He’s the fourth generation to farm the fields of Straight Mountain, but Daniel Allman says he’s had just about enough. “I’m about ready to give up,” Allman said recently as the sweltering sun began to sag on another one of those endless August days when everything seemed to wither under the weight of 100-degree temperatures. “I’ve been fighting it all year, and I believe I’m losing.”Allman isn’t the first tomato farmer Straight Mountain has claimed, but he could be the last. “You fight every worm, every bug, every disease and everybody,” he said. “Then, to make just a little, you have to fight the price.” It’s the same story over on neighboring Chandler Mountain, where Joey Bearden, a 40-year-old, third-generation tomato farmer, also fears the end of a family tradition.”It’s too much worry, too much money invested to not know what kind of return you’re going to get,” said Bearden, who is now down to about 90 acres, compared to 250 about 15 years ago. “There’s no guaranteed return, and the younger generation just doesn’t want to do it. It’s too risky for the money.”But Bearden isn’t giving up on the only occupation he’s ever known. He and his 29-year-old partner, nephew Brian Alexander, recently met with members of the St. Clair County Farmers Federation and established a horticulture committee which they hope can help address some of their concerns, and maybe even find some new commercial markets for their crops.”The St. Clair County Farmers Federation and Alabama Farmers Federation are excited about this new county horticulture committee,” said Brian Hardin, director of the Federation’s Horticulture Division. “Simply establishing a committee doesn’t mean that the growers will be able to eliminate all of the challenges they face. However, what it does mean is that they have taken a step to empower themselves to influence what they are dealing with. Having these growers come together and participate in the organization helps us become a stronger advocate alongside them, while they strengthen us as we advocate for all of agriculture.”Since the committee’s inception, contact has already been made with state agencies to investigate new marketing opportunities for the tomatoes that still grow in abundance on these twin peaks that straddle the Blount-St. Clair county line.Strangers venturing up the winding, picturesque roadways to the mountaintops are amazed at the thousands of wooden stakes dotting the landscape where rows upon rows of tomatoes are hand picked by crews of migrant workers.Chandler Mountain has even been called “The Tomato Capital of Alabama” because tomatoes leave here by tractor-truck loads virtually every day from about May to October.”I think it’s the weather — it’s a little cooler on this mountain than in the valley,” says Jamie Burton, who retired a dozen years ago and turned over Burton Farms to his sons Keith and Kenneth. “Plus, there are a lot of good farmers, too. They know what they’re doing.”But it’s not like it once was, back more than two decades ago when a cooperative called Associated Packing House counted more than 50 farmers among its membership. Now, the unofficial head count is “four or five” tomato farmers on Straight Mountain, and about “eight or nine” on Chandler Mountain. “Everybody’s got their own packing house, and everybody’s got their own deal now,” said Jeffery Smith of Rayburn Smith Farms which, like most farms here, ships its tomatoes up and down the Eastern seaboard. “There aren’t any more associations. If you’re in control of your tomatoes, you know your destiny. If somebody else is in control, you don’t know.”Figures from the Alabama office of the National Agricultural Statistics Service also point to a declining lifestyle. In 1992, Blount and St. Clair listed 2,297 acres in tomato production. Five years later, the acreage was cut to 1,486. By 2002 (the last year figures were available), it was down to just 892.Jamie Burton disputes those figures. “They used to claim there were 3,000 acres of tomatoes in Blount County, but it never was that much, never was even close,” he said, adding that their farm has about 100 acres of tomatoes.Even so, when the next census is taken this fall, it’s likely tomato acreage will show an even sharper decline. “You used to be able to ride around here, and every field had tomatoes in it,” said Allman. “Now, you have to look just to find them.”Allman, who is 45 and has worked the tomato fields since he was 6, says his generation could be the last to farm tomatoes on the mountains. One reason for that, he says, is because Birmingham is bursting at the seams, and the overflow has taken a liking to the breath-taking view from the mountaintops.”I guess you could say urban spread is part of it,” he said. “The land on top of these mountains has gotten so high that you can’t buy any. There’s land up here that’s bringing so much money it’s scary.”But then, tomato farming has never