Mexico a Horn of Plenty in U.S. Produce Needs

The inspector picked his way quickly through the stacked boxes of bananas, strawberries, cucumbers and peppers.

Awaiting his gaze were crates containing plantains, radishes, turnips, cilantro, asparagus, mustard greens and lettuce, all unloaded onto the cargo bays from waiting vehicles.

Later there would be corn husks and nopales, coconuts and jicama, Brussels sprouts and mangoes. And more strawberries, always strawberries in March. Not far away, tractor-trailer rigs awaiting fruit and vegetable inspection stretched for blocks.

Soon, it will be the season of the tomatoes, four different varieties, red and green, truckload after truckload.

“Beautiful,” the inspector said, working his way rapidly through the crates, selecting a papaya here, a pepper there, always on the lookout for signs of pests, disease or other abnormalities. “Muy bonito. “

So it goes each day at the Otay Mesa Cargo Processing Facility, the entry point for Mexican goods arriving at the U. S. border in San Diego.

The frenzied activity along the border is a part of the huge, albeit generally unrecognized, traffic of Mexican produce that heads north daily.

The sabotage of grapes recently focused attention on imports of Chilean products, but relatively little notice has been taken of the Mexican fruit and vegetables that represent a much greater chunk of the U. S. food market, and one that is growing. In fact, Mexico is by far the most important foreign supplier of fresh produce to the United States, sending more than $600 million worth, mostly in vegetables, to its northern neighbor in the most recent fiscal year, according to the U. S. Department of Agriculture. (Chile, which ranked a distant second to Mexico, exported somewhat less than $300 million in produce, mostly fruit, to the United States during the same period.)

For debt-wracked Mexico, the trade is a much-needed source of foreign revenue--one that has been encouraged by Mexico City, with considerable success. The trend is upward. Vast, irrigated production areas, such as the San Quintin region south of Ensenada in Baja California, have been carved out of parched desert and semi-desert largely to serve the U. S. market, transforming huge swaths of Northern Mexico into farm export platforms--agricultural Hong Kongs. Other key producing regions for the U. S. trade include the northern states of Sonora, Tamaulipas and, perhaps most important, Sinaloa. Modern highways lead directly from the farms and packing sheds to the border.

Spurring the industry is the investment of many U. S.-based growers and international agribusiness concerns, drawn to Mexico by its proximity to the U. S. market, its cheap land, its abundance of sunshine, inexpensive labor and relative lack of regulation. Harsh working conditions and low pay for field hands, many of them Indians from the Mexican interior, have led to sporadic work stoppages and labor confrontations. But Mexican activists say their reform efforts have been stymied by the government’s alliance with the big growers.

“In Mexico and the Caribbean, people will pick or they’ll starve,” noted Gordon Tween, officer in charge of the U. S. Department of Agriculture’s plant protection and quarantine service at the port in San Diego.

Barbara Buck, spokeswoman for the Irvine-based Western Growers Assn., a trade group representing farmers, packers and shippers in California and Arizona, said: “We see a trend for more and more of our members to grow in Mexico and other countries. It’s becoming a global economy.”

In fact, although the United States remains a huge net exporter of food, the volume and value of foodstuffs imported into the country has been increasing, topping $21 billion in the most recent fiscal year, according to government figures. (Total U. S. agricultural exports amounted to more than $35 billion.)

Influences Demand

Although the Mexican fruits and vegetables represent increased competition for some U. S.-grown produce, the products, like other imports, also stimulate the domestic industry by getting customers used to the constant availability of certain foods that have limited growing seasons north of the border. “Having a product year-round increases demand,” Buck said.

The global food economy is clearly on display in San Diego and other border crossings.

Most Mexican foodstuffs arrive via refrigerated tractor-trailers at a dozen or so entry points along the 1,952-mile southern border, from Brownsville on the Gulf Coast to San Diego on the Pacific. The port of Nogales, Ariz., is by far the busiest point of entry for Mexican produce, accounting for more than half of the approximately 1.5 million metric tons of fruits and vegetables that were imported from south of the border in the most recent fiscal year, according to Mexican industry figures. More than 120,000 metric tons arrived via San Diego, which ranked as the third-busiest produce entry port, after Nogales and Hidalgo, Texas.

The bulk of the Mexican produce consists of winter vegetables destined for the supermarkets and grocery stores of the West. Tomatoes are king among the Mexican produce, accounting for more than one-quarter of total fruit and vegetable imports, followed by cucumbers, onions and peppers. Last year, more than 50 varieties of fresh fruit, vegetables and herbs arrived at U. S. ports along the border. It’s a good bet that most off-season crops on sale from San Diego to Seattle were grown in Mexico. A vast distribution network trucks them north.

“Mexican vegetables pretty much have the West Coast market locked up,” noted Bruce Zanin, an agricultural economist who analyzes imports for the agriculture department in Washington. “Florida pretty much has the East Coast. The Midwest is kind of split.”

Importation is a complex process, involving reams of paper work, manifests, official checkoffs and inspections. Because of pests that could be harmful to U. S. crops, notably the Mexican and Mediterranean fruit flies, many Mexican fruits, including citrus, avocados and a wide array of tropical products such as guavas, cannot be legally exported across the border, or can only cross with a special certificate from a U. S.-employed inspector in Mexico attesting that the produce is pest-free. Only three vegetables are now “non-enterable”: yams, sweet potatoes and potatoes.

Growers Know the Rules

Because big Mexican growers and shippers know the rules, officials say border seizures of illegal Mexican produce mainly involves tourists and shoppers. “Interception of commercial quantities of fruits and vegetables from Mexico tend to be very low, if non-existent,” noted Scot Campbell, an official in Washington with the Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

In San Diego, all commercial shipments arrive through the Otay Mesa facility, which was opened in 1985 and is already overburdened, prompting plans to expand. At the port, a complement of inspectors from an array of regulatory agencies is responsible for ensuring that the vast and growing supply of produce meets U. S. standards for health, safety and marketing.

Agricultural inspectors check that fruits and vegetables do not carry pests or diseases that could be harmful to domestic crops. U. S. Food and Drug Administration officials seek signs that the material may contain excessive pesticide residues. Customs Service personnel, sometimes employing drug-sniffing dogs amid the produce crates, attempt to ensure that duties are paid and no contraband is hidden amid the shipments. State and county inspectors review produce quality, and are also concerned about certain pests.

“We’re kind of like the first line of defense,” said Tween, the U. S. agriculture official in charge of plant protection and quarantine at the port.

It is a massive job. Last year federal inspectors at the Otay crossing cleared more than 30,000 produce trucks carrying more than 500 million pounds of fruits, vegetables and herbs. Authorities concede that only a small percentage can actually be looked at; they rely on spot checks. Each year, authorities say, agricultural inspectors in San Diego confiscate 64,000 lots of contraband, from pest-infested fruits to smuggled parrots.

The type of produce shipped varies with the season and the demand; the popularity of certain products on the U. S. market can vary drastically. Shipments of Mexican strawberries through Otay Mesa, for instance, have grown dramatically, from none in 1983 to 26 million pounds last year.

“I see this market getting bigger and bigger,” Tween said. “I see it getting huge.”

MEXICAN PRODUCE IMPORTS

Mexican produce arrivals at Otay Mesa 1988: 540,274,113 lbs.

Source: U.S. Dept. of Agriculture