Published: Saturday, December 29, 2012 at 12:01 a.m.
Last Modified: Sunday, December 30, 2012 at 3:55 a.m.
In Florida, however, the opponent is not China and other low-wage Asian nations but the rising tide of cheaper tomato and strawberry imports from Mexico, which have undercut U.S. retail and farm prices.
"They (Mexican growers) produce for the U.S. markets," said John VanSickle, an agricultural economist at the University of Florida in Gainesville who specializes in international trade issues, including tomatoes and strawberries. "The premium product goes to the U.S., and the rest stays in Mexico. If they don't have a U.S. market, they don't have a business."
Mexican strawberry imports showed the steepest rise in the last five years, jumping 142 percent from 2008 to 2011, according to the most recent statistics from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In the first three quarters of this year, they soared 50 percent compared to the same period in 2011.
Mexican imports will likely rise less steeply in the fourth quarter because farmers in both countries faced many of the same unfavorable growing conditions, said Ted Campbell, executive director of the Florida Strawberry Growers Association in Dover, the industry's trade group.
But that doesn't mean the Mexican market threat has subsided, he said.
"They're not going away. They're going to continue to grow," Campbell said. "You can't ignore what's going on."
Mexican tomato imports have risen significantly but less sharply in the past five years, up 43.7 percent from 2008 through 2011 and another 5.6 percent in the first three 2012 quarters compared with 2011, USDA figures show.
Those numbers reflect Mexican imports of round tomatoes grown in open fields and in "hothouses," or covered areas such as a greenhouse. Those varieties most directly compete with Florida round tomatoes, the dominant variety grown here.
Mexican hothouse tomatoes, which account for about 75 percent of total imports, pose the bigger threat, the federal data shows. They've risen 74 percent from 2008 through 2011.
"In the last five to six years, Mexico has converted from a field culture to a hothouse culture," VanSickle said.
That trend will continue, he added. Among the factors fueling the transition are better prices and lower production costs, including pesticides, which appeals to U.S. consumers concerned about chemical residues on produce.
The smaller percentage growth in imports simply reflects the fact that Mexican tomatoes have been competing in the U.S. market for decades longer.
ALLEGATIONS OF DUMPING
Even at the time of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Mexican tomatoes had a roughly 40 percent share of the U.S. market, said Reggie Brown, chief executive of the Maitland-based Florida Tomato Exchange, the industry trade group.
Now, its share has grown to about 50 percent currently, and continues to climb.
Florida currently has a 40 percent annual share of the U.S. market for fresh, field-grown, round tomatoes, he said, and it supplies virtually all of the domestic market in that category between December and May.
Mexican competition has sent Florida's tomato acreage down by more than 26 percent in the past decade, from 43,500 acres in the 2001-02 season to 32,000 in 2010-11, according to USDA. Brown estimated the current total at about 30,000 acres.
"It's almost entirely due to Mexican imports," said Tony DiMare, vice president of DiMare Fresh Inc., a national produce company and one of the top three U.S. tomato growers and shippers. DiMare works at the company's Apollo Beach packinghouse.
Florida tomato growers and their counterparts in other states accuse their Mexican counterparts of illegally dumping tomatoes in the U.S., or selling them at prices below the cost of production. The strategy attempts to eliminate competitors to eventually gain control of an entire market.
U.S. growers made the same charge in 1996, two years after NAFTA's enactment.
The U.S. Commerce Department, fearful the complaint would destroy the trade pact, negotiated an agreement with Mexican producer known in the industry as the "suspension agreement" because it suspended action on the dumping complaint, DiMare said.
The suspension agreement was supposed to eliminate surges of imported Mexican tomatoes to maintain stable market prices, he said.
"In my opinion, the Commerce Department failed miserably," in enforcing the agreement, said DiMare, citing the recent Mexican import growth.
U.S. growers have asked the Commerce Department to drop both the suspension agreement, scheduled to expire in January, and the 1996 dumping action. A decision on both is expected by February, Brown said.
Rulings in favor of U.S. tomato growers would allow them to proceed with a new dumping complaint, widely expected to happen.
BATTLING STRAWBERRIES
Mexican imports had their biggest effect on the U.S. tomato and strawberry markets during the 2011-12 season, when a flood of both commodities sent prices plummeting, Campbell and DiMare said.
Farmers in Florida and Mexico lost money last season because of depressed prices, they said.
"We had such depressed prices last year, we couldn't recover our picking, packing and transportation costs," DiMare said. "They (Mexican growers) inundated their own market. They absolutely destroyed the U.S. market."
Wholesale strawberry prices a year ago fell to $7 per flat, or the break-even point, by Christmas, Campbell and growers reported earlier. They recovered briefly in January but sank again the following month.
Because of lower volumes, wholesale strawberry prices returned to a normal levels this season, USDA figures show. Prices averaged about $26 per flat in early December, when Florida is the exclusive domestic strawberry producer, and were about $17.50 on Thursday.
Florida strawberry growers generally harvest until March, when California production ramps up, sending wholesale price below the break-even point.
The significance of the Mexican competition is that its growers compete in the same market windows traditionally dominated by Florida tomato and strawberry growers. Leaders in both commodities view Mexico as a continuing threat.
"If we have seasons like we had last year, where import volumes kept prices so low and made it impossible to sell at a profit, this industry can't maintain those types of losses," Brown said.
NEW GROWING METHODS
The state's tomato and strawberry growers can compete with Mexico, VanSickle said, but both will have to transition to newer technologies.
In both cases, that would include following their Mexican competitors by turning to "covered agriculture," he said. That would include growing in traditional greenhouses or other closed environments, such as large plastic tunnels put up over an entire crop row.
VanSickle, who consults for Florida tomato growers, has delivered that message to industry leaders without much effect, he said.
DiMare and Brown agreed the Florida climate makes covered agricultural production unworkable and the costs "prohibitive," particularly in the current profit environment.
The price to build a one-acre greenhouse, including temperature controls, would run about $1 million, Brown said.
An acre of plastic tunnels over strawberries would cost $30,000, Campbell said, and all could be blown away with a single hurricane or tropical storm.
VanSickle acknowledged a transition would come with big up-front costs, but he maintained growers, particularly tomato growers, could recover by supplying a better product that would fetch a higher market price.
"In this era, consumers are willing to pay more for a better-tasting tomato," VanSickle said.
"If they want to compete, they've got to change the way they're doing business."
[ Kevin Bouffard can be reached at kevin.bouffard@theledger.com or at 863-401-6980. ]
Source: http://www.theledger.com/article/20121229/newschief/121229325
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