Jaime Chamberlain expects Mexican produce exports to North America “to evolve and grow faster in the next 10 years than we have in the last 50 years.”

Chamberlain, president of the Nogales, AZ-based J-C Distributing Inc., shared these thoughts March 3 in Yuma, AZ, at the University & Industry Consortium Conference.

Chamberlain is a former president of the Fresh Produce Association of the Americas in Nogales and holds several key leadership positions in Arizona.Jaime Chamberlain

“Technological advances in seed breeding, soil conditioning, grafting, fertilization, pesticide use, packingshed automation and greenhouse ag growth have brought Mexican agricultural practices into the 21st century, while making them competitive with first-world economic powers in productivity and quality,” he said.

Chamberlain indicated that U.S. imports from Mexico have “reached historic record highs of 387,000 truckloads of produce through all 47 of [U.S.] Southwest border ports of entry with a value of $8.3 billion for the 11.4 billion pounds of produce. The total value was just $4.9 billion in 1997. Our Mariposa Port of Entry in Nogales crosses 37 percent of all the Mexican fruits and vegetables consumed in the U.S. and Canada. The Mariposa port is the most modern facility of its kind in the United States with a recent government investment of over $215 million for its complete reconstruction.”

Mariposa has the capacity to process over 4,000 trucks a day, “yet we only have the manpower to process the 1,600 to 1,800 trucks a day we currently cross. U.S. Customs & Border Protection is understaffed by almost 400 agents at our port alone. In fact almost every land port, seaport and airport in the U.S. is understaffed. This creates an inefficient and slow process for foreign goods coming into and out of the U.S. Recent studies show that each Customs officer adds $2 million to the U.S. gross domestic product.  

“The reason I point out this specific challenge of our ports of entry is because Mexico is poised to grow exponentially in the realm of greenhouse-protected agriculture,” he added. “Of the estimated 800,000 hectares of protected agriculture in the world, Mexico ranks fifth, behind China, Spain, Turkey and Italy. Mexico’s 20,400 hectares (50,400 acres) of greenhouse infrastructure are worth over $7.1 billion. This greenhouse sector of Mexican agriculture generates over 280,000 direct and 350,000 indirect jobs for Mexico. In comparison, the U.S. and Canada combined only have 5,000 hectares (12,350 acres) of greenhouses currently in production.”