Assuming you were intrigued by the title and are now wondering whether the toast or the avocado is the culprit of the unrest and many of the kidnappings happening in Mexico, let me tell you that, although bread has controversies of its own (Subway’s bread has too much sugar to qualify as actual bread, for instance), it is, indeed, the avocado that will be prosecuted today.
Avocados are notoriously difficult to grow on a large scale. They require a warm climate, yet not excessive wind (as it dehydrates the flowers and affects pollination), as well as approximately three hundred and twenty litres of APPLIED (excluding precipitation) water, which can’t be too saline, or the yield is low.
These factors mean that the fruit has been hard to cultivate anywhere other than its native Central America, more specifically, in Mexico and Peru. And, before we get into the humanitarian issues around their production, we have to also consider their environmental sustainability, or rather, the lack thereof. The air miles that accumulate as a result of their location release greenhouse gases (a small pack of two avocados has an emissions footprint of eight hundred grams of CO2 – twice that of a kilogram of bananas), and the number of workers handling said pack show that it would be impossible for them all to be paid fairly at a price of £1.22, both of which are tell-tale signs that Fairtrade would have a field trip in this industry.
Plus, the hundreds of litres of water involved in the process pose multiple other moral dilemmas—both environmental and socioeconomic. In Petorca, Chile, rainfall is scarce, leading to governmental restrictions and water quotas (even though the water sector has already been heavily privatised to encourage investment). Yet the avocado growers must deliver; hence, many have illegally built streams diverting water from large rivers to the irrigation systems in their plantations. An investigation into this in 2011 proved these allegations, which were raised as a result of nationwide groundwater droughts by the locals of the province, who were forced to choose between washing and cooking due to lack of water, as the agribusiness was earning more and more from their exports to the North American and European markets.
It is this exact leap in demand of the not-so-humble avocado that has led to the unrest in and around the agriculture-heavy communities, like Michoacán, Mexico. During the reign of former President Felipe Calderón, the war against drug trafficking began in 2006, putting pressure on cartels to survive. Some got the brilliantly sly idea to tap into the (legal!) avocado industry, and to divert, much like the major growers in Peru did with water, the flow of cash into their own pockets. Initially, the local farmers appreciated this addition to the “club”, as they were provided with advanced services that allowed them to increase the fruit yields and ensure safety of the cultivators, for a small tax fee. However, as time went on, the exploitation revealed itself; the taxes to the cartels remained, but the services seemed to have been terminated…
However, not all the cartels were large enough to invest into the agribusiness. Some went a darker route – and started kidnapping the family members of successful avocado farmers, that have made a fair sum of money from their produce. They were then forced to pay extortionate ransom prices (Manuel Lucatero was ordered to pay ten million pesos in three days – or his brother and father would be shot) just to save their loved ones, forcing them to sell their farms and homes that they worked on for years. Many farmers still remember their plantations, and the joy they brought them. Some have started from scratch, but many are still far too intimidated to attempt to enter the supply chain once more.
On the global scale, the avocado-fuelled social, economic and environmental sustainability issues, mixed with a hint of moral dilemmas and seasoned with illegal practices substantially taint the fruit’s seemingly innocent reputation. However, this is not to say that we must ban the ‘superfood’ altogether. This is just the tip of the iceberg of the scale of the exploitation within the food industry, that we must all educate ourselves on, problem by problem, if we are to ensure a fair and sustainable future for all communities.
