An Ode to the Alabama Tomato

If it were possible to taste a place, Geneva County, Alabama, would no doubt have the bright acidity of a Slocomb tomato. The variety is named for their place of origin, a town 10 miles square in southeastern Alabama, not far from the Florida line. Some farmers attribute the flavor — not too sweet, not too bitter — to Slocomb’s uniquely acidic soil. Others say that’s hogwash. What you’re tasting, they say, is hard work. It’s the dedication to growing a good tomato — not one that’ll be harvested green, shipped cross-country, and ripened chemically, but one that, when spring turns to summer, will redden and sweeten right there on the vine.

Slocombs aren’t the only local variety. A hundred miles north, Auburn University released the Atkinson, a meaty, disease-resistant variety in 1966, and it’s still popular. TomatoFest, a seed company, advertises its flavor as “old-fashioned” and “outstanding” for the simple, juicy sandwiches that have heralded high summer in the South for generations.

Not everyone goes in for Atkinsons though, or Slocombs. Some like to grow, or just eat, Brandywines, Cherokee Purples, or Sungolds. But across Alabama — and the rest of the South — the challenge of farming, the cost of inputs, and an unforgiving market are making heirloom tomatoes harder to grow at scale. In the 1930s and ’40s, north Alabama’s Sand, Chandler, and Straight mountains became hotbeds of tomato production, but a 1992 epidemic decimated the industry, which has declined further since. As local varieties vanish from market shelves, replaced by flavorless pretenders, so goes a rich and sacred Southern tradition.

Alabama has given us white barbecue sauce, Bo Jackson, and To Kill a Mockingbird, but it can’t entirely take credit for the tomato. The fruit — technically a berry — grew wild in the Andes of South America before it was cultivated by Indigenous groups. The tomato vined its way north, through Central America and Mexico. The Aztecs grew them. Spanish conquistadors brought home their seeds, which, serendipitously, found their way into Italy’s warm embrace. In the 1700s, the tomato crossed the Atlantic again, with the colonists. 

By the early 19th century, tomatoes had become a staple in Alabama. In Tuskegee a century later, in 1918, George Washington Carver published a USDA bulletin: “How to Grow the Tomato and 115 Ways to Prepare It For the Table.” He listed 10 reasons “every normal person should make the tomato a very prominent part of the weekly diet.” No. 7: “They can be prepared in so many delicious ways that one can eat them every day in the week and not get tired of them.” He gave recipes for tomatoes smothered, frittered, puréed, baked, breaded, stuffed, and stewed.

Carver’s growing advice would have been welcome. As much as tomatoes are an iconic part of Southern gardens, they can be fiendishly difficult to grow to maturity, thanks to abundant humidity, pests, and disease. (Hence the popularity of green tomatoes, which one can snatch off the vine before they’re besieged.) That made every juicy, ripe, red tomato a rare gem — and even more so because the growing season, generally from late June to late August, came and went so fast.

Ripe tomatoes, though, brought their own challenges. “Tomatoes don’t typically ship very well, especially if you pick them when they’re ripe,” says Doug Chapman, who worked as an extension agent for the state of Alabama for more than 30 years. Today’s supermarket tomatoes, like many other fruits and vegetables, are picked early and gassed with ethylene to ripen. “Well, if you get a tomato after all of that,” Chapman says, “you’ve got to put a lot of mayonnaise on that sandwich to make it taste any good.”

But in the early 20th century, a tomato industry took hold in Alabama, particularly in the mountains up north. Dozens of farmers grew tomatoes, and they’d leave by the truckload every summer, earning Chandler Mountain the title of “Tomato Capital of Alabama.” (Slocomb, in the south, goes one better and calls itself the tomato capital of the world.) Northern Alabama farmers still grow tomatoes, but their number is dwindling.

In 1992, the Blount Stunt, a tomato multivirus named for the Alabama county where it showed up first, nearly obliterated the local tomato industry. “It nailed everybody,” Chapman says. “Most of those growers went out of business. I mean, those guys would put up a million dollars every year to make $100,000.” 

Blount and St. Clair boasted 2,297 acres of tomato production that year, according to the Alabama office of the National Agricultural Statistics Service. Five years later, that number had dropped to 1,486, and in 2002, it stood at 896. It’s declined still further in the 25 years since. “You used to be able to ride around here, and every field had tomatoes in it,” farmer Daniel Allman told the Alabama Farmers Federation in 2007. “Now, you have to look just to find them.”

In 1992, farmers had unwittingly hitched their wagons to a rotting star. It would have helped, in the aftermath of the Blount Stunt, to cultivate a range of produce, but market forces discouraged diversification. Making a living that way was near impossible, but growing tomatoes was increasingly out of reach, too. 

“The cost of growing tomatoes has just gone out of sight,” farmer Jamie Burton told the Alabama Farmers Federation in 2007. “I remember when you could grow them for $300 an acre. Now, it’s about $6,000. Everything just keeps going up — but the tomato doesn’t go up. It’s still selling for the same price now that it did 40 years ago.”

Up on Chandler Mountain, “they’ve got bacterial wilt, a soil-borne disease, and once it gets into the soil, there’s not much you can do about it,” Chapman explains. “There’s a lot of foliar diseases: early blight, late blight. There’s bacterial leaf spot. You name it.” And those are just the diseases. Don’t get him started on the insects.

Throw in climate havoc, labor shortages, and dwindling government support, and it’s not hard to see why farmers’ children are reluctant to take up the mantle. Southern writer Lewis Grizzard quipped that it’s “difficult to think anything but pleasant thoughts while eating a homegrown tomato.” That’s less the case when you’re growing them. Last year’s unusually rainy summer, for example, was a catastrophe. And as farmers exit the business, few are moving in to replace them. In March, as part of government-wide pushback against diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, the USDA canceled a $300 million program to help new farmers buy land.

For now, tomatoes still grow in Alabama. They twine around row after row of wooden stakes in the northern hills. In Slocomb, 100 acres are devoted to growing the famous local variety. The first tomato sandwich of the summer is still a cherished tradition. Neighbors and friends still share their summer bounty and will can what’s left over. Heirloom tomatoes — Big Boys, Better Boys, and Cherokee Purples — still grow in backyard raised beds, community gardens, and even, occasionally, the cracks between pavement. Tomatoes, it turns out, are tenacious — much like the Alabamians who raise them.

RECIPE: The Perfect Tomato Sandwich

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• Author: Allison Braden
• Yield: Makes 1 sandwich 1x

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Description

Southerners by and large agree that the beauty of the tomato sandwich lies in its simplicity. Stick to these essentials; no need for elevation — unless your sandwich is so juicy, you need to stand over the sink.

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Ingredients

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• 1 generous slather of mayo (Traditionally, imposters like Miracle Whip are frowned upon, but I’ll admit to making do with a vegan substitute.)
• 1 homegrown or heirloom tomato, unpeeled, sliced, and so ferociously ripe that juice slides down your wrists
• 2 slices of soft white bread, untoasted
• Salt
• Black pepper

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Instructions

1. Layer the mayo and tomato slices on the first slice of bread. Sprinkle on salt and pepper, then top with the other slice.