U.S. consumers are eating more and more fresh tomatoes, but producers of domestic field-grown tomatoes are smarting from increasing competition from hothouse tomatoes grown both here and abroad, according to a UC Davis agricultural economist.

"As a result, we're seeing increased tensions in international trade relationships centered around the tomato industry," said Roberta Cook, a UC Cooperative Extension economist in the UC Davis agricultural and resource economics department. She noted that three tomato-related lawsuits are now in the courts involving the United States, Mexico and Canada -- all three partners in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Per capita tomato consumption in the United States has climbed from 16.5 pounds in 1994-95 to 19.1 pounds in 2000, according to Cook. But that rising demand has been partly served by hothouse, rather than field-grown, tomatoes produced in all three NAFTA countries. Hothouse tomatoes now represent about 12 percent of all fresh tomatoes consumed in the United States and nearly one-fourth of the retail fresh-tomato market in the U.S.

Canada led the development of the hothouse tomato industry, growing fresh-market tomatoes in greenhouses as a way of coping with a very short growing season. As of 2000, Canada was producing about 402 million pounds of hothouse tomatoes, with 56 percent exported to the United States.

The U.S. primarily exports fresh field-grown tomatoes, picked at the mature green stage, to Canada and Mexico, while importing fresh vine-ripe and hothouse tomatoes from both those nations.

Canella indicates that the increasing competition from the hothouse industry is making the producers and shippers of field-grown tomatoes in the United States more dependent on selling their tomatoes to the foodservice market rather than retail market.