ARIZONA & MEXICO

REGIONAL IMPACT OF FRESH PRODUCE FROM MEXICO
By Vera Pavlakovich-Kochi
The fresh produce industry in Nogales, Arizona, incorporates several activities developed around
importation of Sinaloa and Sonora grown winter produce: border inspection, custom brokerage,
freight forwarding, warehousing, packaging, sale brokerage, distribution, and transportation.
The fresh produce industry supports directly and indirectly more than 4,000 jobs in Santa Cruz County,
and accounts for 34 percent of the total County’s output.
Although the industry is concentrated in Santa Cruz County, it benefits consumers throughout
Arizona and supports Arizona’s exports of agricultural machinery, fertilizers, and seeds to Mexico.
The industry faces challenges from new produce-growing regions in Mexico, in addition to
investments in highway infrastructure and border ports of entry, which may benefit other border
states, most notably Texas.
A LONG HISTORY OF CROSSBORDER TIES
As noted in the previous chapter, Arizona has long been the primary gateway for fresh produce from
Mexico to the United States. The importation of fresh produce from the Mexican states of Sonora and
Sinaloa through Nogales goes back more than a century. But the industry as we know it today owes its
foundations to several factors: growing market demand along the west coast (most notably in California),
improvements in truck transportation (including cooling systems), and lower labor costs in combination
with mild winters and abundant water supply in Sonora and Sinaloa. For much of its growth into the
main gateway for Mexican fresh produce into the U.S., Nogales owes to a combination of favorable
geographical location, region-specific familial ties across the border, and historically accumulated
expertise in binational shipping and distribution.
The Nogales fresh produce industry is a highly integrated, cross border industry cluster. It is built on
intricate cross border relationships involving land owners in Sinaloa and Sonora, suppliers of capital,
seeds, fertilizers and machinery in Arizona, and distributors with ties on both sides of the border.
DOLLAR VALUE OF IMPORTED PRODUCE THROUGH ARIZONA
The dollar value of imported fresh produce from Mexico through Arizona was more than $2.9 billion in
2014, the last complete year for which annual data are available. This is an increase of more than $1
billion from year 2004, or 38.2 percent more than 10 years ago. Nogales is Arizona’s primary point of
entry for Mexican fresh produce and Nogales’ Mariposa border port facilitates more than 90 percent of
those imports. The remaining 7 or 8 percent enters through San Luis, and another 1 to 2 percent through
the Douglas port of entry. In 2014, $2.8 billion worth of fresh produce was imported from Mexico
through Nogales, $140 million through San Luis, and $41 million through Douglas. Although the smallest
in terms of dollar value, imports of fresh produce through Douglas experienced the highest increase in
the last 10 years, a full 99 percent increase from 2004 to 2014. During the same period imports through
San Luis increased only 3.5 percent. Figure 1 shows total value of imported fresh produce through
Arizona’s border ports of entry in the last ten years and highlights the domineering share of Nogales.
APRIL 2016 • ARIZONA TOWN HALL • ARIZONA & MEXICO • 52