‘It’s like when you see the tsunami coming in’: Agricultural economists are sounding the alarm about produce prices doubling

Milk prices jumping from $7 to $14, strawberries that feel like a luxury good, and a switch to processed food: This is the 6-month outlook economists studying labor and agriculture see for consumers.

Yet, these consumers “don’t have a clue what’s going on,” Raymond Robertson, a labor economist at Texas A&M’s Bush School of Government , and who has advised U.S. agencies on trade and labor policy, told Fortune.

Instead, Robertson said, voters are distracted by the political noise of President Donald Trump’s policies, while the real drivers of grocery sticker shock— labor shortages, and tariffs— continue to tighten their grip. Deportations have thinned fields and stripped farms of undocumented workers who “overwhelmingly” make up the agricultural workforce. At the same time, new t