Florida Tomato Growers Got Their Tariff and Still Plow Crops Under

Florida's tomato industry spent decades lobbying for the end of the United States and Mexico tomato suspension agreement, arguing the arrangement allowed Mexican producers to flood the American market at prices Florida farms could not match. The Commerce Department terminated the nearly 30 year old agreement in July 2025, imposing a duty of roughly 21 percent on most Mexican tomato imports.

A year into the new regime, the outcome has not matched the expectation. Florida growers have reported plowing under healthy crops rather than harvesting them, because the combination of labor costs, labor availability and market prices makes harvest uneconomical even with the tariff in place.

The situation illustrates something that recurs across Florida agriculture: trade policy addresses one variable in a business that depends on several, and fixing the import competition problem does not fix the labor problem or the price problem.

What changed in trade policy

The tomato suspension agreement dated to 1996 and functioned as an alternative to antidumping duties. Under its terms, Mexican exporters agreed to sell above negotiated reference prices, and in exchange the Commerce Department suspended its antidumping investigation.

Florida producers argued for years that the agreement's reference prices were set too low and that enforcement was inadequate, allowing Mexican product to undercut Florida tomatoes in the American market. Florida's growing season overlaps substantially with Mexico's, which puts the two in direct competition during the winter months when Florida supplies much of the country's fresh tomatoes.

The Commerce Department's withdrawal from the agreement reinstated antidumping duties at approximately 20.91 percent. Florida based growers welcomed the decision, describing it as the correction of a long standing structural disadvantage.

Greenhouse growers, importers and industry groups in Arizona and Texas opposed the withdrawal, warning it would raise consumer prices and cost jobs in the distribution and import sectors that handle Mexican product. Those states have significant employment tied to cross border produce trade.

Why the tariff has not solved the problem

Labor is the binding constraint. Florida tomatoes are harvested by hand, and the workforce that does that work has become harder to recruit and more expensive to employ. Immigration enforcement expansion has contributed to labor shortages across Florida agriculture, according to growers who have described difficulty assembling harvest crews.

Florida's agricultural sector relies substantially on the H-2A temporary agricultural worker program for legal seasonal labor, and H-2A involves significant costs beyond wages, including housing, transportation and the adverse effect wage rate that sets minimum pay above local prevailing wages.

When harvest labor costs exceed the market value of the crop, the rational decision is to leave the fruit in the field. That is what growers have described doing: plowing under tomatoes that are perfectly marketable but not worth the cost of picking.

Prices are the other half of the equation. If the tariff had raised market prices substantially, the harvest math would work even at higher labor costs. Growers report that prices have not risen enough to close the gap, which suggests import volumes have not fallen as much as expected or that other supply sources have filled the space.

Florida's agricultural economy

Agriculture is a significant part of Florida's economy and its identity, particularly in the interior counties away from the tourist coasts. Tomatoes, citrus, sugarcane, strawberries, bell peppers, sweet corn and cattle are the major categories.

Tomato production concentrates in Southwest Florida, particularly Collier County around Immokalee, and in Manatee, Hillsborough and Palm Beach counties. Immokalee has been the center of Florida's fresh tomato industry and of the farmworker communities that support it.

Citrus tells a parallel story of long term decline driven by different causes. Citrus greening disease, hurricane damage and development pressure on grove land have reduced Florida orange production dramatically from its historical peaks, and the industry has consolidated substantially.

Development pressure affects all of it. Florida's population growth has made agricultural land valuable for conversion, and when farming margins compress, selling to a developer becomes the economically rational alternative for landowners.

The immigration connection

Florida enacted immigration legislation in 2023 that included employment verification requirements for employers above a certain size and penalties for transporting individuals without legal status. Agricultural employers reported workforce disruption following its implementation.

Federal enforcement expansion has compounded that. Increased immigration enforcement operations in Florida have affected the availability of workers in agriculture, construction, hospitality and other sectors that rely on immigrant labor, documented and otherwise.

The policy tension is direct. Florida's political leadership has strongly supported immigration enforcement expansion, and Florida's agricultural sector depends on immigrant labor. Those two facts have produced a persistent, mostly unspoken conflict in state politics.

