I used to work for FMC, the part of that company that still was about maching food machinery (not weapons, like later). A couple of summers during school, I was a field service tech in the central valley of California, working for FMC. They made tomato harvesting equipment (tomato harvester) and one part of that machine was the color sorter.
That’s the only part of the machine that I touched, was the color sorter. It did this same exact thing, sensing MOT (material other than), which could be green tomatoes, dirt clods, dead rats, etc, then kick them out, down a chute which dropped it right in front of the rear tire. It got recycled back into the earth. Those flappers were LOUD!
The whole process was pretty interesting, and it was very cool getting such an up-close glimpse into California agriculture. BTW, the tomatoes grown and harvested like this go to make things like pasta sauce, frozen lasagna, all sorts of canned tomatoes, (ketchup, yes) and anything else that needs processed tomatoes. You know when you see on the label, it says “vine ripened”? Well, they surely are, but they are bred to have a thick skin and can handle the rough harvesting and processing. Most of them are roma shaped. All the whole tomatoes that show up in the produce section are grown and handled in an entirely different way.
