Green gold: Avocado farming on the rise in Africa
dw.com
dw.com
While perusing the stocks, my partner happened upon a smiling vendor with a big knife standing beside a pile of boxed avocados. He said, “You have to taste my avocados!” as he sliced open a petite dark green fruit. My partner accepted the cube offered on a toothpick and gingerly placed it onto his tongue. Upon closing his mouth, the cube seemed to spontaneously melt into one of the most buttery, savory, rich substances he had ever tasted. Needless to say, my partner brought home a big box of avocados that day.
I was skeptical when he first told me the story, but we quickly had a knife and spoons at the ready and were digging in to a ripe specimen. He wasn’t lying after all, this was among the best things I had ever tasted, similar to an excellent piece of salmon sashimi but… better. I confess to you that we ate that big box of avocados in a week or less, our intake only limited by the rate at which the fruit became ripe. We aren’t normally gluttonous people, but those were some amazing avocados.
We eat store bought avocados several times a week, but I unfortunately haven’t had a single one in the years since that was even a hundredth as delicious as those wonderful fruits. If anything, the flavor and quality seems to be on the decline. We often joke about sneaking back into the produce terminal to find avocado man and his delicious avocados. Maybe one of these days…
I find the quality of avocados (and pretty much everything else) varies by the season. As you get closer to California's season for avocados, they taste better and better. Once they have to travel further, they start being more hit or miss.
I haven't tasted one as good as the ones I ate off the tree in Kenya. Although, almost everything there seemed to taste better.
Of course, there's also the quality - or not - of the soil.
(This is probably why SF distributors were so keen to sell their special avocados direct.)
I found this that ships carefully packed boxes of unripe ones (within US only, so no good for me.. but maybe someone in the US might like to try this?):
https://mimiavocado.com/2014/11/does-bacon-avocado-taste-lik...
So it's likely that his avocados cannot be found elsewhere. Find the avocado man, purchase clippings from his amazing tree and start an orchid.
They aren't the same as the parent I know (and who knows what variety they pollinated with) but it's still a lot of fun to plant one and see what you get. Worst comes to worst, you'll still have a good rootstock!
> So it's likely that his avocados cannot be found elsewhere.
[1] https://californiaavocado.com/avocado101/avocado-varieties/
One place I know has great avocados are fruit stands in San Diego, particularly North County during summer. They grow them all over the hillsides and sell for cheap by the roadside.
Thanks for sharing!
They have their money in many farms. It's a great way to launder money.
I can feel what kind of the comments will be downvoted but can't pin down why. The best I can come up with is that certain comment will be downvoted when the "mood" (not even narrative) of it doesn't fit with the others.
Such fruit could be cheaper and higher quality as it would be local and could reach ripeness on the plant. And it will be less susceptible to anti-gmo activists, because unlike usual GMO that benefits growers, or benefits customers in a non-obvious way (like golden rice), it will benefit directly customers who will be getting delicious tropical fruit which now they can taste only when traveling.
I wonder what happens if there is an influx of avocados from Africa.
Food safety is an issue for meat, but Europe imports enormous quantities of fruit and vegetables from Africa (including avocados).
Hardly enourmous, given Africa agricultural potential and production.
This is why Europeans settlers failed to colonize Africa, except for the southernmost part.
The fact is that crops take water to grow. All crops do. Avocados are on the higher side when looked at water used per pound (though not the highest), but they are still nowhere near the level of animal products. Avocados are also one of the most (if not the most) calorie-dense fruits, which means that their water per calorie is likely in line with most other fruit.
What exactly was the point Rotten was trying to make? That avocados are popular so now they are being grown more? who cares? You could say the same thing about literally every other fruit and vegetable on the planet.
Growing e.g. alfalfa, rice, cotton, or almonds in California (not to mention beef/dairy production) happens partly because water for agriculture is artificially cheap, not reflecting its true costs.
Youtube suggested it to me recently as well.
They are about as balanced and factual as a Facebook.
Reminds me of the YouTube video that take 15 min to explain a 30 second concept.
I remember avocados from the 90s as being rock hard and mostly flavorless. Perhaps they were better locally, but I never had a tasty, buttery soft avocado until the 2000s.
You can’t reasonably compare unripe produce transported from 1500 miles away with fresh ripe local produce.
Avocados exported from California to the East Coast can also end up mediocre.
Almost all fruits and vegetables in the US taste better on the US West coast, in my opinion, and I suspect it’s because you’re closer to the origin (Cali/Mexico/WA/OR/the rest of Central and South America) so the fruit/vegetables take less time in transit and therefore don’t have to be picked so early.
