• Avocado consumption has grown in 2022, especially in Europe where the tropical fruit has been popular for fifteen years.

  • Should we be worried about it?

    Avocado cultivation does not always get good press, especially on the environmental side.

    In Mexico, its expansion is partly on local pine forests.

  • Without denying these limits, Eric Imbert, economist at CIRAD, invites us not to darken the picture.

    Question carbon footprint and water footprint, the avocado does not have to be ashamed of other food productions.

With salt and a little lemon, in a salad or in guacamole, in soup or in a cocktail... "You Europeans consume avocado in many ways", points out Zach Bard, president of the World Health Organization. lawyer (WAO).

For fifteen years, the avocado has been a hit on the Old Continent, surfing on its nutritional qualities as a “superfood”.

More than a third of world imports now go there.

“770,000 tonnes were consumed there in 2021, we should exceed 800,000 in 2022”, specifies Eric Imbert, economist at Cirad, a French agronomic research center.

With 2.2 kilos engulfed

per year and per inhabitant, the French are not for nothing.

It's less than the Danes or the Norwegians, okay.

But, in terms of imported volume, we are well ahead.

World consumption set to double?

This avocado boom is “unparalleled in the world of fruits and vegetables”, notes Eric Imbert.

And that's probably just the start.

“In Asia, we are just discovering its virtues,” assures Zach Bard, who expects world consumption to double within ten years.

The question is at what price?

The lawyer has often hit the headlines for the environmental and societal impacts that his culture entails, particularly in his historic stronghold: the Mexican state of Michoacan.

In thirty years, plantations have increased from 31,000 to 118,000 hectares.

Despite strict rules, this expansion is taking place, in part, to the detriment of pine forests, rich in biodiversity, in the midst of which farmers plant avocado trees clandestinely, told

Le Monde

in 2016. The "green gold", as it is nicknamed Mexicans, also arouses the greed of drug traffickers who extort producers and try to impose their law on the market.

In Chile, where the hectares devoted to avocado have increased tenfold since 1961, the crop is accused of being the cause of the severe droughts that are raging in the province of Petorca, in the center of the country.

Same criticism in southern Spain, one of the first

countries around the Mediterranean to have started growing avocados.

Biologist Rafaël Yus, from the Spanish NGO Ecologiste en action, regularly sounds the alarm about the very low levels of the Vinuela water reserve, near Malaga, due in particular to the irrigation of tropical fruits.


Stimulate the local economy

Eric Imbert does not deny these abuses.

“Unfortunately, there are as soon as a culture develops but it is not fair to sum up the avocado to that.

".

The CIRAD economist nuances the picture.

“Unlike many other fruits, the avocado is still today in the hands of small and medium-sized producers and not industrialists.

Whether in Mexico, Spain, Morocco, Kenya..." This is also a point highlighted by the WAO to show that the avocado boom has stimulated employment and reduced poverty in the rural communities in producing countries.

As for the environmental impacts, there again, we should not see everything in black.

"Or at least put things in perspective", invites Eric Imbert.

Starting with the question of transport.

Admittedly, more than a third of the avocados consumed in Europe come from Peru.

But according to Blaise Desbordes, general manager of the fair trade label Max Havelaar France, “this step counts for very little in the total carbon footprint of food production, especially when it is transported by boat”.

In 2020, Our world in data, a scientific publication specializing in the challenges of global development, urged consumers to focus on the choice of food more than on their origin in order to lower the carbon footprint of their diet.

A carbon and water footprint to its advantage?

Thus, from the field to the plate, a kilo of avocados would emit a little more than 2 kilos

CO2 equivalents, we assure the WAO based on a large study published in the journal

Science

, in 2018. This footprint is 60 kilos for a kilo of beef, 19 for chocolate or 17 for coffee, according to this same study.

As for water consumption, here again, the comparisons are to the advantage of the lawyer.

The reference this time is the "water footprint", an index developed by Dutch researchers in 2011. According to their calculations, it would take 1,200 liters of water to produce one kilo of avocado.

That's more than apples (822) or bananas (660).

"But much less than a kilo of beef, coffee or chocolate, all above 15,000 liters," engages Zach Bard.

The South African also recalls that these calculations date from 2011. "Since then, drip irrigation and digital tools have been widely developed and have made it possible to significantly reduce this consumption", assures- he.



Conducive to agroforestry?

In some humid production areas - Kenya, Colombia, Mexico, etc. - the supply of irrigated water required per kilo of avocados can drop below 10 litres”, specifies the WAO.

On the other hand, in the drier areas - Spain, Chile, Israel, etc. - the quantities of water to be added remain significant.

Up to a maximum of 1,250 liters per kilo of avocados, concedes the organization.

But the lawyer has other assets.

"It's a solid fruit, with a thick skin that protects it from disease," he explains.

It requires few pesticides.

Avocados also grow on perennial trees, which each year capture their share of CO2 from the atmosphere.

“Avocado trees also lend themselves very well to agroforestry,” adds Zach Bard.

This mode of exploitation, often presented as a response to climate change, consists in associating on the same land, trees with lower crops or even livestock, each production bringing benefits to the other and allowing farmers to increase their income.

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After soy and palm oil… Cocoa, the other crop eating away at the forest

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A margin of progress on fair trade?

Blaise Desbordes, General Manager Max Havelaar France, still sees an area in which the lawyer can still progress: fair trade.

Sixteen organizations currently produce avocados under the conditions of the Fair/Trade Max Havelaar label.

That, in particular, of ensuring fair remuneration for producers.

“It remains embryonic, resumes Blaise Desbordes.

Nothing to do with coffee, chocolate or bananas.

»

However, the stakes are colossal.

“When fruits produced in the south become widely consumed in the north, there is very quickly this temptation for intermediaries to pressurize producers, he continues.

This does not help to move towards more environmentally friendly practices, quite the contrary.

" It is on this point that the consumer has a role to play, for the CEO of Max Havelaar: "A few years ago, large retailers understood that their customers wanted fair trade bananas and began to offer it widely”.

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