The cultivation of avocados for American consumers is wrecking Mexico’s forests, as growers have illegally cleared the trees and drug cartels have moved in to launder their ill-gotten gains in this lucrative trade. U.S. consumption of avocados has risen almost fivefold in the past 25 years, with 90 percent of the fruit now coming from two states in southwest Mexico’s “avocado belt,” which is now known for its deforestation and criminal violence. Americans are said to be consuming “blood avocados.”
This dark underside of the avocado boom has received international attention in recent years. But it is not the whole truth. Some Indigenous communities in the state of Michoacán, the world’s largest producer of the crop, are finding ways to ward off the crime syndicates and grow avocados profitably while protecting their biodiverse forests of oak and pine, including vital hibernation habitat for the monarch butterfly overwintering from the United States.
Mexican researchers say the key to their success lies in traditional systems for community management of their forests. The lesson may be applicable far beyond the borders of Mexico, they say. Collectively owned lands can be the best basis for creating “bioeconomies” that combine economic exploitation of the land with the conservation of natural resources.
Nine out of 10 avocados eaten in the U.S. come from Mexico, with three-quarters of those coming from Michoacán.
Mexico is today the world’s leading producer of avocados. Cultivation of the fruit in the country goes back to ancient times. The Aztecs thought it promoted strength and virility. But the modern avocado boom began in the 1990s, when producers in California were unable to meet rising demand because of growing water shortages, and Calavo Growers, a network of California cooperatives growing and selling avocados, encouraged small-scale growers in Michoacán to expand production to take advantage of the 1992 NAFTA free-trade agreement with the U.S.
Since then, annual Mexican output has risen to more than 2.5 million tons, and the country has captured nearly half of a fast-expanding global market. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, nine out of 10 avocados eaten in the U.S. today come from Mexico. With almost three-quarters of this output coming from Michoacán, the state supplies a staggering one-third of the global market.
This requires land. The area under cultivation in the state has nearly tripled to roughly 400,000 acres, according to an analysis by Alfonso De la Vega-Rivera and Leticia Merino- Pérez of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). As existing farmland growing corn and other crops has been converted to avocado plantations, growers have moved into the state’s extensive forests, most of which are legally classified as ejidos, collectively owned by communities.
An avocado orchard displaces forest on a hillside in the Mexican state of Michoacán.
Cesar Rodriguez / Bloomberg via Getty Images
Today, deforested land is responsible for a quarter of avocado production in Michoacán, threatening its status as one of the most biodiverse states in the country. This has happened despite “not one single legal authorization for forest clearing” being issued in the state, says Vega-Rivera — “a clear indicator of the illegal status of the majority of avocado orchards.” Often, this appropriation of communal forest lands results in Indigenous people ending up working in avocado orchards established on lands they formerly owned.
As well as invading forests, the growers degrade water supplies. Avocado orchards require at least 75,000 gallons per acre during a typical dry season, says Vega-Rivera. Mostly, the farmers take that water from local springs, wells, and streams, resulting in many local rivers running dry.
Besides the environmental destruction, avocados have brought social breakdown. According to human rights and financial crime watchdog groups, drug cartels have moved in on the trade to launder their profits and dominate the market through extortion of farmers and bribery of government officials. A 2023 investigation in Michoacán and neighboring Jalisco by Climate Rights International, “Unholy Guacamole,” cited numerous cases of land being stolen, forests cleared for plantations, and water supplies hijacked to irrigate the thirsty crop. In many rural areas, the trade is controlled by criminal gangs. One Indigenous community leader told CRI: “If you point the finger or talk, they’ll kill you.”
“The drug traffickers became armed loggers. In just three years, half of the community’s forests were lost.”
But “not all avocados produced in the state are the result of violence and deforestation,” says Isabel Ramírez of the Center for Research in Environmental Geography at UNAM. There are places where the gangs do not hold sway. This is usually where community cohesion is strong and Indigenous traditions of collective land and forest ownership persist, enabling communities to fight back.
The main avocado-growing region in Michoacán extends from the plateau of Meseta Purépecha in the west to Zitácuaro in the east, a hilly region where the altitude and climate provide ideal conditions for growing the fruit. But they are also ideal for the temperate oak and pine forests that grow widely here, especially in the hills of the Meseta Purépecha, the homeland of the Purépecha Indigenous people.
Prior to the avocado boom, the Indigenous and other people of the area conducted their farming amid trees that moderated the climate and helped ensure steady water supplies by collecting rainfall, maintaining soils, and reducing runoff. “Peasants in the Meseta Purépecha maintained an important agrobiodiversity… with maize, beans, squash, and a high diversity of fruits, tubers, and herbs, including different varieties of avocado trees,” says Vega-Rivera.
But once the avocado boom began, that productive balance was lost in many places. Larger farmers came in and invested in establishing monocultures of avocados that have resulted in a third of the forests being lost.
But many Purépecha communities have continued their traditional practices and repelled the illegal growers and gangs attempting to muscle in on their businesses. Most famously, this happened in the municipality of Cherán. Purépecha community archivist José Merced Velázquez Pañeda, known locally as Tata Meché, remembers how it happened.
“For about 20 or 25 years, the gangsters came in, little by little, sometimes making agreements with people who weren’t authorized to cut down the forest,” he says. Then starting in 2008, things changed rapidly. “Cherán was taken over by the gangs. The drug traffickers became armed loggers. In just three years, half of the community’s forests were lost.”
Once the forest was cleared, the gangs began to lay plans with local officials to plant avocados, Tata Meché says. The Purépecha realized that this threatened to make the loss of their forests permanent. Led by its women, the community decided to fight back.
The community argued that while “avocados provide extraordinary profits for a few years, it is the forests that will sustain us always.”
