"We have developed such a voracious appetite for this versatile fruit that the U.S. now annually brings in nearly 3 billion pounds of avocados."
These consecutive sentences each state as fact an opposite causality.
How can the central thesis of the article be so confused?
High appetite -> lots of fruit imported -> consumption "explodes"
You can't consume what you don't have, so if they're not growing enough then they have to import them before they can be eaten.
Both importing and consumption are downstream of high demand, but consumption is downstream of high importing.
High appetite for avocados is the reason. Maybe combined with reasonable prices or some other factors. Importing them simply makes it possible for those purchase numbers to get that high. Means. If US would grow them in huge quantities on their own soil it would also allow for the same outcome. So how it is the reason?
My English ain't amazing, I know, but when I read "old school press" it makes me thing: am I so dumb, or are they deliberately using confusing phrasing to sound smarter than it's actually required?
Importing them from Mexico lets consumers have a good quality avocado at a low price. Offering someone a good deal raises demand for that deal relative to offering them fewer, lower-quality eaches at a higher price.
> (Question in title:) Why America now eats a crazy number of avocados
> (Answer in article:) And the reason avocados have exploded in the U.S. is that most of them are no longer grown in the U.S.
How does that make any sort of sense? You could say "it's because they've become very cheap", sure. But if they were grown outside US, and at higher prices, would you accept that as a valid "reason why avocado consumption has exploded"? It would imply that americans must actively hate domestically-grown avocados, with passion.
> the average water use would go up "because" it was coming from someplace other than your village's small oasis
No, absolutely not. It would go up, in your example, because it was more readily available. The source has nothing to do with it except indirectly - the availability has everything to do with it.
I do not think this follows. Some boomer oped writers blaming avocado toasts for young poverty does not imply there is causality between the two. Some boomers love to blame whatever is new for them and they do not bother to check prices or actual levels of consumption.
As in, whatever avocados young people were eating and buying, the expense is unlikely to be comparable with the cost of housing, education, healthcare (if they have health issues already) etc.
When you remove a barrier to a market the intersection of supply and demand curves shifts to the right (more supply) and the equilibrium price drops and the equilibrium supply increases. “Why does this happen?” is more correctly explained by “the supply increased” because the supply curve is what changed, not the demand curve. Note that the article argues for a subsequent change in the demand curve, fueled by tax-funded advertising.