Fresh tomato is one of the world’s most recognizable staple foods grown around the world and comes in so many varieties. It is now, one of the most researched vegetable and greenhouse commercial crop in the world, placed at 319th of the world’s most traded product in 2022.
According to an article by atlasbig.com, 180,766,329 tonnes of tomatoes are estimated to be produced worldwide at a yearly revenue of $9.81B. China leads with over 62 million tons of tomatoes representing approximately 35% of the world’s production. India, Turkey, United States and Egypt comes in at 2nd to 5th places respectively, with a combined total production of about 49,459,836 metric tons representing 27.4% of the world’s production.
These four countries combined however, cultivate tomatoes on lands covering up to 1,246,524 hectares whereas, China alone produces tomatoes on 1,086,771 hectares of land to mostly feed its own population.
The global export of fresh tomatoes, however, is quite different. The total volume of tomatoes produced in 2020 was in excess of 187 million metric tons whereas the total volume exported was estimated at 3.51 million metric tons. Mexico tops the list with over 1.8 million metric tons of the world’s fresh tomatoes exported, amounting to $2.62B. The Netherlands comes in 2nd with ($1.82B), followed by Spain ($1.1B), Morocco ($852M) and Canada at 5th with ($448M) revenue from fresh tomatoes export according to tomatonews.com.
The United States tops as the world’s largest importer of fresh tomatoes at a value of $2.9B in 2022. This report by tridge.com also states Germany, France, UK, and Russia with import values of $1.7B, $816.5M, $622.9M and $398.5M respectively in the top 5 of the world’s largest tomato importers.
There was however, a massive decline in the world production of tomatoes due to the pandemic which adversely, affected prices of both fresh and paste tomatoes in local markets around the world. In spite of these challenges, the world’s production is currently rebounding and expected to continue growing.