I planted a few tomatoes that were sold cheap due to damage, because I felt that they deserved a chance.
When I plant tomatoes, I work to give them the best chance. These were both suffering from a damaged stem. Since I plant them deep, it doesn't matter much on the broken stems. I remove all but the last two leaf pairs, and then plant the entire length underground. This makes them drought resistant, due to root depth; and all the removed leaves become new roots as well.
Planted in this fashion, they grow tall! Both hit over 5 foot tall, but set zero fruit for months!
Now for the experiment:
A few weeks ago, I pollinated the flowers with a Q-tip. These tomatoes are the result.
The other plant worked too:
There are more, smaller tomatoes on this one, it may be cherry tomatoes. But Both plants responded to pollination.
This tells us that we have poisoned our honeybees out of existence, and now people will starve; as a direct result of overuse of pesticides!
Now the fix, put in a hive even if you don't plan to harvest honey! Barring that, buy a lot of Q-tips, because without pollination; you will not have any produce, produced....
Corn pollinates by wind, and there are a few other pollination bees available; but this will be a significant ongoing problem if the SHTF!
Just be aware, we have done stupid things on crop spraying; so homesteaders and preppers need to make up the bee losses. I will be dusting more flowers soon myself!