Tomatoes have become the new symbol of soaring food prices, posting the largest price increase of any food item in April and May.
Check the price of “Tomato Flation” in Florida
The average price of tomatoes in the United States rose to $2.489 per pound. In May 2026, it will rise from $1.705 a year ago. This is the amount charged by a Florida grocery store on June 18th.
- A severe winter freeze in Florida and problems in Mexico have caused tomato prices to skyrocket, creating what some are calling “tomatoflation.”
- The national average price of fresh tomatoes hit a record high of $2.689 per pound in April, an increase of nearly 40% from a year ago.
- Florida’s tomato industry suffered an estimated loss of $164 million due to the freeze, which affected a significant portion of the crop.
- Experts expect retail tomato prices to decline over the summer as production recovers in Florida and harvest season begins in other states.
Tomatoes have become the new symbol of soaring food prices.
Some economists are calling this “tomatoflation” because the flavorful fruit has seen the biggest price increases of all foods in recent months. Florida is one of the reasons.
Florida, the nation’s largest producer of fresh tomatoes, suffered two severe winter freezes earlier this year, resulting in production losses on 80% of the 27,900 acres grown tomato on Florida’s commercial farms.
This cost Florida’s tomato industry an estimated $164 million, and the state’s agriculture industry as a whole suffered a staggering $3.17 billion loss, according to Florida Agriculture Secretary Wilton Simpson.
It also coincided with setbacks such as bad weather and disease outbreaks that hit Mexico’s tomato industry. The country produces 70% of the fresh tomatoes consumed in the United States
A combination of these factors pushed the national average price of fresh tomatoes to $2.689 per pound in April, up nearly 40% from $1.793 a year earlier, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index for the same month.
April’s average price is the highest ever for tomatoes since at least 1980, which is how far back BLS historical data for that fresh produce goes.
The national average price in May was $2.489, up 32% from $1.705 a year ago and the third highest price on record.
“What we saw was a textbook supply shock in fresh produce, with two simultaneous weather disruptions hitting the only two regions that supply the U.S. market in the winter and early spring,” said Robert Guenther, manager of the Maitland-based Florida Tomato Exchange.
“For tomato producers in particular, the $164 million loss comes on top of years of margin compression from import competition,” Gunther wrote in an email in response to questions from USA TODAY NETWORK-FLORIDA. “It’s been a tough year. …April was the toughest month of the season (for Florida tomato growers). Production was about 40% lower than last year as freeze damage hit the entire system.”
The good news is that the tomato crisis may be starting to end.
“Florida tomato production was back to near normal by the end of April,” Gunther said. “May was a strong recovery month, with production up about 36% compared to last year and about 11% above the seven-year average.…Overall, Florida’s tomato industry finished the 2025-26 season with production up about 13% compared to the previous season.”
When will tomato prices start falling?
Although it may not yet be felt by consumers, retail prices for fresh tomatoes have fallen in May from their peak in April, although they remain high.
Are tomatoflation, or whatever you want to call it, nearing its end?
Guenther thinks so, pointing to the strong end to Florida’s tomato growing season this year, which runs from October to mid-June.
As a result, “consumers should see significantly lower retail prices for tomatoes over the summer,” he said. “Long-term price conditions for the remainder of the summer will be determined by conditions in California, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, New Jersey, Michigan, and Ohio, which supply the U.S. market from June to October, as well as in Mexico and Canada.
“As long as these regions have a normal growing season, consumers should see prices return to historically normal ranges by late summer.”
Losses suffered by Florida’s tomato industry could be long-lasting
Congressman Brian Mast, who represents all of St. Lucie County and parts of Martin and Palm Beach counties, addressed the impact this winter’s freeze has had on Florida’s agriculture industry during a town hall event March 13 at the Hobe Sound Farmers Market. The event was advertised as the “Farmer Freeze Recovery Conference.”
The Palm City Republican also published a blog post the same day describing this winter’s freeze as two of the “most harmful weather events for growers in our state’s history.” These caused “years of lost labor,” he wrote.
Guenther acknowledged that it will take time for Florida’s tomato industry to recover the economic losses caused by this winter’s freeze.
“Recovery from a freeze of this magnitude is not the same as full recovery,” he says. “The impact varied depending on the stage of each crop. Seedlings and early plantings often did not survive, fields ready for harvest were cut back, and damaged tomatoes were left in the field. Growers lost an entire window of marketable production during one of Florida’s most valuable seasons. Those weeks will never be regained.”
