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Avocados have exploded in popularity across the United States. But to produce all that guac, the avocado industry is gobbling, too — scarfing up vast swaths of Mexican forest, where millions of monarch butterflies migrate to spend the winter and other imperiled wildlife struggle to survive.
Most avocados sold in the United States come from a single region in Mexico, where the industry burns forests and uses an enormous amount of water — 18.5 gallons to produce one avocado — in a region already suffering from extreme drought. Avocado production also brings land grabs, pollution, and violence to Indigenous and other local communities. Research from Climate Rights International has linked this devastation to importers that supply major U.S. grocery stores with avocados.
Tell U.S. grocery stores to adopt avocado-sourcing policies that protect human rights and monarch habitat.
While some grocery companies have anti-deforestation policies for palm oil and beef, few — if any — have them for avocados. And most corporate policies to protect human rights don't address violence to Indigenous and other local communities in their supply chains.
If we demand that grocery stores source avocados responsibly, we can build a better food system. But we need to act now.
Every day more than 10 football fields' worth of Mexican forest are cleared for avocado production. If the United States keeps consuming avocados at this rate, by 2050 the land destroyed to grow them will have increased by more than 70% — at the expense of even more forests, including those of the world-famous Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve. Imperiled monarchs are plunging toward extinction already. Losing their winter home in Mexico could be the final blow.
Join us in urging top U.S. grocery chains to adopt an avocado-sourcing policy that protects monarchs and human rights.
Thank you to Climate Rights International for their research and reporting in their Unholy Guacamole report that provides the basis for this action.