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, the Love Beets company sells beets. They are packaged, they're well-branded, they're often pickled or splashed with balsamic, so slightly more than just raw commodity beets, but also, they are still just beets, to be clear.

• 23:17Speaker 06

  They are excellent quality, they are nicely packaged, the size is uniform, they are not huge.

• 23:24Speaker 03

  Are those beets proprietary?

• 23:26Speaker 06

  No, their genetics are not proprietary.

• 23:29Speaker 02

  Right, there's no special patented genetics here. Love Beets is just carefully selecting beets, often dressing them up, branding them really well, and as a result, they have taken a commodity vegetable and can charge more.

• 23:41Speaker 03

  They figured out a way to put lipstick on a beet. So, that's one side of how you differentiate a commodity crop, good branding. Miguel says on the other side, there's intellectual property. Create a vegetable or fruit that is actually genetically different and better, and then you get legal protection for that plant.

• 23:59Speaker 02

  That is, of course, the route the Scarlet Sunrise tomato folks have taken. But, we were curious, is there perhaps a limit to all this new produce creation? Especially when we think of the poster children for all of this, the apples.

• 24:17Speaker 03

  So, we talked about how influential the Honeycrisp was, and there's so many kinds of apples now. How close are we to market saturation with all these varieties of apples?

• 24:28Speaker 06

  That's a difficult... We don't have hard data to show that, but in my humble opinion, I think we are past that threshold.

• 24:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, Miguel says people don't seem to be eating more apples in total. So, if you were to invent a new apple, you're just going to be jockeying for space in that already crowded apple display. And if you are a new inventor, and you try to jump in there, it's just going to be harder to get a consumer to try your new fancy apple.

• 25:01Speaker 06

  You know, there is what we call the cost of searching for consumers. When you have too many options, it becomes a burden to consumers to choose.

• 25:11Speaker 03

  I tried to buy almond butter a few weeks ago, and I almost had a panic attack in the aisle.

• 25:16Speaker 06

  Exactly.

• 25:18Speaker 06

  Yeah, exactly.

• 25:18Speaker 02

  I'm not allergic to almond butter, I'm allergic to the number of almonds butter.

• 25:23Speaker 06

  Yes, exactly.

• 25:24Speaker 03

  However, Miguel thinks the tomato space in the grocery store has plenty of room for new varieties.

• 25:30Speaker 02

  Also, Miguel thinks that the producer growers trying to get out of the commodity trap is only part of the explanation for all of this. Because producers can push fancy varieties all they want, he's more interested in the demand side of all this.

• 25:46Speaker 06

  I am convinced that at the end of the day, the foods that you see in restaurants in the store are in response to what consumers want. And I think the consumer is the bigger driver of this change at the end, yeah.

• 26:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, I think when we think of the commodities trap, we think of this as a producer push. But what you feel like with a lot of these pieces of produce...

• 26:09Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 26:11Speaker 02

  This is coming from some fancification of our palates, our demands. There's space for food podcasts like Dan's now, because we're all learning how to eat, and we're learning how to differentiate.

• 26:22Speaker 06

  Absolutely, yes.

• 26:24Speaker 02

  Of course, there is also a feedback loop between supply and demand here. Growers can only escape the commodity trap if we are willing to buy into whatever they're selling, a fancier thing at a higher price. And if we are willing to buy in, then more growers can try and escape the commodity trap, and on, and on, and on. Are these guys... Guys, it's true, I can't tell if they're green.

• 26:47Speaker 06

  I'm not seeing much. Again, we plant them late so that we ripen up for our open house.

• 26:53Speaker 03

  Meanwhile, back at the old Rutgers Experimental Farm, we've been searching for a solid 30 minutes and still haven't found an actual, proper, ripe Scarlet Sunrise in the field. Luckily, though, Tom has a backup plan.

• 27:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, so you guys can have these. They came out of my home garden.

• 27:09Speaker 03

  Oh, wow. All right.

• 27:10Speaker 05

  And I planted them a little bit earlier, but...

• 27:13Speaker 03

  Tom is holding one of those little green pint baskets full of these gorgeous little yellow tomatoes with that telltale blush of red. Actually, these are the Scarlet Sunrise.

• 27:22Speaker 05

  These are actually a breeding line, they were from Scarlet Sunrise, it's a derivative.

• 27:28Speaker 03

  Cousin of Scarlet, like what we're tasting out there.

• 27:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, so the flavor and the fruit type.

• 27:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, all right, fine, fine. Technically, these are descendants of the Scarlet Sunrise. And I guess once there's a trademark and legal plant protection, distinctions like cousin of, breeding line, may matter technically. But for our purposes, Tom is presenting us with actually ripe Scarlet Sunrise tomatoes.

