Avocados And It's Environmental Impact
I am going to dare to say this but I believe most avocado consumers in USA are odd enough “Climate Change” militants, mmm, I wonder if they know these little details about their obsession with the Green Gold. As an honor to them I decided to write this post.
In the past several decades, avocados have become a world-famous superfood that can be incorporated into hundreds of different recipes. Avocados have become so popular, in fact, that their status as a cash crop has earned them the name “green gold.” Unfortunately, the world’s growing infatuation with them means that the environmental impact of avocados is becoming increasingly more problematic.
What is the environmental impact of avocados?
Unfortunately, the avocado’s popularity almost guarantees that it has become something of a monoculture in some places. Like sugar, coffee, palm oil, and corn, avocados are a commodity. That means that large swaths of agricultural land aren’t being used to grow anything but avocados.
Monoculture crops like avocados wind up drawing all the nutrients from the soil, slowly degrading it year after year. This makes the soil less fertile over time until it is no longer viable for growing. According to Youmatter, this process can leave crops more susceptible to pests and disease, which, in turn, means that more pesticides and fertilizers will need to be used. Those chemicals can contaminate the soils and affect other forms of local plants and wildlife.
Plantation-farmed cash crop commodities like avocados also encourage deforestation, as local farmers slash and burn huge swaths of natural land to make room for new and larger plantations. Deforestation also leads to climate change, extinction, and an increased amount of carbon in the atmosphere. Removing forests also leads to soil erosion, which can cause flooding, mudslides, and other dangerous conditions.
Avocados use a ton of water
The avocado’s biggest problem is the amount of water it consumes. According to Youmatter, avocado plantations put an incredible degree of pressure on a region’s water supply. The World Economic Forum reports that around 9.5 billion liters of water are used every day in order to grow avocados. For scale, that’s about 3,800 Olympic pools-worth of water.
Considering that avocados are often grown in areas that are prone to drought, the simple act of growing avocados could wind up depriving entire communities of the life-giving water they need to survive. The cost to transport avocados is fairly high in terms of environmental impact as well. Truckloads of these sought-after berries — yes, avocados are technically berries — pump huge amounts of carbon emissions into the atmosphere as they wend their way across the world.
Avocado production requires a lot of water, to begin with, but in the dry regions of Chile, where most avocados for export are produced, avocado farming is especially water-intensive. In these regions, 320 liters of water are required to grow one avocado.
On average, about 283 liters of applied water are required to produce a kilogram of avocados. This is fresh ground or surface water that is applied via irrigation or other methods in order to produce a crop of fruit and does not include rainfall or natural moisture in the soil. This means that approximately 70 liters of applied fresh ground or surface water are required to grow one avocado.
Of course, the amount of applied water needed to grow one avocado is dependent on where in the world it is grown.
In the part of Chile from which we typically import avocados (Region 5, which includes Petorca Province) and where over 60% of Chile’s avocados are grown, an average of 1,280 liters of applied fresh water are needed to produce one kilogram of avocados, which means that about 320 liters of applied water are needed grow one avocado.
For comparison, a global average of 110 liters of applied fresh water is needed to produce a kilogram of oranges, so each orange requires about 22 liters of applied water.
To produce a kilogram of tomatoes requires 63 kilograms of applied freshwater, meaning that 5 liters of applied water are needed to grow each tomato.
Human beings, on the other hand, require on average between 50 and 100 liters of water to meet their most basic daily needs, according to the World Health Organisation.
Sources:
https://www.greenmatters.com/p/avocado-environmental-impact
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/02/avocado-environment-cost-food-mexico/