Thousands of unharvested tomatoes are being plowed over in South Florida in a sign of what is to come under President Donald Trump's tariffs—or tariff threats—and immigration policies. Reporting by Miami's local Fox affiliate, WVSN, revealed that farmers are cutting their losses and letting crops go to waste due to increased picking and packing costs.
"You can't even afford to pick them right now," Heather Moehling, president of Miami-Dade County Farm Bureau, told WVSN. "Between the cost of labor and the inputs that goes in, it's more cost-effective for farmers to just plow them right now." Moehling said tomatoes are currently selling between $3 and $4 per box.*
But farmers need to sell a box of tomatoes for closer to $11 to break even, according to Tony DiMare, president of DiMare Homestead, which owns over 4,000 acres of tomato farms in Florida and California. American farmers haven't been able to out-compete cheaper Mexican tomatoes currently flooding the market, DiMare told WVSN.*
