Healthy And Delicious Avocado: Price Of The Bounty

There has been a silent contest among the major producers of this unique 'green-gold' avocado as to who would be on the top list of suppliers or exporters.

- Rico R. Magda

There have been many contenders but the production of this 'green-gold' fruit is creating some drawbacks like droughts or scarcity of useable domestic water, deforestation, etc. to name a few. Producer countries, however, deny such bad effects and claim otherwise that sales have been beneficial to national economic development. The controversy surrounding the stuff seems unabated though one thing is sure: Avocado will remain as the mainstay export crop and a favorite domestic diet.

AVOCADO, A VERY THIRSTY TREE

In 500 BC, the Aztecs in Mexico named 'avocado' as 'ahuacatl' fruit as it hangs from the tree as testicle, which greatly resemble the male part. Avocado (Persea Americana) appears as a common fare for trendy magazines and social media. Its growing practices, however, have griping disadvantages to the exporting countries due to its gargantuan needs for irrigation water during the fruiting stage, reducing the growing countries with depleted or scarce water supply. Despite this apparent drawback, the popularity of this stuff marches on. A report has it that avocado exports have increased from 230 million kg in 1990 to 1,300 million kg in 2000 despite some precautions of water scarcity.

Due to lucrative international trade of avocado, more forestlands in Mexico have been converted to avocado plantations. In 2000 to 2010, an estimate of 20,000 hectares of forestlands are converted in Mexico resulting to 1,700 acres of deforested lands each year.

It takes more water to produce, let's say a kilo of avocado in comparison with other fruits. One kilo of avocado have noticed that the backside of this booming trade has a gloomy result surfacing: local water supply has considerably dried up.