Mexico is the world’s seventh-largest agricultural exporter, with agro-industrial exports expected to reach $46 billion this year, the highest in 30 years. Among its most significant exports is the avocado. Until this year, all avocados exported from Mexico to the U.S. came from a single state: Michoacán. This summer, however, Jalisco became Mexico’s second supplier to the lucrative market, but small farmers in the state, however, faced with the consequences — environmental and otherwise — of increasing avocado production are far less enthusiastic.
Farmers and environmentalists in Jalisco are warning that Mexico’s “green gold” may not be so green after all, as avocado production stifles biodiversity, depletes water reserves and takes over once-forested land.
Jalisco ranks second in avocado production in Mexico, although it lags far behind Michoacán in terms of total output. But production is growing faster here than anywhere else. According to data from the government’s agriculture and fisheries information portal, avocado cultivation increased by 527% between 2012 and 2021.
Farmers are experiencing the effects of this expansion in multiple ways. According to a study by Alberto Gómez Tagle, of Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo, in the city of Morelia, avocado farms require four to five times as much water as an equivalent area of pine forest. When avocado trees are irrigated, because their roots are relatively horizontal, water is less likely to seep into the subsoil — in other words, an avocado tree can replenish only a fraction of soil moisture compared to a pine tree.
Ecological consequences
“Ecological agriculture is inextricably linked to the right to healthy food,” says Jaime Morales, an agroecologist and founder of an agroecology training center in Jalisco. The expansion of industrial agriculture — boosted by state and taxpayer money, he says — and the accompanying threat to family-owned small farms is endangering this right in a country where more than 55% of rural households are food insecure.
Source: worldcrunch.com