Why Tomatoes Are the Most Expensive They've Been in Four Decades

**SPEAKER_2** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.

**Tracy Alloway** (0:18)
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway.

**Joe Weisenthal** (0:22)
And I'm Joe Weisenthal.

**Tracy Alloway** (0:23)
Joe, I know you love tomatoes.

**Joe Weisenthal** (0:25)
I love tomatoes, oh my god. I love tomatoes. I love tomatoes so much.

**Tracy Alloway** (0:31)
This is the episode, just Joe talking about how he loves tomatoes.

**Joe Weisenthal** (0:34)
Well, there's a funny one, because this is a you episode. You know, you're like, oh, let's do a tomato episode, which I'm glad you did, because I love tomatoes so much.

**Tracy Alloway** (0:42)
But you're gonna make it your episode, aren't you?

**Joe Weisenthal** (0:44)
But it's not like, but I don't know anything about tomatoes. I just love eating them. Like when I was a kid, like growing up in like Ex-Urban, Illinois, you know, I had terrible tomatoes growing up. So I hated tomatoes.

**Tracy Alloway** (0:55)
From the supermarket? From the grocery store.

**Joe Weisenthal** (0:57)
So I thought tomatoes are like the worst vegetable on the planet. Well, they're not. Well, I thought they were just-

**Tracy Alloway** (1:01)
Are you gonna correct yourself and say they're not a vegetable?

**Joe Weisenthal** (1:02)
They're a fruit. You know, so I'm just gonna go on, cause I'm gonna take this episode over. But like, you know, I've once heard someone say that like, knowledge is knowing that tomato is a vegetable and wisdom is knowing not to put tomato in a fruit salad.
But I've like come to like, like tomatoes are so delicious. There are some varietals that I absolutely would put in a fruit salad.

**Tracy Alloway** (1:24)
No, no, this is wrong.

**Joe Weisenthal** (1:25)
And so these tomatoes that we, no, no, no. Like when you, if you tried one of the tomatoes, I have, I still would not put it in a fruit salad. I absolutely would. I love tomatoes. Anyway, sorry.

**Tracy Alloway** (1:34)
So we got to talk about tomatoes. Perhaps not in the way you have been so far, but-

**Joe Weisenthal** (1:39)
Let's spend one minute talking about how tomato prices are really high.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:42)
Yes.

**Joe Weisenthal** (1:42)
And then the other 45 minutes, we're gonna talk about how delicious tomatoes are.

**Tracy Alloway** (1:46)
That's right. Okay. So the genesis of this entire episode is that, as you will have heard, tomato prices are really high right now. So I think we're looking at something like a 40% increase year over year. And I just saw some new data that's out this morning. So there are a lot of tomato headlines floating around saying that tomato prices are at a record $2.69 a pound. So tomatoes are getting kind of expensive, which is bad news for you.

**Joe Weisenthal** (2:11)
It's really bad news for me because I'm addicted to them. I am price insensitive. So it doesn't matter how high the price of tomatoes get, it will not affect my volume at all. So that's just straight money out of my pocket.

**Tracy Alloway** (2:23)
It is not bad news for me because I just installed five raised beds, big raised beds, dedicated all to tomatoes. And I just planted them out yesterday and I'm very excited. You should be excited too because you know you'll get some.

**Joe Weisenthal** (2:35)
Tracy always brings me tomatoes at some point in the summer and they're always delicious.

**Tracy Alloway** (2:39)
I've got a really big selection this year, Cherokee, Brandywine, all the classics and some new things. Fourth of July, I've never tried before. I don't mean to get all like Bubba Gump and just start listing tomato varieties here, but tomatoes are on my mind, and I think they're on a lot of other people's minds, just by nature of the price increase. So we should figure out what's actually going on here.

**Joe Weisenthal** (3:01)
I cannot wait to just talk tomatoes for the next hour.

**Tracy Alloway** (3:04)
You're not just going to say how good they are over and over, right?

**Joe Weisenthal** (3:07)
I might.

**Tracy Alloway** (3:07)
Okay. Well, I am very happy to say that we do in fact have the perfect guest. We're going to be speaking with Jacob Krempel. He is the SVP of Procurement and Merchandising over at Baldor Specialty. So thank you so much for coming on Odd Lots.

**Jacob Krempel** (3:19)
Yeah, absolutely. Very excited to be here. I have quite a few friends that are flabbergasted that I get to be on Odd Lots of all things. So I'm excited to talk tomatoes.

**Tracy Alloway** (3:27)
This is the perfect guest for the perfect moment. Can you tell us what Baldor actually does?