The U.S. government says it's placing a 17% duty on most fresh Mexican tomatoes after negotiations ended without an agreement to avert the tariff.
The U.S. government said Monday it is immediately placing a 17% duty on most fresh Mexican tomatoes after negotiations ended without an agreement to avert the tariff.
My old highschool now has the option for kids to opt out of PE instead you hop on the school bus and your 4 hour block is instead done on a local farm helping out.
You know it was always one of the big points that got brought up in hypothetical WW3 scenarios that the US has enough food to support itself even if it went totally isolationist. Kind of incredible that they found a way to fuck up one of their greatest advantages.
Not a Trump fan, but year round tomatoes could actually be done. Regrettably barely anyone wants to invest in it. Indoor farming and hydroponics are a thing. They use less water and less/no pesticides. And they are great for “buy local” without having to ship them from another country. And you don’t have to pick them in the hot sun. So far I’ve seen lettuce and strawberries for sale in my local grocery that were grown this way.
Shipping from Mexico isn't very far, fyi. Mexico is closer to the entire southern and western US than those areas are to New England. To be clear, I support eating/buying local at every opportunity, but as international trading partners go, shipping from Mexico is about as efficient as can be.
Hydroponics and indoor farming add significant cost, also
The US has plenty of areas with a shitton of sun in the winter. Very dry areas, like southern Spain, or Israel, produce year round and with little available water, but well managed.
The Netherlands produce vegetables, competitive for export, with half the sun or heat.
Vegetables are one of the few sectors that can be repatriated in a short time through tariffs.
When you get into tree crops and such is when you have the same problem as with factories, years until production.
Given that tomatoes suffer when nighttime temperatures start going below 55°F (13°C), there is pretty much nowhere in the continental US where they can be grown successfully year-round without some sort of environmental control or protection.
Want people to eat more US tomatoes? Maybe try making them taste good instead of just growing the tomato equivalent of iceberg lettuce because it keeps for weeks and "looks good"
The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit—and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains.
And the smell of rot fills the country.