When word of a new plan to help save forests reached Juan Gabriel Pedraza, an Indigenous leader in Mexico’s avocado heartlands, he feared the worst.
“They’re going to screw us over,” he remembered thinking.
Rumors had spread that his town’s orchards could be blocked from the market, a devastating outcome for residents. Avocados had helped over a thousand families climb out of poverty. Forest loss was nothing new, having long ago transformed western Mexico, the world’s primary supplier of avocados.
Devouring that forest, for years, has been U.S. demand for the fruit.
Anyone trying to slow the deforestation, nearly all of it illegal, has faced a wall of opposition. Criminal groups, landowners, corrupt local officials and others have been involved in setting fires to clear land for new orchards, and reaping profits from them.
Now a new scheme, using satellite imagery and public pressure, has confronted industry giants and small growers alike with a choice.
They can stop expanding into recently cleared forests, ensuring their fruit remains eligible for the biggest U.S. buyers. Or they can deforest more land for cheap new orchards, risking being cut off from a $2.7 billion annual trade.
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