[dudeonthenet]

Homegrown tomatoes here in Romania are pretty tasty, maybe even indistinguishable from the ones you'd find in Italy. Especially the ones that people in the country side grow in their gardens and, even more so, the late summer, early fall breeds of tomatoes. When you cut one open, you literally want to shove your face in it.

Here's what they look like: http://www.desteptarea.ro/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/rosii-p...

Note: 6 LEI (RON) is 1.2 GBP, but can find them as cheap as 0.8 GBP, depending on the city, market or seller.

The problem is that I don't think we produce enough of them for export as they're only grown naturally, they don't last more than a few days, even when in the fridge, and they are seasonal. Households tipically pick them as they ripen for immediate consumption, sell any surplus on the local markets and, by the end of the season, harvest them for around 10 gallons of tomato juice for winter.

The countryside folk also lack the education to seriously market them, lack the money to produce in larger quantities, etc. Which leads to supermarkets being chock full of import tomatoes though (we also have the Dutch ones) :/