The export of avocados to the United States has a "delicate" side, according to the environmental journalist Agustín del Castillo, who has more than 30 years of experience in territorial and sustainability journalism.
“The first thing that comes to mind is environmental damage, the destruction of forests;
and, the second, organized crime, ”he points out during his conversation with Salvador Camarena.
In this episode, Castillo assures that Mexico is going through a crisis "in terms of control of the territory."
He believes that the lack of control by the State of the soil "has a great impact", a problem that, according to him, began in the 1990s, when California saw the "brutal crisis" of water and looked for a place to produce avocados at a lower cost.
During this time, the journalist affirms, Michoacán —one of the two territories with the highest production and exports, along with Jalisco— “was kidnapped very quickly by organized crime” who saw “high profitability” in the fruit.
He assures that the intervention of the cartels is notable in that State, where the producers come to pay "from the mobilization of the product", "to the priority of the shipment to the United States".
"[This issue] is highly visible in the territory, but it could happen in other parts of the country," he says.
The president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has supported the fruit produced in Michoacán on different occasions, and has defended that the rest of the countries can be "calm" when acquiring it, since the control of the cartels does not currently exist. .
"What has been scientifically proven is that the best avocado is from Michoacán," he recounted during one of his morning conferences, in which he reasoned about "how would" the US and Canada do without this product.
"The quality of the avocado they produce is not the same," he stated.
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