US Avocado Demand Drives Mass Deforestation in Mexico

(Bloomberg) -- US demand for most of Mexico’s $3 billion avocado exports a year may have driven over 40,000 acres of deforestation in the country over the past decade, according to a report.

Top providers to supermarket chains such as Walmart Inc. and Trader Joe’s Co. have been growing their avocados in areas that were in many cases cleared illegally with fires, according to a report from Climate Rights International and Guardian Forestal released this week. In early 2024, companies they tracked continued to source from that land even when shown evidence of deforestation in their supply chains, the nonprofits said.

Mexico’s avocado trade has faced additional scrutiny this year when the US suspended exports out of Michoacan State in June after protesters held up agricultural inspectors. A deal to ensure inspectors’ safety caused shipments to resume, but the reports show the state continues to be a center of land illegally cleared for the avocado trade.

Until 2022, Michoacan was the only state authorized to export avocados to the US. Jalisco was also permitted to participate in the business that year. A US Department of Agriculture report in April stated that Mexico’s production volume of avocados is forecast to grow 5% in 2024 after years of explosive growth.

The report from the nonprofits shows aerial images of the deforested land compared with satellite images from prior years. 

Mexican government records provided to the nonprofit that wrote the report show, in 2023 through April 2024, there were at least 60 examples of US importers — including Calavo Growers Inc., Fresh Del Monte Produce Inc., Mission Produce Inc. and West Pak Avocado Inc. — sourcing from forest land that was allegedly improperly cleared.

In a statement, Calavo Growers said the Association of Producers, Packers, and Exporters of Avocados of Mexico, of which it forms part, follow U.S. and Mexican laws and it is outside the association’s “scope to determine land use policies beyond those imposed by the Mexican government or international treaties like the USMCA,” in reference to the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement. 

It also added that academic studies have found that deforestation happens mainly in highlands where avocados are not grown. The three other companies named in the report did not immediately reply to requests for comment from Bloomberg News.

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