The Florida Professor with Outsized Influence on Produce Import Prices

When the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) held a virtual hearing in August 2020 to discuss trade-distorting policies that could affect seasonal crops, an agricultural professor, Zhengfei Guan (a name that few outside of the industry know by name) was a star of the show.

Research Gate, a website for researchers to connect, collaborate and share their work, lists Guan as having published 60 research papers since 2008, most of them focusing on crops such as strawberries and tomatoes. That represents about one paper per quarter.

The website lists 445 citations for Guan, with more than 50 other researchers collaborating with his work.

Guan is a Chinese national, whose education was completed in China. He received his bachelor’s in science from Nanjing University in 1992, his master’s in science from Wageningen University and Research Centre in 2001 and his PhD from Wageningen in 2005.

Guan, associate professor of agricultural economics at the University of Florida, testified that Mexico has an expansive subsidy program that boosts imports and harms the Florida fruit and vegetable industry. From production to harvest management to marketing, Guan testified that Mexico has systematically subsidized its fruit and vegetable industry throughout the supply chain.

Guan and his research were subsequently referenced by three fellow presenters that day: Kenneth Parker, executive director of the Florida Strawberry Growers Association; Brittany Lee, executive director of the Florida Blueberry Growers Association; and Gene McAvoy, a fellow researcher for the Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS), who said that Guan’s economic data “paints a very stark picture.”

The attention given to Guan’s work is not surprising. In the past decade, the professor has become the go-to source for research that bolsters the growing industry’s efforts to protect members by pushing the federal government to impose tariffs and price minimums on commodities imported into the country.

Quite a bit is at stake considering that the U.S imported $15.71 billion in specialty crops from Mexico in 2020. This is a whopping 35 percent increase over five years.

As an example of Guan’s influence, a June 2019 study by IFAS co-authored by Guan said that a 75 percent increase in imports for bell peppers, strawberries, and tomatoes would result in losses of $389 million for Florida growers. This research helped support a request from growers for a higher reference price for imports, known as the Tomato Suspension Agreement. The Department of Commerce stated that the price minimums would help prevent “suppression or undercutting” of home-grown tomatoes.

As the Taxpayers Protection Alliance previously reported, a number of members of growers’ associations in Florida serve in various capacities with IFAS. This includes Florida Blueberry Growers Association Board of Directors members Gary England, Jeffrey G. Williamson and Philip Harmon; Florida Tomato Exchange member Bob Spencer and Florida Fruit & Vegetable Association member Peter Chaires.

Guan’s biography at the IFAS states his program goal “is to help producers address production, labor, and trade challenges at both farm level and market level” and he’s done so by taking his research to Washington, D.C. Guan’s work has been presented to the White House, Congress, the USTR, the U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) to inform policy marking, according to his bio.

Guan is certainly in demand, as his programs have received $2.5 million in grants, and he has collaborated on more than $20 million in grants at IFAS.

His work has been cited repeatedly, such as this 2018 testimony from Parker during a USITC hearing on how the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) could impact the American economy and specific industry sectors.

In his study that was used to support the Tomato Suspension Agreement, Guan said U.S. tomato growers could lose more than $250 million annually if Mexican imports increased by 50 percent in coming years.

The researcher has found himself at odds with federal bureaucrats on multiple occasions.

For example, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue in 2019 rebuked the assertions of Guan and others that the USCMA would cost the domestic injury revenue and jobs, calling those assertions “sensational” and “flat wrong.”

Guan argued that blueberry imports were harming U.S. farmers. But, in February 2021 (following a Section 201 investigation) the USITC ruled that imports were not at a level that would result in “substantial cause of serious injury, or threat of serious injury, to the domestic industry.”

Guan did not return calls from TPA seeking comment, but Chris Vivian, a spokesperson for UF/IFAS said that while growers contribute to research via associations or fees, “most of that is not a direct contract to research a particular issue, but part of a broader research fund to help their industry as a whole.”

She said that research contracts are vetted centrally through the UF Division of Sponsored Programs to prevent conflict of interest. 

“As with research funding from any other source, researchers are not guided toward preconceived conclusions, or are there expectations of what the findings will be,” Vivian said.

She said that UF/IFAS faculty and staff are not allowed to consult privately in Florida.

Vivian said that about 4.5 percent of UF/IFAS’s budget comes from foundations and nonprofits like the growers associations, with federal agencies contributing three quarters of the organization’s budget.

The University of Florida isn’t the only school producing studies that could potentially benefit growers. In 2019, just months after President Trump and fellow North American leaders signed the USCMA, the University of Georgia produced a study at the request of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetables Growers Association that said Mexico’s produce imports were increasingly competitive with local growers.

The study noted that Mexican imports were arriving during Georgia’s selling season at prices “well below Georgia’s production costs” and that the state would lose $1 billion in annual economic output and more than 8,000 jobs if the imports weren’t curbed.

While UGA hasn’t churned out the reports quite like Guan and UF/IFAS, its studies have also been cited in congressional hearings debating possible tariffs and the impact of imported fruits and vegetables. The Office of the Associate Dean for Research at UGA didn’t return calls from TPA seeking comment. 

The reports from the institutions have helped push a series of investigations into fruit and vegetable imports, but so far none of those inquiries have found any serious injury to growers in the U.S.

Johnny Kampis is director of telecommunications policy and investigative reporter for the Taxpayers Protection Alliance.