Squeezed From Both Sides: Imports, Labor Costs and a Threadbare Safety Net Define the Specialty Crop Crisis

Fruit and vegetable growers face surging foreign competition, a workforce crisis Congress is finally moving to address, and risk management tools that were never built for them — the 2026 Farm Bill and USMCA review will determine whether relief arrives in time

American specialty crop agriculture is confronting a convergence of pressures unlike anything in its modern history. Import volumes from Mexico and other suppliers keep climbing, compressing the market windows and farm-gate prices that domestic growers depend on. Labor — the single largest and most volatile cost in fruit and vegetable production — has become both scarce and expensive, pushing growers deeper into an H-2A guestworker program that until recently was itself a source of runaway cost inflation. And when disaster strikes, the risk management architecture that cushions corn, soybean and wheat producers largely bypasses the fruit and vegetable sector, leaving growers dependent on ad hoc relief programs that have proven slow, inequitable and poorly matched to how specialty agriculture operates. Each of these pressures is now the subject of active policy combat in Washington — in the Securing Agriculture’s Workforce Act, in the dueling House and Senate farm bills, and in the USMCA joint review. The outcomes will determine whether domestic fruit and vegetable production remains a viable enterprise or continues its slow migration offshore.

The import tide keeps rising

The numbers tell a story of structural displacement, not cyclical competition. Imports accounted for 36.3% of the U.S. vegetable supply in 2024, up from 9.7% in 1990, and the crop-level detail is stark: in 1990, U.S. tomato production was three times higher than imports, but by 2024 imports had doubled domestic output, while cucumber imports rose from roughly half of domestic production in 1990 to seven times that level in 2024. Per 2025 USDA data, cucumbers are now 91% import-dependent and tomatoes 69%, and in 2024 U.S. table grape imports exceeded domestic production for the first time. Mexico dominates this flow. In 2024, Mexico accounted for 69% of U.S. fresh vegetable import value — up from roughly 65% in 2000 — with Canada at 20% and all other suppliers marginal; on a volume basis, Mexico supplied about 77% of fresh vegetable imports in 2025. Fresh vegetable imports grew from $2.1 billion in 2000 to $13.3 billion in 2024, and USDA’s May 2026 trade outlook shows the totals still climbing: overall agricultural imports hit a record $219.4 billion in fiscal 2025, with horticultural products at $101.6 billion — including $20.3 billion in fresh fruit and $11.9 billion in fresh vegetables — and imports from Mexico reaching $45.7 billion. The horticultural trade deficit climbed to $37 billion in 2024 and hit $28.6 billion in just the first half of 2025. One nuance: USDA’s fiscal 2026 forecasts show modest declines from the 2025 records — fresh vegetables at $11.6 billion, Mexico at $43.2 billion — but that reflects unit-value normalization after weather-inflated prices, not a volume retreat.

Market window creep is the real killer

The most consequential shift for domestic growers is not winter imports — those have long complemented U.S. production — but what USDA economists call market window creep: imports arriving earlier and staying later, eroding the traditional domestic marketing seasons that once gave Florida, Georgia, California and Michigan growers their profit opportunities. Summer bell pepper imports from Mexico rose 742% between 2008–10 and 2018–20; cucumbers rose 156%, snap beans 204%. Mexico’s government-subsidized expansion of protected-culture production — greenhouses and shade houses receiving project subsidies that reached 4 million pesos by 2019 — has enabled year-round shipping of blueberries, bell peppers and strawberries directly into what were once secure domestic windows. Import competition that used to be a winter phenomenon now presses on growers during their own harvest seasons, and academic analysis confirms it has stressed domestic prices and grower revenue during precisely those months.

Trade remedies have mostly failed growers

Southeastern producers have pursued trade relief repeatedly with little to show for it. USITC investigations into blueberries and spring table grapes concluded imports were not injuring the domestic industry, and a 2022 petition from Florida’s congressional delegation alleging a Mexican export targeting scheme built on lower wage rates produced a USTR-USDA competitiveness collaboration rather than duties. The Seasonal and Perishable Agricultural Products Advisory Committee, created in 2023, acknowledged the structural concern but has not altered the trajectory. That leaves the USMCA joint review — the process now underway following the parties’ decision not to confirm a 16-year extension — as the growers’ best remaining forum. Southeastern producer groups want a seasonal trade remedy mechanism that would allow regional industries to bring cases without demonstrating national injury, a proposal Mexico fiercely resists and that Midwestern export interests view warily, given that Mexico and Canada remain the top markets for U.S. corn, wheat and soybeans. Senate Ag Chairman John Boozman (R-Ark.) has emphasized exactly that tension, warning that farm bill and trade policy must protect the rules-based commitments of the agreement even as specialty crop constituencies demand enforcement teeth. Sources signal the seasonal remedy will remain a bargaining chip in the U.S.-Mexico bilateral track rather than a delivered outcome, because the arithmetic of U.S. agricultural trade still favors the export coalition.

