This month’s Food X is brought to you by the Center’s Population and Sustainability Senior Media Specialist Kim Dinan. Read on to learn about our work to ensure that avocados imported to the United States aren’t contributing to deforestation — and about the certification program that’s bringing new hope to the communities and species affected by avocado plantations in Mexico.
Guacamole’s hidden costs
Monarchs from the United States and Canada travel up to 3,000 miles to reach the Mexican forests where they overwinter. But avocado plantations are destroying the forests they need to survive.
Nearly 2,400 acres of the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve have already been lost to avocados. The butterflies’ forests are further weakened by nearby deforestation: More than 10 football fields' worth of land in the region have been cleared each day for the past 10 years to make room for avocados. Read more in our interview with the Center’s own Tierra Curry.
Rampant deforestation and water hoarding by avocado plantations — it takes about 18.5 gallons to grow a single avocado — aren’t just devastating for monarchs. The avocado market has become incredibly lucrative, attracting organized crime and violence toward Indigenous peoples, local communities, and forest defenders.
But there’s hope that a new program can turn the destruction around.
The latest update in the campaign to protect butterflies
Last year the government of Michoacán — the Mexican state where most avocados imported to the United States are grown — worked with environmental and agricultural experts to launch a certification program aimed at preventing producers who destroy forests from accessing lucrative U.S. markets.
The Guardián Forestal program certifies packinghouses that only source avocados from orchards on land that has not been deforested since 2018 or affected by forest fire since 2012. In the first year, 90% of companies exporting from Mexico to the United States voluntarily joined the program.
Retailers are starting to pay attention, too. Costco is the most recent company to announce avocado-sourcing commitments. We expect other companies will follow suit — and as they do, it’ll put pressure on those last few packinghouses to get certified.
While this momentum is a huge win for the program’s first operational year, the work isn’t over. As long as participation is anything less than 100%, monarchs and their forests are still in danger.
Wildlife-friendly avocados
Climate Rights International blew this issue wide open with its Unholy Guacamole report. And Guardián Forestal’s certification program has created unprecedented accountability in the avocado industry.
The Center has played an important role in bringing the plight of the monarchs into the story, keeping up pressure on companies and elevating the issue through our Stop Killer Guac campaign.
We all have to keep sounding the alarm so retailers know we don’t want the avocados we buy at the store to come with a haunted history. And you can help. Tell U.S. grocery stores to adopt avocado-sourcing policies that prevent deforestation and protect monarch habitat.
