Welcome to A Day in the Life of a Morning Star Tomato
As a leading innovator in the food processing world, Morning Star seeks to disseminate information to other industry participants and interested parties. A Day in the Life of a Morning Star Tomato was developed to grant visitors the story of how superior-quality Morning Star tomato paste is created.
Please visit each part of a Morning Star tomato's "day" by selecting the sequential stages encircling the central tomato, or via the navigation buttons at the bottom of each page.
Industry Background and the Development of the Modern Processing Tomato:
An amazing multitude of food products incorporate Morning Star tomato paste into their products: pizza sauce, tomato juice, soup, chili, catsup, and salsa are just a few. Tomato paste production is a highly refined art, one that requires careful planning, utmost efficiency and expediency, and high quality control. Vine ripe tomatoes are used in the production of Morning Star tomato paste--our tomatoes are picked and processed into tomato paste within two to five hours, ensuring the capture of the purest essence of ideally ripe, delicious tomatoes.
The largest processing tomato product is tomato paste. Morning Star packs a variety of tomato paste types--but to the casual observer, all of it appears similar: dark red, thick in consistency, and rich in taste. From this base, many of the processed food world's most savory products are created.
The story begins with the development of the modern processing tomatoe. There is no singular "processing tomato;" rather, a wide array of processing tomato types. Each variety is specifically bred for a certain taste, consistency, skin pulp thickness (to protect them during transport), picking ability (how easily a tomato will fall off of its stem), seed density, and many other factors.
Morning Star works closely with its customers and carefully studies industry trends to determine which of the various types of processing tomatoes it will acquire for processing. We then contract with seasoned growers in the areas surrounding our processing facilities to cultivate these breeds for us each season. The growing cycle takes approximately four months from seeding to harvesting. However, tomato growing is a highly specialized aspect of the agriculture economy: growers spend the months preceding the planting cycle tending to their land with specialized tools to provide optimal growing conditions.
Growers either nurture their tomato plants by seeding their fields themselves, or by contracting with specialized nurseries that raise the plants from seeding to a sapling stage, then transplant them to the growers' fields.
 
Growers spend months carefully preparing their fields for the tomato season.
Morning Star colleagues develop a detailed Pack Plan, that coordinates specifically when and where the soon-to-be-harvested tomatoes will be grown. This planning requires intimate knowledge of logistics, harvesting technology, and tomato growth.
Ripe tomatoes.
Morning Star is renowned the world over for maximizing both quality and efficiency. Morning Star's tomato paste processing facilities are all located in the agriculturally opulent Central Valley of California. Morning Star colleagues thoughtfully plan for all raw tomatoes to be grown within a close radius of each factory, optimizing taste and minimizing travel time and expense.
1975 Skylab view of California's Central Valley, north is on the right side of the photograph.
California's Central Valley produces approximately 95 percent of the processing tomato crop in the United States and about 40 percent of the world's production. Approximately 95 percent of the tomatoes processed by Morning Star are for the purpose of paste production. The remaining 5 percent go into the production of bulk diced tomatoes. The production stages of these two processed commodities are similar in many ways, with some very important differences. While this site has been developed as a tour of the production stages of tomato paste, diced tomato production will be discussed as well.