TOMATO HOUSE Madison farm project looks to revolutionize food market

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Surrounded by fields and woods, with a view of the western mountains of Maine, 24 acres of a former dairy farm in the Somerset County town of Madison are being transformed into an amazing glass greenhouse.

The scope and technology of the $25 million project are hard to grasp.

Sixty rows of 40 four-foot-tall concrete pillars stretch as far as the eye can see, waiting for steel supports.

Massive is the only word to describe the project, which will be covered with more than 1 million square feet of glass.

It is only the first of nearly a dozen greenhouses planned for the site on River Road.

In a state where the agriculture industry rests on the back of small family farms, this is commodity agribusiness at its best – a salad project designed to pump millions into the state’s economy, be neighbor-friendly and possibly serve as the forerunner of an effort to position Maine to feed all of New England.

The structure will grow tomatoes in a special medium, pumping nutrients to the plants through plastic tubing. That will allow the plants to stretch 20 feet to the roof, where workers will use hydraulic platforms to harvest the fruit year-round.

Grow lights will augment the sun, and each plant’s roots will be set on heating pads.

“We will make Maine and Madison the produce capital of New England,” said Paul Sellew, CEO of U.S. Functional Foods LLC, the project’s backer, based in Carlisle, Mass.

“If you figure that most produce travels 1,500 miles in a refrigerated truck or the belly of a plane, and we are a little over three hours from Boston, there is no reason why Maine can’t be the breadbasket of New England,” he said.

Sellew said there is nothing in New England like Madison’s greenhouse. “It’s the first project of this scale,” he said.

State Agriculture Commissioner Seth Bradstreet agrees.

He said Friday that the Madison project could be just the first of many similar operations in Maine.

“We are three hours from Boston, six from New York City,” Bradstreet said. “Maine is perfect for these operations since it is much cheaper to heat a greenhouse than it is to cool it. This project is a win-win; there is no downside. The bonus is there will be significant numbers of new employees.”

The company plans to construct four greenhouses on River Road within the next three years, and it hopes to employ as many as 500 workers in eight greenhouses by 2014. There is also the possibility of a spin-off business, such as sauce or salsa, for tomatoes that don’t make the Grade A market.

Building the tomato greenhouse – the first of an eventual campus of buildings that will grow peppers, herbs and salad greens – was originally based on the town’s cheap electricity rates – Madison has its own electric company.

But the project is rooted in taste.

Anyone who has eaten a supermarket tomato in January knows the rubbery texture and lack of flavor that often accompanies such an experience.

“The key issue is taste,” Sellow said. “The conversion of starch to sugar only happens on the vine. The tomatoes in the supermarkets are picked green. You have to allow the color to develop. Here, we can pick and deliver in the same day.”

More than 1 million square feet of tomatoes will be growing in Madison by September and will be ready to harvest by Christmas.

This week, with a break in constant rain, it was full steam ahead at the construction site.

Massive machines were digging a rain-retention pond the size of a small lake, metal roof supports were being placed in key locations and tractor-trailers were delivering the miles of glass panels that will encase the greenhouse.

Carefully overseeing everything was Arie van der Giessen.

A master grower from Holland, van der Giessen is no stranger to such massive and technical undertakings. He arrived in Maine fresh from constructing and operating a tomato greenhouse project in Texas that dwarfs the Madison one.

“It was five times the size of this one,” he said.

Van der Giessen got his experience in his native Holland, which is only half the size of Maine but has 60 million people. “My grandfather, my dad, even my two sons all grow in greenhouses,” he said.

“In Holland, land is so expensive there is no way to grow field tomatoes.” Growing the vines four times higher than field tomatoes allows for greater efficiency in a smaller space, he said. “We have 25,000 acres of greenhouses in Holland.”

Functional Foods has already taken in 150 job applications for greenhouse positions. Van der Geissen said about 75 will be employed.

One new employee will be Erica Roderick, a recent honors graduate of Unity College.

Her father, Charles Roderick of Albion, has been helping construct the greenhouse. It was a chance conversation with van der Geissen that landed his daughter the job of her dreams.

“She was studying biologicials,” he said, referring to the use of natural methods and insects to protect and control crops. “We had been arguing for four years. I kept telling her she would never find a job in Maine. Both of us couldn’t be happier.”

On Tuesday, a naming ceremony will be held at the site, revealing for the first time what the produce’s brand name will be. State and local officials will be on hand for the occasion.