DALLAS — Avocado, known in some Mexican regions as “oro verde,” or green gold, may soon become a fruit so scarce in the United States that it could be worth its weight in gold, if you can find it at all.
After the U.S. recently put a halt on the import of Mexican avocados because a U.S. official was threatened by organized crime in Michoacán — the biggest avocado-producing state in Mexico — thousands of tons of the fruit have stopped entering the country.
Merchants are already preparing for this shortage and for a price increase, which will directly impact consumers and restaurants, some of which are already thinking about removing guacamole from their menus.
Alfredo Duarte, general director at Taxco Produce, a fruit and vegetable distribution company that supplies fresh food to more than 1,000 restaurants in North Texas, said he was concerned about the situation.
“I still have inventory for the next two weeks,” Duarte said. “I would hope that this is resolved in a few days because avocado is a huge business, it represents too much money, so the two governments must do their part to resolve this.”
In 2020, the U.S. imported more than 2.1 billion pounds of avocado from Mexico (just over 1 million tons), according to the Mexican data system Sistema de Información Agroalimentaria y Pesquera de México. It is estimated that each person in the country consumes about 8 pounds of avocado every year, according to Avocados from Mexico, based in Irving, Texas.
Although it is possible to get avocados from California, Peru or Colombia, the amount traded and imported is very small compared to what comes from Mexico. Some merchants even refuse to sell avocado not coming from Mexico because they say it is of lower quality.
Lucy Briones, a spokesperson for ITAMP Food Distributors, which sells fresh produce to restaurants and taquerías in Dallas, said that the company is waiting before investing in a more expensive product because it could represent great losses for the company.
“The boxes that we used to buy for $30 are now being sold to us for $70, and the larger ones are already selling for more than $100, we would have to sell for at least $120,” said Briones. “They’re the last avocados that managed to enter the country before the border closed, and right now they are already being sold like gold.”
The company has already taken some steps, such as not selling avocados to noncustomers or only partially fulfilling orders so more people have access to the last of their inventory, which they expect to last a week.
Very soon, the distributor will send a letter to its more than 30 clients to explain the situation.
“We are not going to buy avocados from somewhere else, because they don’t have the same quality as Mexican avocados, and our customers don’t deserve a bad product,” Briones said.
An avocado has an average life of four weeks after it is harvested in Mexico, Briones said. By the time it crosses the border and reaches its end customers, the fruit lasts about two more weeks. If the situation is not resolved, there will be a shortage at the end of February.
Although guacamole is one of the most popular dishes at restaurants and cantinas, some restaurateurs are ready to remove it from their menus if it becomes impossible to acquire avocados or if prices rise exponentially.
“If the cost of avocados becomes absurd, it’s best to take it off the menu,” said Pedro Rojas, owner of Pepe’s & Mito’s, a restaurant in the Deep Ellum neighborhood of Dallas. “We can’t afford it if it’s too expensive because if we raise the price, customers won’t order it.”
Others will choose to modify their recipes to continue offering guacamole and other dishes with avocado to their customers.
“As a business, we have to adjust,” said Robert Stevenson, general manager at Mattito’s, a Tex-Mex cantina restaurant in Dallas' Oak Lawn neighborhood. “There are canned goods and while we have never used them and our goal is to never use them, I’ll say that we will do everything we can to continue to have fresh avocados in our restaurant.”
The halt on imports was put into place before the Super Bowl, the day of the year in which avocados are consumed the most in the United States.
Michoacán is one of the states in Mexico where organized crime groups fight over control of territory where avocado is produced.
In 2013, farmers from the region joined and formed self-defense groups of armed citizens who defended their land from attacks by criminal groups such as La Familia Michoacán or Caballeros Templarios, as reported by Nexos magazine. The government of former President Enrique Peña Nieto took control of those groups because the use of weapons by civilians is prohibited in Mexico.
The phenomenon repeated itself in 2021 when a new self-defense group tried to defend the avocado-producing areas from extortion, invasion of land and threats to farmers by the Jalisco Nueva Generación cartel and other groups like Los Viagras, according to reports by the Spanish newspaper El País.
When the threats and danger reached a U.S. official, President Joe Biden closed the border to the import of Mexican avocados, at least until the safety of officials who monitor the quality of the crops sent to the United States is guaranteed.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Monday that the halt on avocado imports decreed by the U.S. is part of a political and economic conflict in which the United States does not want Mexican avocados to steal the market from other countries.
If the conflict is not resolved, there will be a shortage of avocados and an increase in their price as soon as the next couple of weeks.
———
