Ave an Avocado

Mexico is the world's leadingproducer of avocados. In fact, if youcombine the production of the nextfour countries it would still not evencome close to the annual productionof Mexico. Avocado producers canalso be found in Florida, California,South Africa, and on a somewhatsmaller scale in Chile, Brazil, Hawaii,Australia, and some islands of thePacific. Commercial plantings havealso been made in Israel, and thereare numerous trees in other countriesaround the Mediterranean.

In the less developed producercountries, large volumes of exporteda vocados are produced by plantations with high technologicalstandards and well developedexport structures. Even thoughthese plantations are often highlycommercial and competitive, workingconditions regarding labour rights,social security, safety and healthissues are not always a priority. On the other hand, there is alsothe smallholder, most often familyowned avocado farms. The situationof smallholder farmers is normallyexacerbated by a poor infrastructure, a lack of market information, pooraccess roads and transportation, and poor storage facilities, all ofwhich results in post-harvest losses.People working in this environmentmostly depend on the intermediary,who buys their fruit at “any” price, although it can be a high-qualityproduct and suitable for export. Lack of access to credits, thesefarmers, as said above, often don’thave a proper processing plant andappropriate marketing informationsystems so they do not have accessto information regarding prices,demand and other external marketinformation.

Fairtrade certified avocado producersand workers are ensured a betterdeal for their work and can investthe Fair Trade social premium inimproving their business and oncommunity projects. Many of themhave also used the additional FairTrade payment to conver t intoorganic farming.

"Two of the biggest problems ourproducers face are that growingorganic avocadoes leads to higherproduction costs while the organic fruits are smaller. Up to now productions losses could not becompensated by higher selling pricesbecause of the small demand fororganic avocadoes and because themiddlemen got most of the benefits.For us the Fair Trade market is abridge between the environmentallyaware producer, who produces abetter quality fruit, and the sensitizedconsumer, who knows that hismoney goes directly to the producers.Fair Trade guarantees that everyonewins,” says Gustavo Alonso VallejoEsquivel, President of PRAGOR, a Fair Trade and organic certifiedavocado cooperative in Mexico.