Small farmers often face unique challenges in navigating shifting trade policies.
The Packer spoke with Erin Mittelstaedt, CEO for The FruitGuys, about how tariffs affect small farmers — and consumers who rely on their products. The company sources its produce from small farms as well as supports farmers through its grants program.
Mittelstaedt shared her insights on the real-world possible effects of tariffs, from rising costs to market disruptions.
The Packer: Based on your work with small farms, do you predict the tariffs will affect their ability to afford equipment, seeds and other essential supplies?
Mittelstaedt: Our biggest concern around the impact of the tariffs on this executive order is — what’s the impact on consumers and what’s the impact on farmers? And as we talk to farmers, I think there are three things we’re looking at. One, as you suggested, it could increase the input costs to the farms. Not all farmers use this, but there’s a fertilizer, potash, which is primarily sourced out of Canada. So, like you said, equipment or other costs could increase, and that will affect the farmer.
The other thing is that a lot of our small farms don’t export, but some do. We were talking to a Central Valley farm the other week that exports, and the worry is that if there’s a tariff on U.S. products, then there’ll be a retaliatory tariff from other countries on our products — and that will make it more difficult to export.
I spoke with a Canadian reporter last week, and he happened to share that his family doesn’t want to buy U.S. products if these tariffs go into effect — and would rather purchase from Spain. That could negatively impact those farmers that export products outside of the U.S.
And then the flip side is that there are maybe some small local farms that could see some benefit. We know a farmer that grows avocados. If the Mexican avocados are more expensive because of the tariffs, that makes his price a little more competitive. But overall, I think there’s more potential risk than there is on that potential upside for small farms.
Using avocados as an example, even if there are U.S. farmers growing avocados, won’t the consumer still see an increase? There will still be the same demand but less availability from U.S. growers.
One hundred percent. I don’t see these tariffs going into effect without that higher price trickling to consumers. Because, either you’re able to source from local products, but that might be at a higher price, or you’re buying the imports, which is at a higher price.
And it’s not just fresh produce. It’ll hit other goods as well, such as snacks or other products that you eat, that include food products from Canada or Mexico. Those prices will eventually go up as well because the businesses just can’t absorb the additional cost.
I know on the small-farm side ... the ones that are looking for the upside of the tariff would be those that grow commodities that compete with Mexico, like avocados, strawberries, tomatoes … but the truth is, like you said, a lot of that Mexican product is used when there isn’t as much U.S. product available. So, it’s not quite like you choose one or the other.
Any other thoughts on how the tariffs will ultimately affect the consumer?
I think it’s important that U.S. consumers have access to healthy, fresh produce. The concern here is that this tariff will make that more expensive.
It sounds like you’re saying, at the moment, we have more questions than answers. Is that a correct assumption?
Absolutely. There’s a lot of uncertainty that’s happening, and there’s already a lot of uncertainty in farming to begin with.
I was talking to somebody about how [farming] is predictably unpredictable because it’s so reliant on weather, and so, to politically have uncertainty as well, it creates a level of discomfort in the industry. Because it’s not just about this executive order; it’s also about the executive order around immigration and how is that going to impact farms that rely so much on immigrant labor. So, hopefully the tariffs won’t go through.
And I think there’s another piece of this as food gets politicized: How do we still make sure we’re supporting farmers and consumers so that people have access to healthy food?
