More tomatoes are grown in the USA by home gardeners than are produced commercially*

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In the United States, massive corporations and small cultivators are both allowed to grow and sell tomatoes and tomato products, with differing levels of regulation, depending on the size of the business.

 

Gardeners and small-scale growers are free to gift, trade, or sell tomatoes informally, with little to no regulation by the government, while large cultivators are required to follow industry-standard public health regulations, such as snap inspections by the department of agriculture. 

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Cannabis should be handled the same way.

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How Would the Tomato Model Work for Cannabis?

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• Home grows would be completely legal and unregulated, up to a reasonable number of plants, proportionate to the size of the household.

• Larger cultivation and processing operations would be regulated using common-sense industry standards for public health and worker safety.

• Zero sales and excise taxes on medical cannabis, as medicine should never be taxed.

• Standard sales tax only for recreational cannabis, as cannabis is not a vice like liquor or tobacco.

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The tomato model was first named by Jack Herer, an American cannabis rights activist.

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Under the Tomato Model of cannabis regulation, home and specialty cultivators can thrive side-by-side with commercial cannabis companies.

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We at Mandala Cannabis Club advocate for the adoption of the Tomato Model at all levels of government.

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* This is a quote from Ed Rosenthal's Marijuana Grower's Handbook, there are no direct statistics on this but we did some research and concluded it is more than plausible:

• 43 million food gardens in the US [https://www.yourgreenpal.com/blog/home-gardening-statistics-in-the-us]

• 86% of food gardens grow tomatoes, so that's 37 million tomato gardens [https://www.yourgreenpal.com/blog/home-gardening-statistics-in-the-us]

• The average vegetable garden is 600 square feet and the average garden when counting decorative gardens is 96 square feet. [https://www.yourgreenpal.com/blog/home-gardening-statistics-in-the-us]

• We'll go super conservative and assume the average vegetable garden is 96 square feet.

• One tomato plant takes up one square foot [https://urbanfarmie.com/how-far-apart-to-plant-tomatoes/]

• Assuming only ten tomato plants per garden, that's 370 million tomato plants grown by home gardeners each year in the US.

• The average tomato plant produces 10 pounds of tomatoes [https://www.ruralmom.com/2013/05/home-canning-how-many-tomatoes-will-you.html]

• That's 3.7 billion pounds of tomatoes produced by home gardeners in the US per year.

• Tomatoes can weigh up to 1 pound, but we'll go conservative and say the average tomato weighs 0.33 pounds.

• So US home gardeners produce 11.2 billion tomatoes per year.

• Commercial producers produce 2.7 billion pounds of fresh tomatoes per year, or 8.18 billion fresh tomatoes per year (this does NOT include processing tomatoes for salsa and ketchup etc) [https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/FE1027]

• So assuming US home gardeners dedicate only about 10% of garden space to tomatoes, and assuming the average garden size is only 96 square feet which is also very conservative, US home gardeners produce 137% as many tomatoes as commercial producers. The true number is likely much higher.