Labor: the cost that decides everything

The competitive gap with Mexico is, at bottom, a labor cost gap, and it explains why the workforce fight has become the specialty crop industry’s top legislative priority. Hand-harvested crops require labor intensity that row crops simply do not — as one Georgia industry executive put it, ten acres of cotton needs half a person while ten acres of peppers may need 15 or 20. With domestic workers essentially absent from the applicant pool — of 415,000 agricultural jobs posted for the 2025 season, only 182 domestic workers applied — the H-2A program has become the de facto workforce. Certified positions grew from under 100,000 in 2013 to nearly 400,000 in fiscal 2025, with fiscal 2026 on pace for a record after more than a quarter million certifications in the first half. But the program’s cost trajectory was crushing its users: the national Adverse Effect Wage Rate climbed more than $5.50 per hour between 2018 and 2025, from $12.20 to $17.74, outpacing general inflation by over 70% since 2010, with some states seeing multiyear 20% annual increases.

The wage rule reset — and its risks

The Labor Department’s October 2025 interim final rule rewired the AEWR methodology, replacing the canceled USDA Farm Labor Survey with Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics data, creating a two-tier skill structure and allowing housing cost adjustments. The relief was immediate and large — entry-level minimum rates dropped to $13.78 in some states from $18.15, industry estimates put employer savings around $1.6 billion annually, and Michigan alone projected $24 million to $53 million in 2026 savings. 

But the rule carries three durability risks that growers should not discount. First, litigation: the United Farm Workers Foundation has already sued, and worker advocates calculate farmworkers stand to lose $4.4 billion to $5.4 billion annually, a figure that will feature prominently in court and in any future Democratic administration’s rulemaking. Second, methodology: two-thirds of workers in the five occupations feeding the new calculation are hand packers, most working in nonfarm warehouses, an anomaly that invites legal and technical challenge. Third, workforce stability: growers report experienced returning workers declining contracts after entry-level wages dropped sharply, a reminder that wage suppression has its own operational costs.

SAWA: the most serious reform vehicle in 25 years

That fragility is why the industry has thrown its weight behind the Securing Agriculture’s Workforce Act (SAWA), unveiled June 30 by House Ag Committee Chairman GT Thompson (R-Pa.) with backing from more than 400 farm organizations — a coalition breadth Thompson himself notes has never been assembled behind ag labor reform. SAWA would codify the interim final rule’s AEWR methodology in statute, insulating it from litigation and administrative reversal; cap annual wage movements (increases at 3.25% in bill text, with a drafting discrepancy against the 3.5% summary that needs cleanup); allow housing costs to count toward compensation; extend H-2A eligibility to jobs lasting up to 350 days, opening the program to dairy, livestock, greenhouse and controlled-environment agriculture; create a single online application portal; and shift the definition of agricultural labor from Labor to USDA. Its most politically delicate provision would let certain unauthorized workers present as of May 31, 2026, who can document sustained agricultural work, obtain H-2A status — explicitly without a citizenship pathway. That waiver is the bill’s load-bearing wall and its biggest vulnerability: agriculture cannot function without converting some portion of the existing unauthorized workforce into legal channels, but any legalization-adjacent language draws fire from immigration hardliners, while the UFW opposes the bill from the other flank as a wage-protection rollback. Thompson’s months of pre-negotiation with Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) suggests the House path is real; the Senate, where 60 votes are required and Democrats will demand worker protections, is where SAWA’s fate will actually be decided. History counsels caution — the Farm Workforce Modernization Act passed the House twice and died in the Senate both times — but the combination of a secured border narrative, unprecedented coalition breadth and genuine bipartisan sponsorship makes this the strongest alignment for ag labor reform since IRCA in 1986.