• 27:48Speaker 03

  Now, before we try this tomato, we asked Tom and Pete to each pop one. We wanted to see what people who taste and evaluate hundreds of tomatoes each year are looking for.

• 27:58Speaker 05

  All right.

• 28:03Speaker 05

  Well, it was a little bit low in acidity, but high in sugar, good texture. You know, I would give that a favorable score, maybe four out of five, something like that.

• 28:16Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's got a good pop in the mouth and it's got a good combination of sugar and acid. So, you know, if it doesn't have any acid, it's bland.

• 28:24Speaker 02

  Right.

• 28:26Speaker 05

  It's just sickly sweet, as opposed, you know.

• 28:28Speaker 02

  I love them. They are so scientific tasting tomatoes.

• 28:33Speaker 03

  They are earning their designation as plant nerds.

• 28:36Speaker 02

  Yes, yeah.

• 28:36Speaker 03

  But it was so interesting to watch this because like this is the process of developing a new tomato. Like in some ways, it's super scientific. In some ways, it's just like two guys in a field eating tomatoes.

• 28:46Speaker 02

  You like this bud? Yeah, I like this.

• 28:48Speaker 03

  Right, right. This one's good. Do it like this, you know? And it's like that over and over. Crossbreed, taste the results, discuss, repeat, repeat, repeat.

• 28:55Speaker 02

  But, you know, okay, great. They are tasting dispassionately, objectively. By this point, the only taste test that matters to me is whether or not this Scarlet Sunrise tomato could convert notorious grape tomato hater Dan Pashman.

• 29:09Speaker 03

  I prefer the term grape tomato skeptic, but anyway, there was only one way to find out. We just grab a Scarlet Sunrise and pop them in.

• 29:16Speaker 02

  All right, all right.

• 29:19Speaker 02

  Oh, my gosh.

• 29:20Speaker 03

  That's really good.

• 29:23Speaker 02

  That is a full coarse tomato meal right there. The pop.

• 29:28Speaker 03

  There's a lot in a little package.

• 29:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:30Speaker 03

  And, you know, I told you, Kenny, that I was skeptical of grape tomatoes.

• 29:33Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 29:34Speaker 03

  And the reason why I have often not liked grape tomatoes is I feel like they're too hard. You want to balance between the sort of the firmness and the soft juiciness of the pulp. You don't want it to be mushy, but you also don't want it to be hard as a rock. This, I think, solves that. This is not too hard. It's got a bit of a meatiness that's very pleasant, which a good tomato should have. It's a little bit meaty, but it still sort of yields to the bite. It's soft and tender and it's got that sweetness and acidity.

• 29:59Speaker 02

  That's why he does a food podcast.

• 30:03Speaker 02

  You know, Dan, I have to say, when you mentioned this story idea, this like honey crispification of our produce, I had noticed that suddenly it was feeling like I was walking through the produce aisle and was like being assaulted by colorful hipster Instagram ads or something. But I don't know. I mean, I do like a lot of this fancy produce. I'm not eager to go back to a world of only red delicious apples.

• 30:27Speaker 03

  Oh, my God. Heaven forbid.

• 30:28Speaker 02

  Yes. I guess I'm benefiting from it, but certainly the universities and companies that actually own the IP to this stuff are also benefiting. But I guess it is also true that there are Toms and Pete's behind some of these like very slick, plasticky, commercially looking inventions. And in those cases, in that case at least, they are trying to give growers of New Jersey for Tom and Pete a way out of the old commodities trap.

• 30:53Speaker 03

  Currently, Scarlet Sunrise is more of a specialty tomato, being sold by a small seed company. As it exists now, it may never have big mass commercial distribution because the current iteration is pretty expensive to grow.

• 31:05Speaker 02

  But honestly, Tom and Pete's goal of helping New Jersey farmers here, this ended up going well beyond just inventing another tasty tomato for them to sell.

• 31:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's right, Kenny, because during this whole development process, they made a different discovery that could really change things for tomato growers far beyond New Jersey.

• 31:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, as they worked on the Scarlet Sunrise, they noticed that one of their experimental tomato plants was really small, like half the size of a normal plant, but was still yielding a similar quality of tomato fruit.

• 31:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, as soon as we saw that, Pete saw the one that you see out in the field now. As soon as you see that, you get excited because, you know, you know that that plant is just going to be much cheaper to grow.

• 31:51Speaker 02

  And what surprised us was that as excited as we were to find and eat and talk about the Scarlet Sunrise, Tom and Pete were clearly way more excited about this.

• 32:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, because the cost of growing grape tomatoes is one of the biggest deterrents. It requires a lot of picking by hand, a lot of labor. The standard tall plants have tomatoes from top to bottom that ripen at different rates. So you got to send pickers through your field several times over weeks.

• 32:15Speaker 02

  The more compact plants have a shorter ripening window, so fewer trips through the fields. Plus, more compact plants means like you just save money on ties and stakes and stuff.

