Fresh veggie imports up 200% in past two decades; USDA digital magazine Amber Waves has more data-rich reports

Increasing consumer demand for year-round access to fresh produce has driven a 200% increase in fresh vegetable imports over the past two decades. That brings a host of challenges to U.S. farmers.

The top two sources of imported fresh veggies are Mexico (77%) and Canada (11%), thanks to favorable trade agreements, a stronger dollar, and those countries' ability to cater to Americans' tastes with affordable organic and greenhouse-grown produce, Wilma Davis and Gary Lucier report for Amber Waves, a digital Agriculture Department magazine.

Extended market-window creep is another reason for Mexico and Canada's increasing dominance of imported vegetables: The U.S. once imported vegetables mostly when they were out of season domestically, but vegetables grown under greenhouses or in much warmer climates make it easy for American wholesalers or grocers to buy imported produce even when it's in season in the U.S. For example, "Summer is historically the primary market window for U.S. producers; however, fresh vegetable import volumes from Mexico during the summer months have shown substantial increases in the past 15 years," Davis and Lucier report. (The proliferation of imported, greenhouse-grown produce helped spur AppHarvest, a start-up building huge greenhouses in Kentucky.)

Amber Waves has other excellent reports from USDA's Economic Research Service that can inform rural reporting. Here are a few others from this month's edition, and from ERS's home site:

Food pantry use increased from 2019 to 2020 for most types of U.S. households. "Data from the Current Population Survey Food Security Supplement sponsored by the USDA Economic Research Service shows that use of food pantries increased from 2019 to 2020. In 2020, 6.7 percent of all U.S. households reported using a food pantry, an increase from 4.4 percent in 2019," Alisha Coleman-Jensen and Matthew P. Rabbitt report.

Free meal sites expanded rapidly to provide meals to children during the early months of the pandemic, Saied Toossi reports. A working paper provides more details, and notes that free meal sites are more prevalent in urban areas, leaving many rural communities underserved.

Off-farm organizations are responsible for bringing 40% of total irrigation water applied to croplands. Several federal agencies collaborated on a survey of such organizations in 2019, the first federal attempt to collect nationwide data on such organizations since the Census Bureau's 1978 Census of Irrigation Organizations. The report highlights broad trends, including how much water is lost to seepage because of unlined irrigation canals. Considering the massive drought in the West, that data matters. Read more here.