Florida’s 2023-24 tomato acreage should be similar to last season’s, but volume should be up because Hurricane Ian put a damper on production last year, said Michael Schadler, executive vice president of the Maitland-based Florida Tomato Exchange.
The season was getting off to a slow start, though.
As of Oct. 17, Florida’s West District had harvested 22,000 40-pound cartons, significantly lower than the 123,000 cartons picked at the same time in 2022, according to the USDA.
“Barring any late-season weather events, volume is expected to be steady through the fall,” Schadler said.
Good weather and decent-quality tomatoes should make market pricing more manageable compared to last year, he said.
“We lost a lot of tomatoes in the storm last fall,” said Bob Spencer, president of Palmetto, Fla.-based West Coast Tomatoes. “We’re looking forward to a normal fall this year with volume.”
Hurricane Idalia, which made landfall in Florida on Aug. 30 this year, pretty much bypassed the tomato-growing regions, he said.
There was less rainfall this summer and early fall than normal, “but the crops looks good,” Spencer said.
Gadsden Tomato Co. Inc., Quincy, Fla., started harvesting tomatoes Oct. 8 in a “really light” way, said Wade Williams, plant manager. The peak of the harvest likely will run from Oct. 25 through Nov. 15, he said.
“Crops are quite a bit later than usual,” probably due to unusually hot, dry weather in late July, Williams added.
Quality should be decent this fall, but volume for Gadsden Tomato Co. could be affected by the heat, he said.
The company grows fresh round and fresh roma tomatoes and expects to ship the fruit through November. The next harvest will be in June, Williams said.
West Coast Tomatoes will harvest into the second week of February, shut down for three or four weeks, then start up again in March and continue through the end of May, Spencer said.
He expected normal volume and good sizing on the company’s round and roma tomatoes.
The main tomato varieties grown in Florida can be broadly categorized into four types: round beefsteak-type tomatoes, roma or plum tomatoes, grape tomatoes and cherry tomatoes, Schadler said.
“The vast majority of the Florida crop is conventionally grown, but there are some growers that produce organic tomatoes,” he added.
Mexican tomato impact
Florida tomato growers say they continue to face the challenge of Mexican growers “dumping” tomatoes into the U.S. market below the cost of production.
Florida producers are calling for abandoning what they consider to be ineffective suspension agreements that set minimum prices for tomatoes and replacing them with antidumping duties.
“We strongly believe that antidumping duties would impose discipline in the market to prevent unfair dumping of Mexican tomatoes while also giving the Mexican industry a chance to earn their way back to free trade,” Schadler said.
If antidumping duties are imposed, the U.S. Commerce Department will conduct an annual review to determine if dumping continued, he said.
If Mexican tomatoes aren’t dumped, the duties paid will be reimbursed to the importers and the duty rate will go to zero.
“If that continues for a series of years, the whole proceeding will be wiped clean, and free trade will return to the marketplace,” Schadler said.
Duties could have a marginal effect on tomato prices, Spencer said. “But the greater effect will be that the American growers will not be put out of business by people who don’t follow the rules.”
He said plenty of tomatoes still will come into the U.S. from Mexico from shippers who “are doing it the right way and not breaking the rules.”
“It’s been a frustrating time for us,” Spencer said. “We feel like a legitimate industry in the U.S. is pushed to the brink.”