• 32:25Speaker 03

  Tom actually estimates this could save growers somewhere between 25 and 50%.

• 32:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're excited because this is the kind of innovation that doesn't just help farmers a little. Like it could completely change the economics of tomato growing for those farmers.

• 32:40Speaker 05

  I think this is something that, you know, can have a much bigger impact, you know, worldwide. It could, like I said, I want to overstate it right now, but we're we don't, we haven't seen anything like this on the market.

• 32:52Speaker 03

  What I hear you saying is that this tomato could change the world.

• 32:57Speaker 05

  Like I said, I don't want to overstate it.

• 33:00Speaker 03

  Who knows, Kenny? Maybe someday you and I will tell our grandkids that we met the men who won the Nobel Peace Prize for tomatoes.

• 33:07Speaker 02

  Why isn't there a Nobel Peace Prize for tomatoes specifically?

• 33:10Speaker 03

  By the time we're grandfathers, maybe there will be.

• 33:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:21Speaker 02

  Dan Pashman, what a joy to work with you. Do you want to just share with folks what you've got going on over at The Sporkful?

• 33:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, Kenny, we got a couple of recent episodes people can check out. One was about a woman attempting to pass the hardest beer test in the world.

• 33:33Speaker 02

  That is one of my favorite episodes you guys have done. That's excellent.

• 33:36Speaker 03

  Not just that it involved beer. We also did one recently about a rare condition called Prader-Willi syndrome that causes extreme insatiable hunger. We talked to a family dealing with this. They have to lock food away. There's a lot more to it. We got a lot of response to this episode, so I hope folks will check it out.

• 33:50Speaker 02

  All right, that's wherever you find your podcasts, The Sporkful. And if you enjoyed what you heard today, we have an extended version of our interview with agricultural economist Miguel Gomez, where you talk to him about the heirloom varieties of fruits and vegetables. We, Dan, you and I, tried to speculate what the next superstar products category could be. Is it avocados? Is it mangoes? Where's it coming? And, you know, can all of us get rich if we guess it? Probably not. So that's going to be over on the NPR Plus feed. If you're already a subscriber, you'll see that episode show up this Monday. And if you're not, it's not too late. You can subscribe. It's one of the best ways to help us and show your support. And may I mention that those NPR plusers, they do get

• 34:31Speaker 02

  20% off at the NPR shop where you can now buy The Planet Money game, Sell Me a Sasquatch. We've been documenting this project. It is a game secretly inspired by Nobel Prize winning economics. It's a party game. It is best played with four, five, six people. And we would encourage you, if you're willing, to host a game night. And I guess it is very helpful if you take pictures at that game night and then post those on social media. You can tag us. We are at Planet Money. You can tag Exploding Kittens. They are at Game of Kittens on Instagram at least. And they tell us that this kind of thing is super, super helpful to just show the fun, show people having fun, or show yourselves duping

• 35:13Speaker 02

  your best friend with a terrible deal because, you know, asymmetric information. That's what the game is about. Yeah, that would be a huge help. Today's episode of Planet Money was produced by James Sneed. It was edited by Keith Romer, fact checked by Ciada Juárez, and engineered by Sina LaFredo and Jimmy Keely. Our executive producer is Alex Goldmark. Special thanks this week to, I don't know, you want to thank anybody, Dan?

• 35:34Speaker 03

  You, Kenny. I want to thank you.

• 35:36Speaker 02

  Oh, Dan, thanks. You know, I will say, so only that one specific kind of tomato can be the Scarlet Sunrise. And so all these other cousins and descendants, they hadn't named those plants yet, right, Dan?

• 35:49Speaker 03

  That's right. That's right. If people have ideas, send them our way.

• 35:52Speaker 02

  Lord knows, we had a few and pitched them all to Tom and Pete.

• 35:56Speaker 06

  Scarlet, I assume, has to be in the name because of the Rutgers affiliation. We do like that, yeah.

• 36:01Speaker 03

  I think probably spawn of Scarlet Sunrise is too long.

• 36:03Speaker 06

  How about Scarlet Dawn? Ooh, there you go. I like that.

• 36:06Speaker 02

  Dusk? Scarlet Dusk?

• 36:08Speaker 06

  That sounds a little dark.

• 36:10Speaker 02

  I'm Kenny Malone.

• 36:11Speaker 03

  And I'm Dan Pashman. This is NPR. Thanks for listening.

• 36:16Speaker 02

  How about Two Scarlet, Two Sunrise? Like Fast and the Furious.

• 36:21Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 36:22Speaker 02

  We can go all day. That's fine.

• 36:23Speaker 05

  I think if you guys can send your, we'll forward all your suggestions.

• 36:30Speaker 00

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• 36:49Speaker 04

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