The Ledger
Published Tuesday, August 10, 2004
LAKELAND, FL -- The nation's shrimping industry is struggling because of cheap, foreigncaught shrimp being sold in the United States at rockbottom prices. Florida is a big part of that industry: Shrimping provides 4,400 jobs and contributes $97 million to the state economy, the Florida Department of Agriculture estimates.
In the past four years, however, shrimp imports have increased dramatically from Vietnam, India, China and Brazil. Nationwide, an estimated 200,000 U.S. jobs have been lost because of shrimp imports.
It was only last month that the Bush administration agreed that foreign shrimp from foreign counties was being sold here at artificially low prices. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has proposed tariffs on shrimp from six nations.
Florida citrus growers, faced with imports from Brazil, can feel the pain of the shrimpers.
Now, another struggling Florida industry faces competition: The U.S. Department of Agriculture has proposed allowing Mexico to ship avocados to all 50 states yearround. A 60-day period for public comment ended last month.
The proposal would overturn bans in 29 states -- including Florida and California. The two states account for 100 percent of United State's avocado production, although Florida contributes only about 5 percent.
Even so, Florida's avocado market is a $20 million industry -- an amount equal to the yearly importation from Mexico nationwide. Mexico can currently import during six months of the year -- a restriction that would be lifted under the Commerce Department's proposed guidelines.
Mexico's annual production far outstrips both California and Florida, and the proposed changes would about triple current imports from Mexico -- with much of the crop going to the millions of potential consumers in Florida and California.
"The volume of Mexico is so huge that even if the fruit is a little different, they can still affect avocado prices," said Carlos Balerdi, a commercial tropical fruit specialist for the Miami-Dade County Agricultural Extension Service, to The Miami Herald.
Florida avocados are, indeed, different from the predominant variety grown in California and Mexico. The most popular Californian and Mexican avocado is the Haas, with its pebbly black skin. It is smaller than the Florida variety, which has smooth, medium-green skin.
Florida avocados have less fat and fewer calories than an equal serving of Haas avocados. "We have positioned our avocado as a low-fat, low-calorie option to Haas," Pal Brooks, president of Brooks Tropicals in Homestead, told The Herald. The company is marketing a "SlimCado" avocado it has developed that has half the fat and a third less calories than a Haas. "So I think [the change for Mexican imports] is going to impact the California producer more than us because the Florida avocado is, and always has been, an alternative."
Jim Rogers, a spokesman for the Agriculture Department's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, told a California reporter last month when the public comment period ended that it was "too early to say how long it will take for us to make a decision." He said nearly 6,000 letters and e-mails were received on the subject. "We're looking at the comments and, based on the comments, we'll make a decision."
Public opposition was heavy in the mid-1990s when the USDA liberalized rules on Mexican avocado imports to allow them mostly in states in the Northeast. Domestic growers can only hope that this time, the public comments receive more weight.
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