Mullen: Florida plan would harm Texas jobs, cause fresh tomato prices to rise

As you might have noticed in your local store’s produce section, fresh fruit and vegetable prices are higher than ever. Your grocery budget is likely getting squeezed.

Unfortunately, a proposal from a Florida special interest group would make prices even higher.

The fresh produce market has always been volatile, subject to many different uncontrollable variables, including the weather. But now shoppers are contending not just with individual weather events, but with the results of climate change, which is affecting fruit and vegetable production across North America and putting upward pressure on costs that get passed on to consumers at the checkout counter.  

Adverse weather conditions in Mexico and the United States – including rains and unseasonably cold temperatures that, in some cases, have led to crop freezes – are delaying regular plantings and harvest dates on many items like tomatoes, lettuce, broccoli, squash, cucumbers, and more.  

That’s why it’s alarming that amid these shortages and the associated price increases that a group representing tomato interests in Florida, the Florida Tomato Exchange, is calling for the Biden administration to slap a 21 percent additional tariff on tomatoes entering the U.S. from Mexico.  

The Florida group would have the U.S. Department of Commerce cancel the existing Tomato Suspension Agreement – the accord that regulates the conditions under which Mexican tomatoes can be imported, including pricing mechanisms – and replace it with duties that would make the imported tomatoes more expensive and disrupt the whole supply chain to retail, foodservice and wholesale buyers across the country.

That’s bad news for shoppers and for Texas jobs. 

Texas is the country’s top importer of tomatoes grown in Mexico, contributing to an industry comprised of brokers, freight forwarders, warehousers, and more as part of a sophisticated supply chain contributing more than $4.5 billion in economic activity to the state according to a study from Arizona State University. 

Florida wants the federal government to muscle out the Mexican tomatoes because consumers prefer the vine-ripened tomatoes that Florida growers have been unable to produce in both volume and tomato type. Florida simply can’t meet the demand for tomato varieties like grape, cherry, heirloom, and Roma, as well as medley packs and new snacking tomatoes. 

Florida growers have invested heavily in greenhouse production in Mexico in an attempt to catch up, but they’re still heavily invested in an inferior product, harvesting tomatoes when they’re still green and then using ethylene gas to artificially ripen them. It’s a method that allows for easier transportation and longer shelf life, but that results in tomatoes with far less flavor and texture than ones ripened in Mexico. 

This year’s climate-change-induced shortage has become so acute that some companies with production in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada have been informing their customers that they cannot meet their current delivery obligations.

Climate change doesn’t play favorites, either, as both Florida and Mexico can attest. 

In 2017, Hurricane Irma caused a more-than-50 percent drop in Florida tomato shipments and increased prices by 400% over 16 weeks.  

Heavy rains in Baja California and mainland Mexico in 2022 meant damaged greenhouses and flooded farms. Predictably, the price of round tomatoes hit record highs.   

And yet with supply down, prices up, and consumers’ wallets stretched thin, Florida would now exacerbate the pain that Mother Nature’s already inflicted in the name of rank protectionism.

Florida’s tomato industry wants to change the rules of the game rather than compete on quality or adopt the changes necessary to better buffer its sector from things like freezes and hurricane damage. 

If the Florida Tomato Exchange gets its way, the importation of fresh tomatoes from Mexico would be effectively blocked, Texas jobs would be lost, and American shoppers would get stuck with the bill. 

Editor’s Note: The above guest column was penned by Britton Mullen, president of the Border Trade Alliance. The column appears in The Rio Grande Guardian International News Service with the permission of the author. Mullen can be reached by email via: garrick@thebta.org.

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