There is always something in the news about the food supply most times it is something is recalled because of some lingering disease….well this time it is tomatoes.
The Food and Drug Administration has updated an ongoing recall of tomatoes to its most severe level, warning there is a high risk of “serious adverse health consequences or death” to those who consume affected products. The recall, for potential salmonella contamination, applies to tomatoes distributed in late April. The New York Times reports consumers are unlikely to come across fresh tomatoes that have been recalled at this point, but the bacteria can survive for months in wet environments, so if any affected tomatoes were frozen, they could still be impacted. The tomatoes were sold in Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, Newsweek reports. No illnesses have yet been linked to the tomatoes.
But wait there is more tomato news….
Framers in Florida are destroying their crops before market because of tariffs and lack of labor.
Thousands of unharvested tomatoes are being plowed over in South Florida in a sign of what is to come under President Donald Trump’s tariffs—or tariff threats—and immigration policies. Reporting by Miami’s local Fox affiliate, WVSN, revealed that farmers are cutting their losses and letting crops go to waste due to increased picking and packing costs.
“You can’t even afford to pick them right now,” Heather Moehling, president of Miami-Dade County Farm Bureau, told WVSN. “Between the cost of labor and the inputs that goes in, it’s more cost-effective for farmers to just plow them right now.” Moehling said tomatoes are currently selling between $3 and $4 per box.*
But farmers need to sell a box of tomatoes for closer to $11 to break even, according to Tony DiMare, president of DiMare Homestead, which owns over 4,000 acres of tomato farms in Florida and California. American farmers haven’t been able to out-compete cheaper Mexican tomatoes currently flooding the market, DiMare told WVSN.*
Even though the tariffs on Mexican imports never took effect for goods compliant with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, including U.S. tomatoes, the threat of tariffs alone was enough to disrupt the U.S. market, DiMare told WVSN. “The Mexican industry exported, in some cases, double and triple the daily volumes to beat being subject to the 25 percent tariff in February and March and the 10 percent tariffs in April. That just devastated our markets in the U.S.,” DiMare said.
To protect U.S. tomato farmers from the harm caused by tariff policies, Trump plans to impose an import duty of 20.91 percent on most tomato imports from Mexico starting in July. The action, which will end a 2019 trade agreement establishing a minimum price on Mexican imported tomatoes, is expected to drive up the cost of tomatoes for U.S. consumers, according to Michael Strain, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Granted I am not a farmer but I cannot understand why no income is better than some.
Will these farmers get government subsidies because of the loss of crops?
If someone can explain the economics behind this destruction then please do so for me it makes little sense.
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”
I know of nobody richer or better off than a typical American Farmer… always the latest automobile, the biggest and baddest pick up trucks…lots of moneyh to throw around … subsidies paid by the government to entire farmers to let their lad lay fallow– so they have to do nothing at all about it except let it lay while they collect their government money —always bitching and moaning about how hard they have it and then killing their chickens, dumping their milk, and plowing their crops under to inflate prices on their shit while Americans struggle to make it from day to day….too damned bad they have to have a bad day now and then …. they need a helluva lot more of them…. selling their crops overseas when Americans go hungry… bastards…
I *am* a farmer, or was, and that is a complete and utter load of nonsense. I don’t know where the hell you’re getting that crap from, but I suggest you get out in the real world and see what it’s really like out here
you can’t harvest a decent crop without help; sometimes a LOT of help. And that help has to be paid, or they will go elsewhere. If what you’re paying them, and what you’re paying people to transport the crops elsewhere, eats up what you could have made on the crop because of tariffs, etc, then yeah, plow it under and let it enrich the soil. Maybe next year.
Not interested in the dislike of farmers….agribusiness is more who you dislike than the family farmer….why lump them all together….and as usual there is little answers to the question. chuq
Farmers are always screaming poverty, especially over here in the UK. Their latest moan is that they cannot get cheap labour to pick the crops. As I see it, they help to create the shortages that hike up the prices they get for the goods. That way they make the same money wihtout having to pay fair wages to pickers and farm staff.
Best wishes, Pete.
Still why is it more better to let crop rot than sell or donate? chuq
Why is it better for a farmer to plow down an entire crop rather than get at least some harvest from it? Pure economics. Look at grain, for example. Let’s say I have 100 acres of wheat. Growing season was terrible and I my yield is only 50% of what it should be. It costs about $40/acre to combine that wheat. That’s the cost of running the combine: fuel, labor, oil, cost of the combine averaged out over its lifetime, etc. My wheat crop may be producing 50% less than usual, but I still have to combine all 100 acres. I’m losing money with every acre I harvest. I’m better off plowing the whole mess down.
Interesting….thanx for the answer to my question and the insights….much appreciated. chuq