Guenther added that the estimated $164 million loss to Florida’s tomato industry applies only to round tomatoes inspected under the federal marketing mandate. “It doesn’t include Roma, grapes, cherries or specialty varieties,” he said.
When will tomato growers start planting next season’s crop?
“The real physical recovery is already underway, as Florida’s next crop begins to be planted in August for the 2026-27 season,” said Gunther, who represents a group of commercial tomato growers across the state.
“Financial recovery to replenish balance sheets after a freeze of this magnitude will take much longer,” he said. “Federal disaster assistance through the block grant program that Secretary Simpson and Governor DeSantis have been promoting with the Department of Agriculture will be critical for many producers as they make planting decisions for next season.”
Is there a possibility that “tomatoflation” will be repeated in the future?
Gunther is furious about the term “tomatoflation,” calling it “an independent phenomenon that exaggerates what happened.”
Nevertheless, he admitted it could happen again.
“Florida has never experienced freezes this severe before, but in recent years we have not experienced freezes of this magnitude and the variability of weather has increased,” he said. “Florida agriculture is currently absorbing approximately $7.5 billion to $8.5 billion in cumulative losses from hurricanes, freezes, and blight between 2017 and 2026. This is a level of cumulative risk that will ultimately become very difficult for producers to continue absorbing without serious attention to disaster relief, trade enforcement, and the underlying competitiveness of the domestic industry.”
Gunter points out that tomatoes are not the only crop that is vulnerable to hard freezes and unfavorable growing conditions.
“The bottom line is that the U.S. food system relies on a small number of growing regions, and when those regions are disrupted at the same time, it shows up on grocery store shelves. The answer is to maintain a strong and resilient domestically based fresh tomato industry, which is exactly what FTE (Florida Tomato Exchange) does every day.”
Did US tariffs on Mexico contribute to “tomatoflation”?
Some economists attribute “tomatoflation” in part to the 17% tariff imposed by the United States on Mexican fresh tomatoes that went into effect on July 14, 2025.
Because Mexico is a major supplier of fresh tomatoes, the United States cannot easily substitute tomatoes from other countries or U.S. producers, Ricky Volpe, an agribusiness professor at California Polytechnic State University, told CNBC in an April 15 article.
These tariffs have caused some Mexican tomato growers to cut back on plantings. According to an April 22 article in Kansas-based Farm Journal The Packer, the combination of a disease outbreak that has affected some tomato fields in the country and the winter freeze that hit Florida has led to a spike in the price of tomatoes for U.S. consumers.
Gunther doesn’t think so.
“The tariffs on Mexican tomatoes are anti-dumping duties, not tariffs in the traditional trade policy sense,” he told USA TODAY NETWORK-FLORIDA. “This regulation was imposed in July 2025 after the U.S. Department of Commerce determined that Mexican growers were selling tomatoes to the U.S. market at unreasonably low prices, a determination previously confirmed by the U.S. International Trade Commission.
“The purpose of anti-dumping duties is to restore fair competition, not as a tax on consumers.”
Evidence for that, Gunter said, is the fact that U.S. wholesale tomato prices remained stable from July 2025 to January 2026.
“The sharp rise in prices started until late February 2026, when the freeze and Mexico’s disease and weather issues hit the supply chain,” he said. “This is a seven-month gap and we dispute that duty was the trigger.”
What do the historical numbers for U.S. tomato prices show?
In August 2025, the month after U.S. tariffs on Mexican tomatoes began, the national average price for field-grown tomatoes rose slightly to $1.925 per pound, according to historical BLS data stored on the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis website. The average price in July of the same year was $1.793.
U.S. tomato prices continued to decline year-on-year through February, with the average price increasing 11.1 cents from January to $1.902 per pound, a 2.9% increase from $1.848 in February 2025.
The average price in March was $2.255 per pound, an increase of 35.3 cents, an increase of nearly 24% from $1.819 in the same month last year.
The average price rose another 43.4 cents to the highest price in April and a new all-time high for fresh tomatoes. The price was $2.528 per pound, recorded 10 years ago in January 2016.
Clayton Park is a journalist with USA TODAY NETWORK FLORIDA. He’s a consumer planner in Florida, covering everything from insurance, utilities and home prices to grocery, gas and car prices. If you have a news tip, send it to cpark@usatodayco.com. Sign up for our free Florida TODAY newsletter at https://news-journalonline.com/newsletters to get all of Florida’s best content straight to your inbox every weekday.
