Rising fuel prices, truck driver shortages, and a tightening labor supply have collided to create the perfect storm for higher food prices, leaving both Central Valley consumers and business owners scrambling to keep up. With no relief in sight, everyone’s feeling squeezed.
“It’s not just one thing,” says Tom Riddle, managing director of transportation of PRO*Fresh Logistics, based in Visalia. “Food pricing isn’t a simple equation. There are at least 14 people handling your produce from the field to your fork.”
Produce has to be harvested, moved to cold storage, to the distribution center, and grocery store shelves, says Kevin Beno, owner of K & D Produce Sales in Visalia. “The cost to move product at every step of the way is just more expensive,” Beno says.
Tomato prices are a case in point. At Tony’s Taverna in Three Rivers, chef Ryan Rusie watched the price for a 25-pound box soar from $18 in April to $80 in early May. “When diesel’s $7.40 a gallon, everything that gets shipped is going to cost more,” Rusie says.
Tomato prices have since dropped to $35 now that the California tomato season has kicked in, but the volatility remains. Tony’s, which opened last October, hasn’t raised menu prices yet. “We don’t want to do that to our customers,” says Maritza Konnaris, who co-owns the restaurant with her husband, Tony. “We can’t serve less on the plate, so we’re just trying to get through this. Prices have to go down, at least a little.”
It’s a tough balancing act, and as long as costs keep rising, restaurant owners across the country will be forced to make tough choices and find creative ways to stay afloat. To try to save money, Tony Konnaris drives down to Los Angeles every week to get supplies, which are sometimes cheaper than in the Central Valley.
As an example, a pallet of to-go boxes that cost $6,000 locally, are half price in Los Angeles. “It’s important to us that quality and the prices are the same for our customers. So, Tony will drive down and back in one day. He leaves at 7 a.m., makes five different stops and the comes back at 11 p.m., and then I’m here to help him unload supplies. The next day, he’s back at the restaurant first thing to prep for lunch,” Konnaris says.
It’s hard to tell how much more prices will continue to rise. Steven Fenaroli, managing director of public affairs and communication for California Farm Bureau in Sacramento, says that farmers are being squeezed just as hard as anybody else. “Farmers right now are keeping less than 6 cents for every dollar of produce that’s sold,” Fenaroli says.
With rising costs and tightening government regulations, the cost of doing business and complying with safety and labor regulations is 1400 percent higher now than it was 55 years ago, according to a 2024 Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo study of lettuce growers in Salinas Valley.
“It’s death by 1,000 paper cuts,” Fenaroli says. The cost of diesel, which has gone up 46 percent since this February, has only made matters worse for farmers, increasing expenses for everything from running equipment to transporting crops.”
Fertilizer production is tightly linked to natural gas, much of which is exported by countries like Qatar through the Strait of Hormuz. “A lot of farmers aren’t going to be able to plant things. The reality is farmers are going to have to make hard choices when deciding what to plant,” Fenaroli said, who noted that 70 percent of farmers nationwide, surveyed by the American Farm Bureau, say they cannot afford fertilizer for their upcoming planting seasons.
Midwest corn growers, especially face their own fertilizer headaches, which will force hard choices about what and how much to plant. Delays in shipments and high costs threaten to reduce yields and drive up food prices even further.
Transportation costs are climbing, too. The country is already short on truck drivers to move produce. About one in six U.S. truck drivers is foreign-born, according to the American Trucking Association. Now, new regulations are sidelining many of those drivers, making the shortage—already estimated at 60,000 to 80,000—even worse.
Rising food prices aren’t just about oil and trucking regulations—tariffs are also playing a major role, says Ricky Volpe, an agribusiness economist at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. Take tomatoes, for example. Over the past year, imports from Mexico faced a 25 percent tariff, which helps explain why tomatoes have gotten so expensive. But it’s not just tomatoes; Volpe points out that nearly every food category is seeing price hikes.
In the last month alone, food prices have climbed 0.7 percent. That might seem small at first glance, but stretched over a year, it means an 8.4 percent jump—way above the U.S. government’s target of less than 2 percent annual inflation. The last time Americans saw increases like this was during the height of the Covid pandemic, when food prices soared 20 to 25 percent due to supply disruptions.
Volpe doesn’t expect food prices to drop. “Food prices generally don’t ever really go down. The real question isn’t if prices will fall, but when inflation will slow,” he says. While he’s not forecasting another wild surge, he does predict food inflation will settle in the 4 to 4.5 percent range—still double the government’s goal. And with the current trends, he thinks high food prices could be sticking around through 2026.