In June, the Department of Agriculture suspended the import of avocados from Mexico. The decision followed reports that two USDA inspectors were held against their will amidst police protests in Michoacán, a state in south-central Mexico that produces the majority of the country’s avocados. By July, the agency resumed operations, and imports returned to previous levels.
The irony is that, since the U.S. began importing Mexican avocados in 1997, the trade has wreaked havoc on forests and neighboring communities in Michoacán. But it was the detention of two Americans that warranted disrupting the flow of avocados across the border. The environmental devastation has never been the subject of trade restrictions.
After decades of oversight, the consequences of Mexico’s avocado industry are too dire and too close to home for the U.S. to ignore any longer.
In a country plagued by corruption and impunity, criminal organizations set their sights on the lucrative industry shortly after the U.S. opened borders to Mexican avocados. They began clearing protected forests to make room for avocado crops and bribing local officials to re-classify the land as agricultural. It’s estimated that avocado growers have illegally razed as many as 20,000 acres of forest in Michoacán per year, roughly the size of 15,151 football fields.
Lawful growers and others involved in avocado production, like packers and truckers, are extorted by cartels for “protection.” If they don’t pay, they risk robbery, kidnapping, or murder. Local police forces benefit perversely, selling security services to producers wanting to avoid dealing with the cartels directly.
Besides deforestation and violence, avocado farming takes a toll on Michoacán’s water supply, already strained due to a series of droughts. Avocado plants require 14 times as much water as the native forest. Diversion from natural reserves to retention ponds leaves little water for inhabitants of the area. Avocado production has also destroyed swaths of Michoacan’s monarch butterfly habitat. Since 2023, the eastern monarch butterfly population has decreased by 59%, which has been attributed to avocado growing.
Unsurprisingly, Mexico’s murky avocado market is primarily funded by America’s insatiable appetite for the fruit. An estimated 81% of Mexico’s avocado exports go to the U.S., amounting to 2.78 billion pounds of produce in 2023. As the primary customer, we have leverage. As a country that claims to champion environmental protection and labor rights, we have a moral imperative to use that leverage to mitigate harm.
In other words, we need to stop importing avocados from Mexico until conditions improve.
Namely, we should make sustainability a criterion for certification to export. Currently, USDA inspectors evaluate Mexican avocados for pests, absence of leaves and stems, and proper packaging. Yet, the process does not take farming practices or land use into account. The USDA should consider ties to deforestation, organized crime, and water scarcity in adding growers to the list of orchards approved for export to the U.S.
Although Mexico’s Directorate General for Plant Health (DGSV) maintains a list of approved orchards, the task of evaluating farms for ethical sourcing should not be delegated to Mexican officials due to the risk of bribery and intimidation. Rather, the USDA should enlist the help of a third-party certifying body, such as Naturland or Rainforest Alliance, or an independent auditor. They should also leverage the knowledge of local organizations and agencies. For example, Agriicola, a Mexican start-up, launched a satellite monitoring system to detect changes in forest cover. Such information would be useful in determining lawfulness of operations.
Imposing conditions would likely throttle America’s avocado supply. When the USDA paused imports in June, prices rose 40 percent. But price instability is inevitable in the status quo. Degraded lands, depleted water resources, and unstable communities result in unreliable supply. Sustainable farming practices beget longevity. Furthermore, the inconvenience is justified by the imperative to curtail our complicity in Mexico’s environmental and social destruction. I promise we’ll survive without cheap avocado toast. But the survival of Michoacán’s forests is not so certain.
Originally published in the Sun Sentinel.
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