been easy. For the last 15 years, farmers here have fought a tomato virus that can’t be stopped. “I haven’t found anything that’s helped,” said Allman, who has six plantings a year over 35 acres. “If it gets you, it gets you. If it don’t, it don’t.”On top of that, there’s the weather — like the string of 100-plus temperatures and drought this year or the 45-minute hail storm last year — low prices, labor shortages and on and on.Burton, whose sons will likely ship 60,000 25-pound boxes (1.5 million pounds) to places like New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Puerto Rico this year, says escalating input costs keep eating away at profits. “Everything just keeps going up, but the tomato doesn’t go up — it’s still selling for the same price now that it did 40 years ago,” he said, pointing to a 20 percent price increase in drip irrigation systems and plastic sheeting.He remembers, too, how he once paid seven to eight cents for those wooden tomato stakes but now pays 25 cents each for a half-million, only to lose about 20 percent a year to breakage.”The cost of growing tomatoes has just gone out of sight,” he said. “I remember when you could grow them for $300 an acre. Now, it’s about $6,000.”Even when a farmer thinks he’s on top, it’s easy to get blind-sided. That’s what happened to Joey Bearden of J&J Tomato who thought he’d found the perfect niche product in grape tomatoes. His grape tomato crop had grown to 20 acres when he discovered competition from an unexpected source — the Alabama Department of Corrections.It was 2004 when Bearden learned through a customer in Chicago that Alabama prison inmates had grown 28 acres of grape tomatoes, and were selling them on the open market at $5 for a 20-pound box — a dollar less than it cost Bearden to pick each box. The prison system, of course, had no labor costs. “When you’ve got 6,000 boxes in the cooler, it makes you almost swallow your tongue,” Bearden said, recalling his reaction when he heard he’d been undercut by the State of Alabama. “You can’t move them at that price, and we ended up dumping 6,000 boxes at $6 a box. On top of that, we had three acres that we didn’t even pick. We just had to let them rot on the vine.”They (the DOC) acted like it was no big deal to have 28 acres, but it IS a big deal,” said Bearden, adding that the competition from the state forced him to cut his own production by half. “Growing 28 acres of grape tomatoes is like 200 acres of regular tomatoes. You can’t market that many.”Soon after Bearden enlisted the help of the Alabama Farmers Federation, the DOC announced it was getting out of the tomato farming business. While that was welcome news, other governmental challenges remain in the form of federal regulation.Bearden’s wife, Lisa, recently worked for more than two months trying to earn Good Housekeeping Practices/Good Agricultural Practices (GHP/GAP) certification, a pain-staking process intended to ensure a safe food supply but could spell more problems for the farmers on Straight and Chandler Mountains.While still voluntary, most of the farmers say their customers are beginning to require the certification.”When this becomes mandatory, I don’t see how smaller farmers will be able to keep up with this,” said Lisa. “I truly believe it’s going to put a lot of people out of business. We’re losing so many of our small farms, and this isn’t going to help.”The requirements, which some say border on the “ridiculous,” include the keeping of a wildlife log to note any wildlife that may wander into — or birds that may fly over — their fields, fencing around all fields (although much of the land is leased), and a tarp over tomatoes being transported to the packing houses because they “may get dust on them.””You have to draw them a map of every field, how the trucks drive in, which way the tomatoes go when they unload them … if you put them in the cooler, you’ve got to log the day they went in and the day they went out. It’s the awfulest mess you’ve ever seen in your life,” says Jamie Burton.Even so, Lisa Bearden says the requirements are probably a good idea as far as promoting food safety. “Our crews have seen that it helps,” she says. “They’re picking up their own trash and bringing it back with them every night from the fields. They’re washing their hands before they start and after they finish. They’re sanitizing buckets, and making a concerted effort to make everything cleaner.”That outlook amid such pressures impresses Hardin and other Federation members.”For decades, the farmers on Chandler and Straight Mountains have faced virtually every kind of obstacle imaginable, and yet, they’ve carried on,” said Hardin. “Just like other areas of farming, their numbers are declining through no fault of their own. But the rich history of tomato production on these mountains is a tribute to the commitment of these farmers and families to adapt and change with the times.”