For more than 80 years, Lewis Taylor Farms has served as a staple of the community in Tift County, Ga.
The south central Georgia business grows and distributes bell peppers, cucumbers, squash, and eggplant up and down the East Coast and to parts of the Midwest, and providing jobs to as many as 850 employees during its picking season.
But CEO Bill Brim fears that if Congress approves the renegotiated North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement in its current form, as President Trump is urging lawmakers to do, Lewis Taylor Farms and other south Georgia growers could cease to exist.
“If the government doesn’t step in and do something to help us, we’re going to be completely broke,” Brim, who purchased Lewis Taylor Farms with his partner in 1985, said. “We won’t be able to survive anymore.”
At issue for Lewis Taylor Farms and others in rural Georgia is the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which farmers in the southeast say fails to provide fruit and vegetable growers with a relief mechanism to combat unfair trade practices by Mexico.
“We’re not even asking for protection but give us some way when this happens to be able to defend ourselves,” Charles Hall, executive director of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association, said. “What we’re asking the administration and Congress to do is give us some kind of hope or solution to this, otherwise there will be a section of American agriculture that will be gone in 8 to 10 years.”
The president announced the new NAFTA last fall and has since been calling on Congress to finalize the trade deal.
“And then the great farmers, and manufacturers, and steel plants will make our economy even more successful than it already is, if that’s possible, which it is possible,” Trump told a gathering of the National Association of Realtors on Friday.
But while the president believes the USMCA will be a boon for the economy, farmers in rural Georgia believe the potential success touted by Trump will come at their expense.
“All our members are questioning any expansion and questioning when they get out,” Hall said. “Is it better to get out of the produce industry now or do they ride it out and see if there are changes down the road?”
An April study from the University of Georgia compounded those concerns. The analysis found that economic losses to the state’s blueberry and vegetable industries would be “considerable” if Congress approves the USMCA. The state, economists at the university found, could lose up to $1 billion in annual economic output and more than 8,000 jobs.
“Crucially, the new USMCA as currently constituted contains no provision to protect American producers from seasonal damage or government subsidies, providing no remedy or relief mechanism to preserve the ability of American growers to compete fairly with Mexican imports,” the study found. “Thus, unless the current deal is amended, these Mexican imports can cause extensive economic damage to Georgia (and American) fruit and vegetable growers with no remedy available to American growers.”
Lower labor and production costs in Mexico, coupled with subsidies from the Mexican government, have given the country a competitive edge over the United States, according to the study. Additionally, Mexico has boosted its protected production area since 2009 from 25,000 acres to more than 100,000 acres. Because of an explosion in growth in imports from Mexico, fresh produce from the country now competes “directly with Georgia fruits and vegetables.”
“Georgia’s natural seasonal advantage has been diminished by Mexican imports arriving during Georgia’s selling season at prices well below Georgia’s production costs,” University of Georgia economists found.
Lawmakers from Florida and Georgia raised concerns last month about the lack of measures to protect growers in the southeast in a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, and called for the Trump administration to “ensure that clear rules are in place to defend domestic seasonal and perishable produce from unfair trade practices.”
“Domestic seasonal and perishable produce growers deserve reasonable access to trade enforcement tools that are readily available to other agriculture and industrial producers in the U.S.,” the coalition of three dozen lawmakers wrote. “Such an outcome would be good for American fruit and vegetable farmers, good for American families, and good for the nation’s food security.”
Farmers in the southeast, such as Brim, want the USMCA to include an anti-dumping provision or other trade protections that would create a more level playing field.
“It’s just too one-sided, and we think that it’s our government’s responsibility to at least give us a window to grow in and have U.S. food supply instead of Mexican food supply,” Brim said. “I feel like they’re not doing the right thing for the southeastern U.S. We grow a lot of good produce here and feed a lot of good people on the East Coast.”
Brim said Lewis Taylor Farms is one of Tift County’s largest employers, alongside Tift Regional Medical Center and the University of Georgia Tifton campus, and the effects of his farm closing could be felt throughout the community.
“We need something to help us to be sustainable and to try our best to continue to be able to survive,” he said. “I don’t mind having competition as long as it’s fair competition. It’s gotten to where it’s not fair anymore.”
Hall, of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association, agreed that it’s not just farmers who “will be suffering.”
“You’ve got a lot of rural communities that depend on that economy that if we see USMCA continue the way it’s going, then we’ve got some real issues,” he said. “The food and the agriculture industry is part of the national security, and if we have to depend on foreign countries for our food supply, then we’re much more vulnerable.”
