Thousands of acres of forest razed at a breakneck pace. Stolen water and drained aquifers. Abductions and killings.
All of this is being driven by the United States’ billion-dollar demand for Mexico’s avocados. The trade is so lucrative that it has for years fueled a rush to illegally clear forests and drawn in cartels, who extort growers by threatening violence.
Traditional efforts to stop the deforestation and criminal activity have largely failed, so a group now hopes to use the market itself to change the industry’s destructive dynamics.
The initiative — a certification program for orchards and companies — aims to halt decades of forest loss by showing where avocados come from. In providing near real-time deforestation alerts, it also gives the authorities intelligence to act on.
“We had never, ever reached the point we are reaching now of being able to put a stop to deforestation,” said Guillermo Naranjo, a federal environmental inspector in the state of Michoacán, the world’s primary supplier of avocados.
How is U.S. demand for avocados killing Mexico’s forests?
After a U.S. ban on Mexican avocados was lifted in 1997, the avocado industry became hugely profitable, reducing poverty but laying waste to the environment, experts and officials say.
“They start cutting down forests without any control,” said Mr. Naranjo. “And no one stops the land use changes — all of which are illegal.”
Mexican law requires a federal permit to convert forest to orchards, but no such document has been issued in Michoacán since the late 1980s, officials say. Many parties are involved in clearing forests for avocados, including criminal gangs, landowners, corrupt local officials and community leaders.
A 2023 report by Climate Rights International found that avocado expansion over the preceding decade resulted in the clearing of up to 70,000 acres of forest in Michoacán and Jalisco, the only states authorized to export avocados to the United States.
Thirsty avocado orchards also consume far more water than native forests, depleting streams and aquifers at the expense of local communities.
The situation led to pressure on the four major American importers of avocados from a group of U.S. senators and a consumer association, which sued the companies.
What does the new plan entail?
Last year, Michoacán State, working with the nonprofit Guardián Forestal, reached out to those American importers, presenting them with a list of suppliers harvesting from recently deforested orchards.
They invited the companies to join a voluntary certification program, a system reliant on satellite imagery, made public, to ensure compliance. To get certified, a packer must only buy avocados from orchards free of deforestation since 2018 and forest fires since 2012.
“The system enhances transparency. You don’t have to trust us, you can go directly to the data,” said Heriberto Padilla, the nonprofit’s director. “That’s why everyone is putting so much effort into it: Packers are afraid that retailers will notice any mistakes.”
Orchards can also be certified for a fee, with some of that money returning to local communities to fund their own conservation efforts.
How have people reacted?
The program is having at least some effect: Avocados recently meant for the U.S. market can be seen unharvested in noncompliant orchards.
“It was very abrupt, from one day to the next. And yes, producers are upset,” said Luis Miguel Gaitán, a manager at a Mexican packinghouse, Tanim Avocados, which has seen some of its own partners cut off.
But he called it a fair price to pay: “Business is one thing, but we need to take action if we want to leave something to our children.”
Some environmental activists see the 2018 baseline as too recent and question if the program can reverse decades of damage. But they also say it may be the first effort to make a difference.
“Before this, we didn’t have anything,” said Nuria Yamada, a 33-year-old activist. “The program is working as a little light, when for years there weren’t even flashes anywhere.”
The program has been criticized by others as being too onerous and dismissive of industry interests. The federal government and an association of avocado exporters are working on their own, mandatory plan that they hope to enact next year.
And several growers have refused to join the program, citing concerns about how any money they pay in fees would be used.
How effective has it been?
Experts and Guardián Forestal say that deforestation rates have slowed or flattened in several municipalities, suggesting growers have less incentive to level trees.
“It’s no longer profitable to deforest,” said Alberto Gómez-Tagle, a researcher who has studied the avocado industry’s consequences.
But it’s too soon to know if the program alone is responsible.
And the effort can do little to reduce the criminal footprint of cartels, which have infiltrated the industry to diversify their income and take a cut of the profits. In August, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned members of two criminal organizations for illegal logging and extorting farmers.
Some growers may also try to game the system, experts say, by expanding orchards into states not being surveilled and then bringing noncertified avocados to Michoacán to get them exported.
Emiliano Rodríguez Mega is a reporter and researcher for The Times based in Mexico City, covering Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.
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