![]() ![]() Mexico can be seen as a proving ground for today’s avocado industry. A complaint against the Government of Mexico had recently been filed with the Commission for Environmental Cooperation under the USMCA, accusing the government of tolerating the ecocidal impacts of avocado production in Michoacán. ĭespite its limited coverage in US media, the dark side of avocado production was the unwelcome guest at this year’s event. “The guacamole eaten during the Super Bowl alone would fill 30 million football helmets,” says Armando López, executive director of the Mexican Association of Avocado Growers, Packers, and Exporters (APEAM), which paid nearly $7 million for a Super Bowl ad. The United States imports 40% of global avocado production and the Super Bowl is when consumption peaks. A month earlier, more than 2000 km away in Michoacán, Mexico, tens of thousands of tons of avocados were being packed for shipping. We begin the story on 12 February 2023 in Kansas City at the 57 th Super Bowl, American football’s premier annual event. What are the implications of this worldwide expansion? What forces are driving it? How does this model, working on both global and local scales, manage to keep prices high? How did the current boom, with avocados featured at major sporting events and celebrations of all kinds, come to pass? What are the social repercussions of this opaque business? ![]() Their production is taking up an ever-growing area and continually expanding into new countries. The business model for this popular tropical fruit is the epitome of agribusiness recrudescent, causing rampant deforestation and water diversion, the eradication of other modes of agriculture, and the expulsion of entire communities from the land.Īvocados are, after bananas and pineapples, the world’s third-largest fruit commodity. Perhaps, if he were writing today, he would replace grapes with avocados. So wrote John Steinbeck when, perhaps for the first time, the immense devastation provoked by capitalist agribusiness, the subsequent expulsion of peasant families from the Midwest, and their arrival in California in the 1930s became visible. ![]()
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