If you live in Arizona, maybe you have a vague sense that many of the state’s fruits and vegetables filling our grocery aisles came from Mexico. But, what you might not realize is just how many of them do.
That’s how journalist Melissa del Bosque felt, until she took a trip to Nogales. That’s where she met Yoli Soto, the founder of Borderlands Produce Rescue. Del Bosque’s profile of Soto, recently published in the Border Chronicle, illuminated not only the quantity of produce that makes its way across the border to places throughout the U.S., but also what happens when that produce is not purchased by retailers from the produce distributors.
Del Bosque joined The Show to discuss, saying she wasn’t necessarily planning to profile Soto when she went to Nogales — she was there to speak at a conference. But then, in the middle of her panel, something remarkable happened.
Full conversation
MELISSA DEL BOSQUE: It was wild. Somebody came in and said a man just dropped off a whole pallet of cherry tomatoes on the sidewalk. People were going and getting them and bringing them in, and it was like Christmas or something. You know, it was weird. I was like, OK, well, I guess I'll go get some of these tomatoes cause they look perfectly good and nice.
And, and so I asked somebody from Nogales, like, what, what's up with this, just this guy dropping off like pallets of nice tomatoes that cost, you know, like $6 at the store in Tucson where I shop. And, he said, “oh, you didn't know Nogales is like the primary port of entry for all the produce and fruits for all of North America from November to May?”
SAM DINGMAN: Yeah, 60% of the produce consumed in North America comes in via Nogales. That's a remarkable number.
DEL BOSQUE: I know, remarkable. And then I learned about Borderlands Produce Rescue.
DINGMAN: Yeah, well, so tell folks what exactly Borderlands Produce Rescue does, because there's some equally remarkable numbers lurking in here as well.
DEL BOSQUE: Yeah, so I, so I went down to Nogales to visit with Yoli Soto, and she's the founder and CEO of Borderlands Produce Rescue, and she, you know, was born and raised in Ambos Nogales. Her dad was a pilot for the farming industry, so she grew up, you know, in the farming industry on the border, and she saw, you know, these millions of pounds of produce and fruit just being sent to the landfill in Nogales.
DINGMAN: Right. And when you say millions of pounds, we should tell people that's 250 million pounds, right?
DEL BOSQUE: You can't even picture it, and it just seems terrible, right, when there are so many people facing food insecurity.
DINGMAN: Yeah, and why, why does it get thrown away? Like what, what is the issue with this produce that ends up in the landfill?
DEL BOSQUE: I mean, that was my question, and, and she said, well, you know, the distributors and these are the warehouses that are dotted all over Nogales, so they receive the produce and the fruit from Mexico. And they house it there and they have contracts with grocery stores who, you know, they'll come and inspect it to see if it's, it's good or not, and you know, they may look at one crate of cucumbers for example, and if it doesn't look good, then they're like, no, we're rejecting this whole load of cucumbers.
DINGMAN: So then, so it's like one little packet of cucumbers has like say a nick in it, they'll just reject the whole pallet.
DEL BOSQUE: Yeah, she was saying, you know, if the stems are broken, if the produce is rain stained, I mean, Americans are pretty spoiled. They want their produce to look perfect. And if there's any little thing wrong with it, it gets rejected. So then it's slated for the landfill.
DINGMAN: This seems like an extraordinary effort, considering, as we were pointing out, this just mountain of produce that ends up in landfills, again, 250 million pounds. I feel like I can't say that number enough to, it's like if you can't picture that number, maybe if you just hear it enough, the magnitude of this will, will get through. What happens after Borderlands Produce rescue gets their hands on it?
DEL BOSQUE: Well, they have their warehouse down there on Produce Row in Nogales. They have several programs. She has a program called Veggies R Us, where they open up the warehouse and, and you can just pick up fruits and vegetables there
DINGMAN: For free?
DEL BOSQUE: It is free.They ask for a contribution of $5 but, but I don't think you actually have to pay it. And you can get up to 200 to 250 pounds of produce. Yeah, it's, it's, it's wild. And I mean, because she was saying, you know, Nogales doesn't have public transport. So what she's hoping is that people will come pick up 250 pounds of produce and then distribute it among their community, among their networks. They also have one where they're asking for host sites around Arizona, and they will drive the produce up to that host site.Typically like churches and community centers.
DINGMAN: Well, so, Melissa, this would be an incredible story under normal circumstances, just the sheer volume of produce that, as we've said, is coming into North America via Nogales, but there's this extra extraordinary layer in talking about this right now, which is the tariffs that the Trump administration has imposed on Mexico and as we're talking today, are saying will go into effect on April 2. That's obviously changing all the time, so we don't know how that's going to go, but let's assume that the tariffs do go into effect on April 2. How will that impact all this?
DEL BOSQUE: Yeah, so I was in Nogales the day that the tariffs did go into effect because they were in effect for a little more than 48 hours before President Trump rescinded it, and in talking to Yoli, she was saying, you know, distributors are going to go out of business because they have to pay the 25% tariff on the fruits and vegetables, whether they're sold or not. They, they have to pay that cost.
DINGMAN: And they're already paying to throw away 250 million pounds a year.
DEL BOSQUE: Yeah, and there still are smaller, you know, distributors, exporters, and, and they just will go bankrupt. They won't be able to compete. So, you know, our food distribution system will become further monopolized. Only the large, the biggest companies will survive the uncertainty and the tariffs. And you know, it's uncertainty that leads to waste also because the farmers in Mexico don't know what to plant or what to plan for. The distributors don't know what to plan for. Just in those two days that the tariffs were in place, food was diverted to Mexico City rather than crossing into the U.S. to avoid paying those tariffs costs.
DINGMAN: You're saying there is a very high likelihood if these tariffs went into effect, that all of a sudden we would have a lot less produce coming in, and it's hard to say where we would turn to replace it.
DEL BOSQUE: Yeah, I mean, we'd have a lot less choice of fruits and vegetables, and it will cost a lot more.