Agricultural interests have generally advocated for expanded and streamlined legal guest worker programs as the resolution, arguing that reliable legal channels would address both enforcement concerns and labor needs. Congress has not acted on agricultural guest worker reform despite repeated proposals.

What it means for Floridians

For consumers, the tariff's effect on grocery prices has been a subject of dispute. Importers warned it would raise tomato prices; the actual effect has been complicated by supply chain adjustments and by the range of tomato products and origins available in American stores.

For Florida farmworkers, the situation is difficult in a different way. Crops left unharvested mean work that does not exist, and communities like Immokalee depend on harvest employment. A season with reduced harvest activity affects household incomes across those communities.

For rural Florida counties, agricultural economic distress has broad consequences. Farm employment supports local retail, services and tax bases in counties that have few alternative economic engines, and sustained decline in agriculture reshapes those communities.

For Florida's food system generally, the reduction in in state production has implications for supply resilience. Florida is one of the few states that can produce fresh vegetables through the winter, and a diminished capacity there affects national supply during those months.

How Florida tomatoes reach the market

Florida's fresh tomato industry operates on a distinct model from the greenhouse production that dominates Mexican exports, and the difference explains part of the competitive dynamic.

Most Florida tomatoes are field grown on staked plants, harvested at the mature green stage and ripened with ethylene in packing facilities before shipment. That method suits Florida's climate and soil, produces fruit that ships well, and allows harvest scheduling around weather.

Mexican production has shifted heavily toward protected agriculture, including greenhouses and shade houses, which produce vine ripened fruit with different flavor characteristics and longer harvest windows. Consumer preference has moved toward those products, particularly in the specialty categories of grape, cherry and cluster tomatoes.

That preference shift is a market force the tariff does not address. A duty on imports raises the price of Mexican product but does not make a mature green field tomato into the product a shopper reaching for vine ripened clusters wants to buy.

Florida growers have moved into protected agriculture to a degree, but the capital required is substantial and the state's hurricane exposure complicates the investment case. A greenhouse operation represents a large fixed asset in a place where a Category 3 storm can arrive with a few days notice.

Weather is the other recurring variable. Florida's winter tomato season is vulnerable to freezes in the northern growing areas and to tropical systems at the season's start, and a single weather event can eliminate a crop that no trade policy would have saved. Growers have described the combination of weather risk, labor cost and price uncertainty as the reason acreage has trended down for years regardless of trade rules.

What Florida agriculture is worth

Agriculture generates billions of dollars in annual economic activity in Florida and occupies millions of acres, making it the second largest land use in the state after conservation lands.

The sector's composition has shifted substantially. Citrus, long the state's agricultural signature, has contracted dramatically under pressure from citrus greening disease, a bacterial infection spread by an invasive insect that has no cure and that eventually kills infected trees. Florida orange production is a fraction of its historical peak.

Sugarcane in the Everglades Agricultural Area south of Lake Okeechobee remains a major operation and a recurring subject of environmental policy debate, since agricultural runoff from that region affects water quality in the Everglades system.

Cattle ranching occupies more Florida acreage than any other agricultural use, concentrated in the interior counties of Central and South Florida. Florida ranks among the leading states in beef cattle inventory, a fact that surprises people who associate the state with beaches and theme parks.

Specialty crops including strawberries in Hillsborough County, bell peppers, sweet corn, watermelon and blueberries fill out the sector. Many of those crops share tomatoes' labor intensity and face the same workforce constraints.

Development pressure operates across all of it. Florida's population growth has driven agricultural land conversion at a rate that state land use planners have tracked with concern, and once cropland becomes subdivision, it does not return.

What's next

The antidumping duty remains in effect and is subject to administrative review by the Commerce Department, which periodically recalculates duty rates based on updated pricing data. Those reviews can raise or lower the applicable rate.

Mexican producers and American importers have pursued legal and diplomatic channels to challenge or reverse the withdrawal. Trade disputes of this type frequently extend for years through administrative proceedings and litigation.

Watch the coming winter growing season, which begins in the fall in South Florida. That season will show whether the labor and price dynamics that produced unharvested fields last year persist, and whether growers adjust acreage in response.

Watch also for any movement on agricultural labor policy at the federal level. Guest worker program reform is the intervention agricultural economists most commonly identify as addressing the actual constraint, and it remains unaddressed.