Ethical food, sometimes it's not that ethical. This is the case ofavocado, a tropical fruit with undisputed nutritious properties and long considered an indispensable cornerstone of the "healthy" diet, food Howdy, vegan or otherwise. A superfood with an exotic flavor and consumed in many different ways, from sushi to sauces, from poke or temaki to vitamin juices, up to avocado toast, the trend for which has spread especially in the United States. The Use But they matter the avocado from Mexico: a business that began 40 years ago and is now worth 2,7 billion dollars a year, but which is seriously threatening vast forest areas in the Central American country. To make room for the growing demand for the fruit which is so good for health, the Mexican criminal gangs, large land owners, are not hesitating to cede pieces of territory to US companies, thus favoring the deforestation of whole forests downpipes especially in the West of the country, at an increasingly dizzying pace. These activities have violated Mexican law for at least two decades and have come under the scrutiny of the NGO Climate Rights International.
US avocado hunger: at what cost to the planet?
Mexican authorities have urged North American companies to stop what is a real ecocide, also because in 2021 Mexico committed to the UN to stop deforestation between now and 2030. The requests, however, remained unheard. Among the companies there is also Fresh Del Monte, one of the largest fruit distributors in the USA, which admitted involvement, promising however to engage in reforestation projects in Mexico. The avocado plantations I am particularly harmful to the environment, because in addition to reducing the capacity to absorb carbon dioxide and increasing the emission of greenhouse gases, they require an enormous consumption of water, the availability of which is reduced as the surface area of the rainforests decreases. The lower availability of water resources also negatively impacts other agricultural activities, those of small local producers who grow primary raw materials such as wheat and tomatoes, to the advantage of multinationals with stars and stripes and food for a few, given that in the USA the selling price of the exotic fruit increased by 70% from 2020 to 2022.
Mexican avocado: a fruit that costs forests and suspicions of connivance
“What happens in the Amazon or in Borneo to make room for cattle breeding, the extraction of gold and precious minerals or the cultivation of palm oil – writes the Brazilian newspaper polemically Folha de Sao Paulo -, in Mexico it is done to satisfy the enormous desire for avocados in the United States." 90% of the avocados harvested in the Central American country, particularly in the state of Michoacán, are exported to the United States. And this business, although illegal and having a strong impact on the ecosystem (Mexico hosts the second largest rainforest on the planet after the Amazon), is nevertheless worth a lot for the economy of Michoacán: it employs 300 thousand people, on a total of 4 million residents in the area. Which raises a certain suspicion connivance, if not by the national government, at least by the local one: it seems in fact, according to what the New York Times who dedicated one investigation to the topic, that part of the authorized plantations, approximately 10 thousand hectares, arose in 2014 in forest areas. In all of this, a 2022 study predicts that the surface area dedicated to avocado cultivation will increase by 80% between now and 2050.
