Rising avocado prices fuelling illegal deforestation in Mexico

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian and agencies

Rising avocado prices fuelling illegal deforestation in Mexico

Mexican farmers can make higher profits than most other crops
so are thinning out pine forests to plant young avocado trees

Haroon Siddique and agencies
Wednesday 10 August 2016 11.08 BST

The popularity of the avocado in the US and rising prices for the “superfood” are fuelling deforestation in central Mexico.

Mexican farmers can make much higher profits growing avocados than from most other crops and so are thinning out pine forests to plant young avocado trees.

Such is the size of the market that it has become a lucrative business for Mexico’s drug gangs, with extortion money paid to criminal organisations such as Los Caballeros Templarios (The Knights Templar) in Michoacán – the state that produces most of Mexico’s avocados – estimated at 2bn pesos ($109m) a year.

Mario Tapia Vargas, a researcher at Mexico’s National Institute for Forestry, Farming and Fisheries Research, told the Associated Press: “Even where they [the farmers] aren’t visibly cutting down forest, there are avocados growing underneath (the pine boughs), and sooner or later they’ll cut down the pines completely.”

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/aug/10/avocado-illegal-deforestation-mexico-pine-forests

[Judi Lynn]

1. Avocado price Mexico deforestation as farmers try to meet demand; butterflies threatened

Avocado price Mexico deforestation as farmers try to meet demand; butterflies threatened
AP

Aug 11, 2016




MEXICO CITY – Americans’ love for avocados and rising prices for the highly exportable fruit are fueling the deforestation of central Mexico’s pine forests as farmers rapidly expand their orchards to feed demand.

Avocado trees flourish at about the same altitude and climate as the pine and fir forests in the mountains of Michoacan, the state that produces most of Mexico’s avocados. That has led farmers to wage a cat-and-mouse campaign to avoid authorities, thinning out the forests, planting young avocado trees under the forest canopy, and then gradually cutting back the forest as the trees grow to give them more sunlight.

“Even where they aren’t visibly cutting down forest, there are avocados growing underneath (the pine boughs), and sooner or later they’ll cut down the pines completely,” said Mario Tapia Vargas, a researcher at Mexico’s National Institute for Forestry, Farming and Fisheries Research.

Given that Michoacan’s forests contain much of the wintering grounds of the monarch butterfly, the deforestation is more than just an academic issue. Authorities have already detected small avocado plots in the monarchs’ reserve where farmers have cut down pine forest.Worse, Tapia Vargas said, a mature avocado orchard uses almost twice as much water as fairly dense forest, meaning less water reaches Michoacan’s legendary crystalline mountain streams on which the forests and animals depend.

More:

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/08/11/business/avocado-price-spike-sparks-mexico-deforestation-farmers-try-meet-demand-butterflies-threatened/#.V6uqCuRTGbw