No matter how you slice it, a tomato is getting way more expensive

Alejandro Sanchez has been growing tomatoes in Mexico for more than 15 years. If he had to start all over, he would think twice.

“It’s much harder than I thought,” Sanchez said.

Tomatoes are a high-maintenance crop. Sanchez, managing director at Vista Produce, said they need the perfect balance of temperature, light and fertilizer.

“You can do everything right and still have a terrible year,” he said. “For example, right now I have pests that I didn’t have 12 years ago. There’s a type of spider, red spider, never seen it. Now it’s all over.”

Spiders aren’t even his biggest worry right now. What really keeps him up at night is how much the economics of growing tomatoes is changing. Minimum wage in Mexico went up 13% at the beginning of 2026, and cherry tomatoes are labor intensive. Each one has to be picked by hand, and packaging has gotten more expensive.

“We had to increase the width of the polyfoam because tomatoes would get bruised otherwise,” Sanchez said.

And this is all before the produce even hits the border.

The latest consumer price index showed the cost of tomatoes went up 15% in March and 22% in the last year.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, about a quarter of every dollar Americans spend on vegetables is tied to farm production — and yes, tomatoes are vegetables, not fruits, according to U.S. tax law.

The rest of the cost of growing a tomato is mostly transportation and import taxes.

“It’s really this perfect storm of factors that are impacting tomato prices,” said David Ortega, a food economist at Michigan State University.

Last summer the U.S. put a 17% tax on Mexican tomatoes. The timing of that tax coincided with a terrible growing season in the U.S. A cold snap in Florida, where most domestic fresh tomatoes are farmed, caused $160 million in damage. It’s put more pressure on imports, which Ortega said make up 70% of American supply.

“It’s really tough to tease out well how much of this price increase is because of the war in the Middle East versus tariffs versus weather, because all of these things are kind of happening at the same time,” Ortega said.

Diesel prices climbed more than 40% in March alone. That means getting tomatoes from Mexico to grocery stores all over the U.S. is getting more expensive.

“When you transport them it’s under refrigeration. In other words, it’s cold chain,” said Skip Hulett, the chief legal officer at NatureSweet, which handles every part of a tomato supply chain — from growing to importing to distribution. He said a cold chain means higher diesel consumption.

With this long list of pressures — stunted supply, growing labor costs, high import taxes, pressure on fertilizer prices and gas prices — tomatoes will likely continue to cost a pretty penny all summer.

“If you have a hamburger, you have tomatoes on it,” Hulett said. “If you eat a salad, you have tomatoes on it. If you eat pasta, you have tomato sauce.”

Experts say it’s only a matter of time before the price of fresh tomatoes starts trickling down to the price of canned and processed foods.