The fruit and vegetable industry is an important segment of the U.S. agriculture. The 2017 U.S. Agriculture Census shows that the industry had total sales of USD 48 billion from over 10 million acres of land. However, over the last two decades, production of major fruit and vegetable crops in the United States has been declining while imports have grown significantly. The rapidly growing imports have posed challenges to the sustainability of the U.S. domestic industry. This study provides a systematic industry review of fresh fruit and vegetable production and trade between the United States and Mexico, by far the largest source of U.S. imports, highlighting the structural shift in the market over the last two decades and the caveats for industry sustainability. The analysis shows that Florida, Georgia, and California are among the states that face the strongest competition from Mexico. Among the 10 crops reviewed, berry, tomato, pepper, and cucumber production has been affected the most. The study further discusses the factors driving the rapid growth of imports and shows the importance of innovation and policy reform to the sustainability of the U.S. fruit and vegetable industry.

The United States is one of the world’s top producers of fresh tomatoes. However, the industry supply chain is not well understood with little attention in the literature. To attend to this literature gap and to better inform business decisions and policy making, it is crucial to understand the industry structure on a deeper level. Applying a supply chain mapping approach, this study presents a complete picture of the U.S. fresh tomato supply chain with valuable insights into the fresh produce industry and lays the groundwork for future research on solving supply chain issues.

Agroathelia rolfsii (A. rolfsii), the causal agent of southern blight (SB) of tomato, is a soilborne fungal pathogen that produces sclerotia to survive during fallow periods and is commonly managed with pre-plant soil fumigation in commercial tomato production. However, fumigant efficacy against A. rolfsii sclerotia distributed throughout raised bed soil profiles and the economic return of fumigant inputs have not been assessed for currently available fumigant systems. Across four trials, this study evaluated the efficacy of three fumigant treatments against A. rolfsii sclerotia distributed at different soil depths and placements, on SB disease incidence, and marginal economic returns in a plasticulture fresh-market tomato system. Treatments included the grower-standard chloropicrin and 1,3,-dichloropropene (Pic-Clor) applied at the bed base, metam potassium (Kpam) applied in the top half of the bed, and a combination treatment (Pic-Clor+Kpam). Beds treated with Pic-Clor+Kpam saw 2-3% sclerotia survival across all burial depths and placements, compared to the grower’s standard, Pic-Clor, which had 11% recovery at 1.5 cm and 5% at 10 cm depths. Across all seasons, Pic-Clor+Kpam and Pic-Clor limited disease incidence below 2% and 4% respectively, compared to 9% for Kpam and 43% for the nonfumigated control. All fumigant treatments returned at least $20,000/hectare more than the nonfumigated control during high disease pressure seasons. Moreover, both Pic-Clor alone and Pic-Clor+Kpam returned $25,0000/hectare, suggesting that the additional cost of Kpam was not justified based on marginal economic return when only considering disease management. While additional bed-top Kpam application does lower surviving inoculum levels and improves SB disease management compared to Pic-Clor alone, the prospect of limiting other pesticidal applications may be needed to justify the additional cost as marginal returns are comparable across systems.

We investigate the determinants of U.S. bilateral imports of olive oil and their dynamics from shocks in foreign supplies and changes in U.S. olive oil demand, using an augmented gravity framework that leads to an equilibrium of bilateral trade flows from olive oil exporters to the U.S. market. The empirical specification is applied at the disaggregated HS-6 level in a panel dataset, and three estimation techniques (truncated OLS, PPML, Heckman), for which the latter two account for zero trade flows, the extensive margin of trade and the potential censored distribution of exports with zero trade flows. We run Reset and HPC tests to qualify our results. On the supply side, exporters’ capacity to exports, multilateral trade resistance, and immigrants’ networks into the US are strong determinants of the bilateral trade flows for both aggregate olive oil exports and for virgin olive oil exports, On the consumer side, U.S. GDP, the import unit value, and immigrant network effects are robust determinants of bilateral flows as well for aggregate and virgin olive oil trade flows. Migrants’ stock, exporters’ GDP and population, and total exports revenues increase the probability of an exporter entering the U.S. market. We could not find robust evidence of consumer behavior being influenced by popular press measures of the emergence of Mediterranean diet and olive oil, or measures of cultural globalization of U.S. consumers.