The greenhouse operation in Madison recovers from setbacks and is back to meeting strong demand for its firm, red tomatoes, but the sustainability of the business is still unclear.

MADISON — “You want them all to be red,” said Tim Cunniff, executive vice president for sales and marketing at Backyard Farms, as he indicated a cluster of cocktail tomatoes that would be in the stores within the month. He touched one tomato that already looked just right, deep red, firm and despite the longitude, latitude and a light dusting of November snow outside, alluring enough to bring on a craving for basil and mozzarella. “Without this one being ketchup,” Cunniff added. He wants that hydroponically grown cluster to arrive in customers’ homes with everything red and that first tomato he pointed to still firm, still perfect. “That’s the trick.”

Every week between 350,000 and 400,000 pounds of tomatoes leave Backyard Farm’s greenhouses, headed to stores like Hannaford, Shaw’s and Market Baskets in New England and Gourmet Garages or restaurants in New York. None spends more than 12 hours on the road and none travels farther than Maryland, where Backyard Farms has one customer.

Despite the evocative company name – the backyard being the most likely place for someone passionate about tomatoes to have first understood the greatness of the fruit – there is nothing on the packaging that boasts that these are “local” tomatoes. Cunniff said the word is too fraught, especially in this agriculture-happy region. “Each state in New England has its own definition of local,” he said. “Like in Vermont, if you’re not living next to the guy that grew it you can’t say that is local.”

So the “Maine Greenhouse Tomatoes” stamped on the box suffices.

It’s confusing though. Backyard Farms sent its first tomatoes to the market in January 2007, joining the food economy at a time when words like “local” and “sustainable” were first becoming nearly as commonplace in Maine as “lobster” and “snowplow.” But the privately owned company, headquartered in a 42-acre greenhouse in Madison, doesn’t quite fit the standard definitions of either word. It uses massive amounts of energy. It also employs 200 Mainers in an area where jobs are hard to come by.