A few weeks ago, the United States signed a new trade agreement with Mexico and Canada that will drastically affect the way South Florida farmers do business.
South Florida specialty crop farmers produce a sizeable amount of the country’s fruits and vegetables, including tomatoes, lychees, strawberries, dragon fruit, mangos and avocados. Many of them have been in business for decades, keeping family legacies alive in a part of Florida that provides most of the country’s winter produce.
But according to communitynewspapers.com, the new trade agreement, nicknamed USMCA, will allow Mexico to sell the same fruits and vegetables that South Florida grows, at exactly the same time of year and at drastically lower prices; a process known as “crop dumping.”
Kern Carpenter, whose family has grown tomatoes in South Miami-Dade County since the 1940s, says Florida’s farmers have been let down once again. “All we have asked for in the renegotiation of NAFTA is for fair trade. If something is not done to stop Mexico from dumping vegetables…it will be a total disaster for the farmers.”
“We can’t compete in an unfair scenario like that. Mexico brings exact duplicate crops to market, crashes the prices, and upsets the whole system,” says Michael Huter, founder of Taste of Redland. ”And what’s more, it seems no one is paying attention to what this is doing to the small farmers in Redland.”