Avocado also varies based on weather and age of the tree.
I also cringe when I see people pressing their thumbs into them at the store.
This is a very pronounced effect across all sectors of the economy. It's really not that surprising. It's similar to the old traffic engineering adage that expanding highways expands traffic in equal measure - such that it is often futile to add extra lanes to existing congested roads.
When something becomes cheaper/easier to use, demand often rises to the point that the new equilibrium is similar to the old one, as new opportunities open up to use X product that were previously unexplored due to constrained supply
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-02-01-fi-24310-...
Maybe that's true for the ones shipped eastward.
Here in the SF bay area, I find California Hass avocados are superior to those available from Mexico and Peru. They're easy to peel and the flavor is fantastic.
That shift has laid the foundation for items like avocado toast or Chipotle’s guacamole to help popularize avocados.
There are lots of other factors, I’m sure. But it helps that they’re tasty.
My understanding is also that it can take 20 years from pit to fruit-bearing-tree, so supply will tend to lag behind demand (which has grown globally.)
No one answered you about avocado toast, but it's literally what it sounds like. Slice some avocado, put it on toast, typically with a poached egg and some seasonings of choice. It's seen as a quick healthy meat free breakfast or lunch that still has a sort of richness to it. It became a fad with younger people after restaurants realized it could be a real money maker.
By contrast, oranges aren't something I'd indulge in. They have much more sugar - ~10x what an avocado has. They're acidic. They're not particularly filling (low fat / protein content).
I too was also lucky enough to grow up with a hand full of avocado trees that fruited every year, and I say that even though I never really cared for them personally, but to this day I do incorporate avocado oil into my salads and wish I had acquired the taste for eating the avocado itself.
I think the marketing has died down but for a while I Felt it was almost on par with the kind of submarine marketing both pizza and tacos get as a favorite food of the masses.
I stopped eating chips with canola oil and only get the ones with only avocado oil, because the canola is rancid for my belly
I would think that they manage their farm land as an investment. It isn’t easy to move to a different area due to labor, equipment, investment into the ground, etc.
If anything, I’d expect a small farm operation to easily relocate should the land become less productive.
That's never made any sense to me. Why does the food become bad just because I'm farther from the farmer? The environmental emissions from transport are minimal, so that can't be it.
Are you trying to say eat from grown by a small farmer?
But that's no good either, small farmers are less efficient. Or maybe you are valuing something else over environmental efficiency?
Can you explain?
Where I live, we buy summer crops from local farms about 30 miles away. The farmers sell for half of retail, and make about double. They are fairly large operations with a diverse set of products and have a sustainable, smart approach to farming — most have been in business for hundreds of years and plan to remain.
The monocropping of the Midwest is creating a desert, period. We’ll be importing corn in my lifetime. Vegetable crops in the Colorado irrigation corridor are vulnerable to climate change.
What happens to the “miracle in the desert” in California and Arizona if climate changes significantly reduces snowfall in the Colorado River watershed?
IMO, we face risks that are real, and short term economic forces and incentives will affect our ability to adapt. I live in the Northeast, and it’s important that on a regional basis agriculture is an industry that is vital and can grow.
Want to bet on whether the US will become a net corn importer?
Big dairy industry looks different. A big farm with 1000 milking cows is hyper-optimized for maximum profit. There is not enough pasture to go round, so depending on regulations of the country, the animals may never go outside ever. If you can save 1% on buying in cheaper food, even if it comes from half a continent away, you do it since that's easily a six-figure savings. If you can increase stocking density withing law limits, you do it. If you need to use less sand or can get away with cleaning their water bins less often, you do it. Each animal is a number that turns food expenses into milk profits, that's it.
It is not an exact rule of course. There are many irresponsible small farmers who just inherited a small farm and run it poorly, and there's some big farms that do things very properly.
There are many advantages but not shipping, flying or excessive trucking makes it much greener.
Add in regenerative organic farming processes, and you pay farmers to improve the land.
It's simply a consequence of people wanting to (and being able to afford) good tasting food.
Why should Nigeria import rice and wheat and export avocados her citizens don't need, because the avocado farmers can retain export proceeds abroad, while the food importers profit from subsidized basic foods produced in the West?
You only have enough farms to feed half your people. You can feed half your people or export something twice as expensive and import enough food to feed everyone. That’s the whole argument of globalization. Everyone has different geography and cultures and thus produce what makes the most money since they can import anything they need from elsewhere.