If true, hard to argue.
Jungmeyer says what’s really going on is that consumers just plain prefer Mexican tomatoes. Tomatoes ripened on the vine instead of ripened with ethylene gas, as Florida growers use.
I have also heard (for other type of produce, I think) that the soil is prime for some kinds of fruits and vegetables, but not others. So you can’t be great at everything, and it seems (and I am open to being wrong) that it sounds like Florida may want to use the courts to balance things in their direction. That said, large corporations are backing Mexico, and I think we have all learned that they are not the bastions of truth, and illegal deals would not be surprising.
here is the story on Florida’s soil and tomatoes, and why it isn’t a great fit.
Florida is warm in the winter, and it’s an easy trailer-truck ride to most of the country. But Florida is also about the worst possible place to grow tomatoes. Both the climate and the soil are completely unsuitable, Estabrook says, so farmers must drench their fields in pesticides and fertilizers to have any hope of a crop.
On top of that, the tomatoes you see in those supermarkets have been bred for high yields and durability, not flavor. “As a farmer once said — an honest farmer — ‘I don’t get paid a cent for flavor,'” Estabrook says.