Nutritious monocultures? Where and how fruits and vegetables are produced in the US

Abstract

The United States (US) agri-food system is primarily oriented toward growing grain for livestock, biofuels, and other highly processed byproducts that cause concern for human and environmental health. Simultaneously, the US is in a trade deficit, importing three times as many fruits and vegetables as it exports. Those fruits and vegetables that are produced in the US rely on precarious labor systems and unsustainable costs to the wellbeing of farmers and farmworkers, exposing the fractures and precarity of these systems amidst changing trade agreements and immigration policies. To overcome these fractures, calls for more diverse and resilient food systems are increasingly urgent. Using national-scale agricultural and labor datasets, we ask: 1) How well do current US agricultural landscapes produce the fruits and vegetables needed for a healthy and diverse diet at scale? 2) How diverse are these landscapes? 3) How does migrant labor support fruit and vegetable production and diversity? We show that US agricultural landscapes are not producing the fruits and vegetables needed for a healthy and diverse diet. Fruit and vegetable production is concentrated on the coasts of the country and occupies little land, making it difficult to see, track, and understand on a national scale. Further, as the proportion of cropland under fruit and vegetable production increases, fruit and vegetable diversity decreases, suggesting that most fruits and vegetables are grown in simplified systems. Finally, counties with the highest proportion of fruit and vegetable production have the highest averages of H-2A farmworker certifications, emphasizing a disproportionate reliance on migrant labor as fruit and vegetable production expands. This study helps to disentangle the link between what we grow and what we eat in the US, tempering calls to increase fruit and vegetable production in the US writ large without reconciling the accumulating concerns of these current systems.