US Produce Farmers Face Growing Import Pressure

Aug 19, 2026
By Farms.com

Rising imports and costs create new challenges for fruit and vegetable growers

U.S. fruit and vegetable growers are facing growing challenges as production costs continue to rise while imported produce captures a larger share of the market.

Fresh fruits and vegetables are highly perishable products. Growers often have only a short period to harvest and sell their crops, making market timing extremely important. Even a brief period of excess supply can significantly reduce prices and profits.

Imports remain an important part of the food system. They help provide consumers with fresh produce throughout the year and fill seasonal gaps when domestic production is lower. However, imported fruits and vegetables are increasingly entering the market during active U.S. harvest seasons, creating additional competition for local growers.

Domestic producers are dealing with rising labor expenses, higher input costs, and increasing regulatory requirements. These added expenses make it more difficult for farmers to recover costs, invest in their operations, and remain competitive.

The effects are visible across many produce sectors. Since 2010, U.S. fruit production has declined significantly, while vegetable production has also fallen. At the same time, imports of fresh fruits and vegetables have increased sharply.

Competition varies by crop. Some commodities experience steady import pressure throughout the year, while others face increased competition during critical harvest periods. This overlap can place downward pressure on market prices when farmers are attempting to sell fresh products quickly.

Growing dependence on foreign production also raises concerns about food security. Events such as extreme weather, transportation disruptions, political instability, and food safety issues can affect the availability of imported produce.

Trade will continue to play an essential role in supplying consumers with fresh food. However, industry observers say maintaining a strong domestic fruit and vegetable sector is equally important. Supporting profitable production at home can help strengthen supply chains, improve resilience, and ensure a reliable food supply for future generations.

Photo Credit: getty-images-eric-ferguson

Video: Can Gene Editing Give Seeds a Stronger Start?

Reagan Reed has a way of describing his research that might make a plant breeder pause.

“I’m the sort of person who likes to break things to understand them,” he says.

What he breaks are genes involved in seed germination. Reed, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Davis, is investigating whether changing those genes can help seeds establish healthy plants under a wider range of conditions.

Reed recently attended the National Association for Plant Breeding meeting in College Station, Texas, as an NAPB Borlaug Scholar. His work speaks to a question that matters well beyond a research lab: what does it take for a seed to get a crop off to a strong start?

A seed that germinates quickly, alongside the others planted with it, spends less time vulnerable to stresses before seedlings become established.

“If you’re able to bridge that gap between germination to stand establishment, then that’s going to give you the highest probability of having a solid yield that year,” Reed says. “There’s a bunch that can go wrong after that, but it maximises your yield from the start, at least.”

Reed works in Dr. Imtiyaz Khanday’s lab at UC Davis, where his research focuses on seed quality in tomatoes and potatoes. He brings an unusual academic background to the work: at Skidmore College, he studied both biology and Latin.

Reed believes that combination prepared him for research. Translating an ancient text means studying each word, weighing its possible meanings and using context to reach the best interpretation. There is rarely a way to know with complete certainty what an author intended. Science, he says, requires a similar willingness to work through uncertainty.

“Attention to detail and comfortability working with uncertainty,” is how he sums up what Latin taught him.

In the lab, uncertainty can produce a surprise. Reed describes changing one gene and seeing little effect. Changing a second gene also appears to do little. Put both changes in the same genetic background, though, and the result can be substantial.

“I break this gene, nothing really happens. I break this other gene, nothing really happens. I combine them into the same genetic background, and now there’s a massive effect,” he says.

Those interactions matter as researchers gain the ability to edit multiple genes at once. They also complicate any simple account of how a trait works: improving a seed may depend on understanding what several genes do together.

For Reed, the question is whether that knowledge could help seeds germinate reliably when conditions are difficult. Some of the genes he studies prevent germination under certain conditions. That response may serve a plant well in one setting while limiting its usefulness in agriculture. He wants to learn what happens when those genes are changed, and whether the result improves establishment.

Yet a discovery that works in a lab still has a long way to travel before it reaches a field. Reed argues that agricultural biotechnology faces an economic challenge as well as a scientific one. New tools can create value for farmers, he says, but developing them requires a way to support the work in an industry where margins can be thin.

His fellowship with Flagship Pioneering gave him a view across AI, agriculture-related work and human health research. It also reinforced the importance of bringing people with different expertise into the same conversation—a benefit of gatherings such as the NAPB meeting.

“You need to have a team of people with different backgrounds who are willing to work together and approach the same problem in different perspectives and different ways,” he says.

That thinking connects the different parts of Reed’s path. Latin taught him to examine details without expecting a perfect answer. Gene editing lets him test what individual genes do—and what happens when their effects combine. Working with people beyond his own field helps him ask what those findings could become.

He came to agriculture because of its reach: the possibility that work by a small group of researchers could eventually make a difference on a much larger scale. His immediate focus is smaller and more precise. He wants to understand what helps a seed get through its first days and become a healthy plant.