In the videos it looks like the plants are taller that are picked by hand. I also know that some plants produce a lot of tomatoes all at once(determinate) and that some grow a long time and produce fruit for months(indeterminate). But I do not know why everybody would not just grow a determinate species and use a harvester.
If you are marketing you want indeterminate and hand picking allows you to pick riper tomatoes in better condition. For sauces and soups you want determinate to happen all at once and since they are to be chopped up anyway the condition of the tomato being picked is no big deal so a machine is as good as anything.
any tomatos you see whole and not canned or frozen or bagged have to be hand-picked because they're so fragile. the ones you see being picked by machines are all going towards stewed, canned, pickled, lol, juice, etc etc.
The other posters gave you good answers. The other point I would raise is that harvesting machinery is very expensive and only the largest farms can afford them. For most vegetable growers, especially if they are growing a variety of vegetable crops, they don't have the economy of scale to justify the investment.
