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Farm Bureau wants more Mexican tomato deals

American Farm Bureau Executive Vice President Dale Moore says the updated tomato suspension agreement between Mexico and the U.S. could serve a model for other specialty crops facing increasing pressure from imports.

“As Mexico’s productivity has increased over the past several years, we’re seeing more and more pressure on things in the fruit and vegetable sector, particularly berries—strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, etcetera, as well as vegetable crops—cucumbers, peppers.”

He tells Brownfield coming to a sidebar agreement outside of trade deals like the USMCA serves as an instrument to fair trade without holding up major negotiations.

“Our hope is that we can find other ways to address it that don’t require those sectors of fruits and vegetable production to have to go through all the steps that go into building a case for a suspension agreement.”

Moore says he hopes the U.S. Trade Rep’s office will move quickly to create similar agreements for other products that are too often sold at artificially low prices.