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$27 Million In The Red, Florida Tomato Producer Goes Bankrupt

Avatar for Paul Rusnak Posted by Paul Rusnak|May 11, 2015

According to a news report, Wauchula, FL-based tomato operation Grainger Farms Inc. has filed for bankruptcy.

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Chapter 11 documents were said to be filed with the Tampa division of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court last week.

The filing cites prolonged turbulence in the tomato market as the reason behind the company’s struggles, as well as four of its subsidiaries. Records show the companies (combined) currently have more than $27 million in unpaid debt.

Click here to find out more details and about what will happen next in the process.

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Paul Rusnak is the Senior Online Editor of American Vegetable Grower, American Fruit Grower, and Greenhouse Grower magazines, all Meister Media Worldwide brands. He is based in Northeast Florida. See all author stories here.

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Avatar for Matt Matt says:
May 11, 2015 at 3:47 pm

Gee I wonder what would cause the wholesale tomato price to fall through the floor? Hmmm, it wouldn’t have anything to do with “Free” trade from other countries would it?

Free trade only makes sense when all growers have to play by the same rules.

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Avatar for Mary A. Barfield Mary A. Barfield says:
May 12, 2015 at 6:18 pm

You are so right. First hand knowledge of the Florida growers problems with imports.

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Avatar for Robert tornello Robert tornello says:
May 19, 2015 at 8:54 am

While free trade is far from free, most of the US market place damage is created by the brokers and resellers.
They make there profits at the buy, and sell and the artificially floor price created by the sell of local farms like Grainger.
When a Florida producer pays W.Comp, state and federal employment taxes and insurances for people & equipment and umbrella policies to lower risk, it increases cost of production and goods sold, profits here are gauged in nickles and dimes.
Even at minimum wage the migrants are here because it is still substantially higher earning than south of the border were all the big producers have moved to.
Regardless of any-other problems the company may have had to accumulate 27M in debt, supply and demand and the brokers who skim the cream dictate our failed policies. When global markets crashed a few years ago, who made money going in and out and got federal dollars.
I have been in Ag for 40 years and it is always the same…follow the money.
Now our leaders want to give Asia the same equivalent to NAFTA.
Soon it will be our children fighting for the field work as this country, its products and future are all just commodities to traders who see it as just another deal.
If you are not connected to subsidies or insider deals in this industry, you are just another soon to be failed statistic.
So as California dries up and may help our states farm producers short term,you guessed it, as you are bringing in your crop they will undercut it with one from abroad.
Ag, the reality cocktail that is a bitter one to swallow.

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Avatar for Samuel Whitestone Samuel Whitestone says:
June 1, 2015 at 7:39 pm

Robert, you are 100% correct about the impact of free trade on Ag., or any industry. I watched Bill Clinton’s signature NAFTA waltz in devastation to mom and pop sewing factories all over Tennessee. Every small town had a handful of operations employing hundred of women and paying a decent wage based on piece work. It changed lives. When NAFTA came, the sewing machines were packed up and shipped south to Mexico, South and Central America. The price of jeans, shirts ans shoes didn’t go down…they went up.

Not one of these towns or families has recovered, nor is there a hope of recovery. The jobs were shipped off by Clinton businesses filed bankruptcies…it cannot be denied. Is this happening to Ag? Apparently so, but more slowly and foreign price cuts are undermining US Ag. Is there hope? Unfortunately, I do not believe so. I take this position based on two elements…if the second Clinton is elected in 2016 it will just get worse…more undermining of US businesses…that is the Democrats’ way. And, Ag. Is “business.”

Now comes a problem even if a Republican wins. The conservative movement in this country is whipped into a political “illegal alien” frenzie, and they will not accept allowing these people to remain in our country regardless of what they do or how necessary they are. Well educated conservative citizens are demanding getting them out of America. I have tried to reason with some…they either don’t get it or don’t care if a tomatoe is $5 or a head of lettuce $8. And I am not confident that the US could even produce and market produce at these prices without illegals.

The only thing you say that I take issue with and the reason for this reply, is your prediction that it will all be our children fighting for this field work. This of course implies US citizens will be fighting to pick tomatoes, stake tomatoes, plant vegetables …pick watermelons, etc. The only way that will ever occur is after the burning or American and the starvation of its people. They will work in fields only when they are starving.

The American filed worker has been gone from the farm for a longtime…it’s hard work, as you know, low pay…enough to eat on if you eat at home.

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