Tomatoes

Unilever produces a range of tomato-based products, including pasta sauces and ketchup. We use about 7% of the world volume of industrially processed tomatoes. Most processing tomatoes are grown under contract by farmers in Australia, Brazil, Chile, Greece, India and the United States.

Unilever has started programmes on tomatoes in Brazil (2000), Australia (2000) and U.S.A. (California, 2001). Nature and scale of farms involved ranges from small (Brazil) to very large (California). Important aspects are water management and irrigation (Brazil and Australia, where drip irrigation was introduced), pest management and soil conservation (conservation tillage, California). Good Agricultural Practice guidelines were published in 2004 (please check Results, SA Guidelines).