The safety net that isn’t

The third leg of the specialty crop squeeze is risk management, and here the equity gap is stark. Fruit and vegetable growers are excluded from Title I programs — no ARC, no PLC, save narrow exceptions for pulses — and the Federal Crop Insurance Program, despite expanding specialty crop insured liabilities from about $1 billion in 1990 to more than $25 billion in 2022, still leaves over 43% of fruit and nut acreage and 47% of vegetable and melon acreage without either FCIP or NAP coverage. More than 80% of hazelnut, kiwifruit, strawberry and lettuce acreage is uncovered. The structural problem is data: most fruits and vegetables lack futures markets or centralized price discovery, making revenue products hard to actuarially design, while NAP covers only production losses from natural disasters, not the revenue collapses that import competition inflicts. Whole Farm Revenue Protection was meant to fill the gap and serves diversified operations up to $17 million in insured revenue, but its paperwork burden and limits on greenhouse and livestock revenue have kept uptake modest.

Ad hoc relief has compounded the inequity

When standing programs fail, specialty growers fall back on ad hoc disaster assistance, and the recent record is damning. Under the Supplemental Disaster Relief Program, most payments flowed through Phase 1, which pre-filled applications using existing RMA crop insurance data — data specialty growers largely lack. Pushed into a manual Phase 2 requiring tax and production records, specialty crop producers had received only 8% of SDRP payments despite representing nearly 20% of documented 2024 crop losses, roughly $4 billion, with growers holding losses from early 2023 still awaiting a payment framework. This is the concrete meaning of “inequitable”: the delivery machinery itself is built on row crop data infrastructure, so even nominally commodity-neutral relief programs systematically shortchange fruit and vegetable farmers on both speed and share.

What the farm bills would do about it

Both chambers have now moved to institutionalize a fix. 

The House-passed Farm, Food, and National Security Act (HR 7567, approved 224-200 on April 30) establishes a framework for direct assistance to specialty crop producers hit by adverse events, expands crop insurance research and development mandates — including revenue policies for blueberries and other specialty crops, a specialty crop pricing library, and expanded hurricane and tropical storm coverage — and adds market price decline to the list of insurable losses under the Federal Crop Insurance Act, a potentially significant opening for import-pressured growers. 

Chairman Boozman’s 902-page Senate discussion draft, released June 23, includes a Specialty Crop Emergency Assistance Framework that would standardize future ad hoc aid calculations based on prior-year sales, echoing the MASC program structure, alongside state disaster block grants for quicker, regionally tailored delivery, an expanded Tree Assistance Program and broadened produce purchasing under federal nutrition programs. Specialty crop groups from Texas Citrus Mutual to AmericanHort and the International Fresh Produce Association have praised the draft while pressing to strengthen the emergency framework — though sustainable agriculture advocates flag the $900,000 payment limits as generous to the largest operations. 

Separately, RMA’s own 2026 final rule quietly expanded Dollar Plan coverage to direct-marketed fresh tomatoes and peppers, a small but telling acknowledgment that insurance design must follow how growers sell.

Bottom line

The specialty crop sector’s three crises are one crisis: a domestic industry whose cost structure — dominated by labor — cannot match subsidized, low-wage competition operating under the same tariff-free market access, and whose safety net was designed for a different kind of agriculture. The policy response is finally proportionate to the problem, but sequencing and politics matter enormously. SAWA offers durable labor cost relief but must survive a Senate filibuster and immigration politics that have killed every predecessor. The farm bill’s specialty crop emergency framework and crop insurance expansions are genuinely responsive but hinge on a bipartisan Senate markup that has slipped repeatedly, with Democrats conditioning cooperation on SNAP restoration and a conference still to come after that. And the USMCA review is more likely to produce bilateral managed-trade accommodations than the seasonal remedy Southeastern growers want. Sources expect the wage relief to hold through 2026 barring an adverse court ruling, and they expect a farm bill conference fight over the payment limits and coverage details of the specialty crop framework, and they further expect import share to keep grinding higher in the interim — because the structural drivers, from Mexico’s protected-culture investment to American consumers’ year-round produce expectations, respond to economics, not legislation. 

For fruit and vegetable growers, 2026 is the year Washington finally took the whole problem seriously; whether it is the year Washington actually delivered will be decided between the July markup window and the lame duck.