U.S. fruit and vegetable growers made their annual trek to Capitol Hill but instead of their usual gift of a full box of fresh produce for the Members of Congress, they only filled it a quarter full. Their message: fresh fruit production has fallen by 10 percent and fresh vegetable output has gone down by 23 percent due to the lack of available laborers. At the same time, imports of fruit and vegetable products have increased by nearly 38 percent over the past five years.  The solution is revising immigration law to make temporary migrant labor easier to procure. Congress has failed to act. Mexico is the largest beneficiary of this dynamic. Some could argue that there is also a misalignment of farmland resources, where overproduction...

TAGS – Softs, North America