The United States’ hunger for avocados is destroying forests in Mexico as farmers try to keep up with demand.
Up to 70,000 hectares of Mexican forest have been cut down to grow Generation Z’s favorite crops in the last decade, according to a shocking new report.
That’s the equivalent of two to five Manhattans, and the avocados exported to the US in 2022 alone consumed 290,000 Olympic swimming pools’ worth of water.
Mexico’s avocado industry also runs on blood. Over the past 20 years, cartels have entered the fray, intimidating, kidnapping and even killing local activists and leaders who dared to speak out against uncontrolled deforestation.
The fruit’s popularity has skyrocketed in the United States since 2000, due in part to its reputation as a healthy source of heart-healthy unsaturated fat.
San Gabriel, a municipality in Jalisco, has lost thousands of hectares of forest since 2014, largely due to illegal logging for avocado plantations. Nevertheless, avocados grown in the blue areas were approved for export to the United States
At the same time, domestic production has stagnated and has even declined in recent years.
Mexican imports make the difference, but its forests and people are paying for Americans’ insatiable appetite, says a Climate Rights International (CRI) report, aptly dubbed “Unholy Guacamole.”
Workers pack avocados in Jalisco, one of two Mexican states whose forests have been decimated by the avocado-growing industry
Americans consume nearly 3 billion pounds of avocados annually, a number that has more than tripled since 2000.
About 90 percent of them come from Mexico.
The environmental price of this insatiable appetite includes illegal deforestation of avocado plantations, stolen water to feed them and violence against indigenous peoples as cartels intervene in the booming business.
These areas in San Gabriel, Jalisco have been deforested for avocado plantations since 2020. The areas outlined in blue have been certified for export to the United States, but the areas outlined in yellow have not yet been certified
“Mexico is the world’s leading avocado producer and the United States is the primary destination for Mexico’s avocado exports,” according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
U.S. farmers have historically produced hundreds of millions of pounds of avocados each year, but those numbers have been declining recently.
“Imported avocados now account for 90 percent of the domestic supply, compared to 40 percent in the early 2000s,” the USDA reported.
Zacapu is a municipality of Michoacan. Between 2012 and 2022, all areas outlined in blue were deforested for avocado plantations approved for US export
The U.S. imported an average of 55 million pounds per year from 2001 to 2003, the USDA reported last year. But from 2019 to 2021 that figure rose to an average of £2.25 billion per year.
CRI’s new report highlights the environmental and human costs of this growth, focusing on the states of Michoacán and Jalisco, where all Mexican avocados exported to the United States are grown.
In addition to the vast areas of forest lost to avocado cultivation, “avocado producers use enormous amounts of water, and many illegally withdraw it from streams, rivers, springs and underground aquifers to irrigate their orchards,” according to CRI.
US consumer demand for avocados has steadily increased, but domestic production has declined. Mexico accounts for most of the difference. From 2001 to 2003, the U.S. imported an average of 55 million pounds of avocados each year. And from 2019 to 2021, that annual average was £2.25 billion. During this period, 88 percent of imports came from Mexico
This extraction has created water shortages for people living in these areas.
And because forests help hold soil in place during rains, the loss of native pines and oaks has increased the risk of deadly floods and landslides.
According to CRI, there are over 50,000 avocado plantations certified to export avocados to the United States in Michoacán and Jalisco alone.
“Virtually all of the deforestation for avocados in Michoacán and Jalisco over the past two decades has violated Mexico’s federal criminal law, which prohibits ‘land use change’ from forest areas to agricultural production without government approval,” the group reported.
Not only is it illegal to change land use without government approval, but the way farmers do it is also illegal: by starting forest fires.
Even if farmers replace forests with avocado trees, orchards are not the same as forests from an ecological perspective.
The habitat loss for native species caused by the destruction of natural forests is incalculable, and burning all those trees releases tons of greenhouse gases and eliminates carbon-storing trees from the ecosystem.
All deforestation is driven by U.S. demand for avocados, but CRI places the real blame on the U.S. and Mexican federal governments, as well as local authorities in Michoacán and Jalisco, all of whom have the power to do something about it, but it have missed act.
The failure of local environmental authorities stems from two sides of the same coin, CRI said: corruption and violence.
In the first case, the Michoacán prosecutor’s office tasked with investigating avocado-related deforestation is rife with corruption, CRI alleged. This allows the perpetrators to act with impunity as they laugh at the forest department’s impotence, a forest official said.
And where producers do face resistance, violence or the threat of such violence has silenced resistance from government authorities and local communities that have sought to hold them accountable.
In an industry worth billions of dollars each year, this problem has only gotten worse as criminal syndicates seek to get in on the action.
When local community groups tried to fight back against the growers, some members were kidnapped or even killed.
Not only has the Mexican government failed to stem the tide of illegal deforestation, but so has the United States.
According to CRI, “The U.S. government routinely certifies illegally logged orchards for export to U.S. consumers.”
In the absence of significant action by authorities supposed to protect the land and local communities, some locals have taken matters into their own hands.
For example, in Cherán, a community in Michoacán, locals were tired of uncontrolled illegal logging and violence. And in 2011, they threw off the local government and established their own government.
This included the establishment of a police force to enforce the new government’s anti-deforestation laws, and Michoacán eventually recognized the authority of this group.
But local solutions cannot be the only force against such widespread problems, the CRI report says.
So the group released a list of recommendations in its report, including a call for the Mexican and U.S. governments to properly enforce laws surrounding deforestation and avocado cultivation. This includes the US commitment to ban imported avocados grown on illegally deforested land.
However, just last year the US approved imports of avocados from Jalisco without taking protective measures to prevent deforestation.
With Americans’ hunger for avocados growing each year, these problems will only get worse if authorities don’t act soon, CRI said.
“The urgent adoption and implementation of such regulations and policies is critical to averting climate catastrophe and protecting the rights of people where the goods are produced,” they wrote.