In early February, inspections were halted on Mexican shipments of avocados after a U.S. inspector was reportedly threatened by growers for refusing to certify a shipment. On Friday, February 18, the U.S. Embassy announced that the country would be lifting the ban on avocado inspections, meaning exports should resume soon.
Mexico's avocado exports to the U.S. are worth $3 billion annually, with the western state of Michoacan supplying 80% of the avocados purchased in the U.S. in 2021. Michoacán is the only Mexican state that has been certified to export avocados to the U.S.. Regulators have concerns in other areas over pests and diseases that could be inadvertently transported with the exports.
According to U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar, the decision to drop the ban on avocado inspections followed an agreement between the two countries "to enact the measures that ensure the safety" of the inspectors. Details on what those measures will be weren't provided.
Along with the issue of deforestation, avocado growers in Mexico are routinely targeted by drug cartels for extortion, and cartel violence is common in the industry. There have also been reports that growers and packers are disregarding sanitary measures required by the U.S., including by sourcing avocados from non-certified states.
Similar issues have been reported in other profitable export industries in Mexico, including citrus fruits. In 2020, a citrus inspector was murdered in Mexico, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
The USDA said that the recent threat received by one of its avocado inspectors was sent because the inspector had "questioned the integrity of a certain shipment, and refused to certify it based on concrete issues." The threat sent directly to the inspector's phone was directed "against him and his family".
While it only lasted a week, the ban had an immediate effect on growers in Michoacán. Pickers lost jobs, and the supply of avocados to the U.S. dropped. Currently, other sources, like Peru, Columbia, and Chile, only supply a tiny fraction of the U.S. avocado supply, but turmoil in the Mexican avocado industry could change that.
"I was talking with a few buyers of avocado domestically, and on toward the future, they know they need to diversify suppliers," said professor of applied economics and management at the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, Miguel Gómez. "The issue is that they realized that it would be very risky to depend on a single source."
Analysts say that U.S. shoppers may not be willing to pay more for avocados that weren't sourced from Mexico. However, they also point to the fact that the cartels being paid off by the avocado growers are the same groups supplying much of the U.S.'s counterfeit fentanyl pills.
"It's requiring Americans to really ask themselves, do they want to pay more to have a quality product or do they want to kind of look the other way and be able to slice their toast accordingly?" says Desirée LeClercq, a professor at Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations. "And I think that consumers are becoming more educated on how these products are made. But whether or not that's going to trickle into consumer behavior, I think has yet to be seen."