“One morning in April 2011, at 5 a.m., all the bells in the community rang. That was the signal, organized by the women, to stop all the gang’s vehicles on the road,” says Tata Meché. “We knew where they would be. Everything was confiscated.” Armed male community members held some loggers hostage and destroyed their trucks, while local police seen as complicit in the illegal activities were run out of town. It amounted to an insurrection, and it had a lasting impact. The Purépecha were granted local autonomy soon after, and corrupt local officials were ousted. The criminals never returned, says Tata Meché.
Cherán’s forests were saved, and no avocados have been grown since. “We decided that avocado plantations will not be allowed. That’s very strict here in Cherán, and we all respect it,” says Tata Meché. “We agree that we must recover communality, the way of life inherited from our ancestors.”
Elsewhere in the hills of Meseta Purépecha, the Purépecha people have not banned avocado growing outright, but in some places have succeeded in combining it with traditions of sustainable forest management. Most notably, this has happened in and around the village of Nuevo San Juan Parangaricutiro, which has long been feted for its sustainable management of the surrounding forests.
A Purépecha woman collects medicinal herbs near a community spring in the forest in Angahuan.
Monica Pelliccia / Mongabay
In San Juan, a strong community culture underpins a forestry industry that includes logging, the sale of roundwood, furniture making, and the production of cleaning products from pine resin. Village enterprises sell their products in most of Mexico’s cities, while protecting the forests. They have been certified by the Forest Stewardship Council and have won the Equator Prize awarded by the U.N. Development Programme for outstanding community efforts to reduce poverty through the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity.
When the avocado boom arrived, many in San Juan wanted to plant avocados on existing farm plots. In among 25,000 acres of its community-owned forests, some 5,000 acres have been set aside for agriculture, primarily now for avocados. But their business model has been very different from that elsewhere in the avocado belt. For while the orchards are owned by individual farmers, community laws require them to follow agreed rules, and some of the profit goes back into the community forest enterprises.
When some farmers began to extend their farms into the forest, the community intervened, says local farmer Gregorio Anguiano. The community argued that while “avocados provide extraordinary profits for a few years, it is the forests that will sustain us always — if we conserve and manage them well.”
The people of Carpinteros have not cut down a single tree to grow more avocados, says a community leader.
UNAM’s Vega-Rivera agrees. “Strong community institutions have enabled San Juan to limit avocado expansion and maintain the communal forests… which provide vital environmental services for the entire region.” Vega-Rivera believes the San Juan model “shows the potential of collective action around forest commons as [a] means to contain environmental destruction.” This model could be adopted to sustain “bioeconomies” much more widely around the world, from rubber-tapping in the Amazon to mangrove harvesting in East Africa.
The Zitácuaro municipality in the east of the avocado belt is another center of Indigenous avocado cultivation where sustainable methods are enforced by cultural traditions. More than two-thirds of avocado production there is in the hands of Indigenous communities, most notably the Mazahua and Otomi people. Under their land-management practices, Indigenous farmers have the right to cultivate avocados on plots within the commonly owned forest lands. But the plots typically cover only three or four acres, and the farmers are governed by goals that include protecting the forests, says Ramírez, who has studied their work in detail.
A Purépecha woman grows fruits and vegetables in a plot outside her home in Angahuan.
Monica Pelliccia / Mongabay
Forest conservation here is particularly vital since biodiversity is high, and much of Zitácuaro is part of a 140,000-acre biosphere reserve set up to protect the wintering grounds of the monarch butterfly. Up to a billion butterflies arrive each fall from around the U.S. Northeast and Midwest to overwinter in forests whose protection is essential to the butterfly’s life cycle.
José Guadalupe Garduño, president of the Communal Commission in Carpinteros, one of the five Indigenous communities in the municipality, is adamant about the gains from growing avocados. They are “green gold,” he says. “Before, when we planted corn and wheat, the profits were minimal.” Life is much better with the profits from avocados, he says. But the five communities work together through their collective assemblies to control it and prevent cultivation on forest lands.
The people of Carpinteros have not cut down a single tree to grow more avocados, he says. This strict policy protects the forests and maximizes avocado yields. “The forest keeps the avocados cool and hydrated,” ensuring annual yields of as much as 14 tons per acre. Many farmers grow the crop organically. ”Very few herbicides and agrochemicals are used,” says Garduño. “Most of us are in favor of biological controls, and it has worked out very well for us.” These practices have protected the forests within the butterfly reserve, as well as producing avocados. Meanwhile, a share of the avocado shareholders’ profits goes to support community institutions, including forest monitoring and the management of scarce water resources.
In February, leading U.S. avocado suppliers agreed to a new certification scheme that would reject fruit grown on deforested land.
Maintaining this approach against intimidation by criminal gangs has not always been easy, according to Garduño. A few years ago, he says, the community “had a very serious confrontation with those people.” An armed gang set up a roadblock and shot at a car, killing one community member before escaping into the forest pursued by community members. “Seeing our determination to defend our own, they didn’t bother us afterwards,” says Garduño.
Local geography is helping keep outsiders away. “There aren’t many roads here,” he says. “If outsiders come in, we all communicate this by radio. It won’t be easy for them to face 300 or 400 people responding quickly to a communal call. They have no way out.”
In February, some leading U.S. of avocados, including Calavo Growers, agreed to join a new certification scheme that promises to reject fruit grown on land deforested after 2018. Daniel Wilkinson at CRI, which has criticized previous attempts to certify deforestation-free avocados as inadequate, said it could be a “major step forward” and “a big relief for local communities who have suffered threats and violence for opposing illegal deforestation.” But he warned it would only work if monitoring were rigorous and all suppliers and retailers signed up.
Meanwhile, Indigenous community control of their own lands may remain the best defense the forests have.
