During the Super Bowl – the final of football in the United States that will be played this year on February 2nd – the consumption of guacamole (with nachos) is growing considerably. Guacamole is made from the Hass avocado, the most widespread variety on the planet. January is the month, therefore, in which the world price of avocado rises, specifically during the penultimate week.
Mexico is the world’s leading avocado producer, but the benefit of this price increase also reaches Málaga, the Andalusian province in southern Spain: Málaga the number one producer in Europe and seller to that continent, with at least 6500 hectares cultivated.
Málaga, mostly in the region of Auxarquia, produces 45,000 tons of avocadoannually, with profits of about 120 million euros (more than 130 million dollars), according to a report by Nacho Sánchez for El País.
The price increase in January has been happening since 2016. Before that, it used to happen during spring, as reporter Fran Extremera for La Opinión de Málaga writes.
Extremera consulted an agricultural technician from a cooperative in the area, who told him that in January avocado imports from there reached 100,000 tons in 2018 and increased to 120,000 in 2019. “It is logical that the price in January will shoot up all over the planet. It is just the supply and demand,” he said.
To this prosperity illegal practices follow.
If in Mexico the drug cartels are disputing control of the local market for avocados — Michoacan, in that country, is the world’s leading producer, selling at least 2.5 billion dollars to the United States in avocados and the business is now tinged with violence and blood — in Malaga the market for stolen avocados is growing and giving high and fast profits, because the retail price is at least 4 euros (almost 5 dollars) a kilo and last year it was bought at 3 euros (almost 4 dollars) from the producer.
The thefts worsened in 2019, wrote Nacho Sánchez in the article for El País in December. A grower with a 15-hectare avocado farm had 2,000 kilos stolen in a single weekend. Another grower who has 60 hectares was robbed of “several thousand kilos” in at least five robberies in 2019.
Journalists Pepe Barahona and Fernando Ruso followed an avocado thief for a report for El Español. He is a retired man who draws a pension because of an accident at work. He easily jumps over the fences of the farms. “For just half an hour of work he can earn more than 100 euros [more than 110 dollars],” journalists write. When night falls, he goes around the farms with his backpack. In five minutes he can steal fill it up with 10 kilos of stolen avocados.
“He sells directly to small supermarkets at half the price paid to the farmers, the victims of his thefts.” That is two euros a kilo, half of the at least four euros at which avocado is sold to the public.
“I do it alone, I don’t like going with anyone or having company, although I know that on the side of La Axarquía there are organizations that steal a lot and are real specialists,” says Ramón, the fictitious name he gave himself, to the two journalists.
In fact, the Civil Guard arrested an organization of nine people in Auxarquía in June 2019 who specialized in avocado theft and had made profits of more than 170,000 euros (more than 187,000 euros). Robbers sell the avocados to unofficial street markets. The problem was getting so big that, as of 2018, a Civil Guard unit called the Roca group (Robbery in the Countryside for its acronym in Spanish) is active to guard the area.
In the million-dollar business where ambition and then crime appear, Mexico is ahead of the game.
Saeed Kamali Dehghan wrote for eldiario.es that the risk analysis consulting firm Verisk Maplecroft warned about “the possibility that the Mexican avocado could drive a conflict around its control and that avocados could become the new ‘blood diamonds’ (as happens in Angola or Sierra Leone) or that the same could happen with minerals in the Democratic Republic of Congo”.
The New Generation Jalisco cartel not only wants to dominate the drug trafficking market, but also the avocado market. The consultant, Dehghan wrote, also determined that the cartels’ intervention produces violence and that they use forced and child labor in avocado production. In addition, they illegally deforest land in order to expand the crop fields.
In September, the U.S. Department of Agriculture threatened the growers in México –the legal ones– with suspending the certification of the avocado, which is mandatory for export to that country, “if measures are not taken to guarantee the safety of their health personnel operating on the region’s producing farms,” reported journalist Carlos Salinas Maldonado
A social media celebrity
Several analysts agree that the enormous increase in demand for the global avocado is due to the fame of this tropical fruit on social media; on Instagram only there are more than 10 million posts under the hashtag #avocado. This fruit is available almost year-round and has numerous benefits: it is a source of healthy fats (monounsaturated), vitamin E (needed to protect cells and prevent diseases such as cancer), vitamin C (needed for bone health and iron absorption), and minerals such as potassium, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, iron, copper and zinc.
This @Starbucks avocado frappuccino is served in South Korea 🥑 pic.twitter.com/9m62YyOlHk
— Food Insider (@FoodInsider) November 21, 2018
In Axarquía, in Málaga, farmers toast to the Super Bowl. “We have young growers who, at the same time as selling avocados all over Europe, when the final of the American Football League arrives, toast to the good prices of this fruit, following it on television even though it starts after midnight from Sunday to Monday,” Antonio Gómez, a farmer, comments to Fran Extremera.