Dan Coxe in the avocado orchard he planted outside of Fallbrook, Calif. Avocado growers like him are urging the Trump administration to consider measures to constrain imports of the fruit during the California season, either through a tariff or a quota that limits import volumes.Nathan VanderKlippe/The Globe and Mail
Dan Coxe thought he was building on a historical legacy when he planted 22 acres of avocado trees on a hilltop property north of San Diego – not spoiling for an international trade fight.
The Hass variety consumed by most people today was developed in California. Fallbrook, a town not far from Mr. Coxe’s orchards, still calls itself the “Avocado Capital of the World.” But it’s a title that, in most practical terms, it has long since ceded to Mexico, where the plant is native.
California is now a small player in a market that has been propelled by a relentless hunger for guacamole and so-called superfoods. Mexican avocados flow freely into the U.S. – with 2.4 billion pounds expected this year alone, more than seven times what California can produce.
Meanwhile, the winding road to Mr. Coxe’s ranch is lined with “nothing but dead trees. Those used to be beautiful, producing avocado groves. The owners gave up,” he says.
Now, he and other California farmers say it’s time to reconsider how easily that foreign-grown fruit can enter the country. In filings to the U.S. Trade Representative that form part of Washington’s preparation for review of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, avocado growers have asked the Donald Trump administration to consider measures to constrain imports during the California season, either through a tariff or a quota that limits import volumes.
A failure to act, they argue, risks damaging an American industry.
“Are we 100 per cent free trade? No. But we’re 85 per cent free trade,” said Gary Ohst, who has a small avocado orchard in Santa Paula, Calif.
Gary Ohst examines avocados growing in his orchard in Santa Paula, Calif.Nathan VanderKlippe/The Globe and Mail
The pleas of avocado growers are among the hundreds that have been directed toward the Trump administration as it decides how to approach North American free trade. The expected review of USMCA next year forms a key test of what limits – if any – the White House will accept to its imposition of global tariffs. While most major corporations and industry groups have staged a strong defence of the tariff-free movement of goods across the continent, Mr. Trump’s eagerness to impose import levies to boost the fortunes of American interests has also opened a door for some groups to ask for help.
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The avocado issue does not directly affect Canada, where the fruit is not grown in any significant quantity. But any bid by U.S. agriculture for special protections has relevance to Ottawa at a moment when the Trump administration has said it is determined to break down Canadian barriers to the northward movement of milk products. Canada’s supply-management policies “unfairly restrict market access for U.S. dairy,” U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told Congress this week.
The requests by avocado growers are also striking because their industry is growing, rather than shrinking. Planted acres in the U.S. expanded by 3.3 per cent in the past year alone. Prices have trended upward over the past few decades.
Any new tariff is “just another tax that the consumer is going to pay,” said Stephen Barnard, chief executive of Mission Produce, the world’s biggest avocado distributor. “But the grower is getting greedy.”
Mission Produce has operations in Mexico, Peru, South Africa and Guatemala, in addition to a small acreage in California. It has stood astride a swelling wave, with U.S. avocado consumption tripling in the past 25 years.
But the growth is slowing, Mr. Barnard said. Anything that raises prices risks worsening that trend, he said.
Besides, he added, it’s not even clear that growers in San Diego County – where Fallbrook is located – should be tending avocado any more.
“They have high water costs down there. They get low production because the soil isn’t that good. They can’t get any production because they aren’t doing it right,” he said.
Mission is based in Oxnard, north of Los Angeles. In that area, the producers with large acreages are “not complaining,” he said.
That’s not entirely true.
Mr. Ohst tends an orchard a half-hour drive from Mission headquarters. He has broader philosophical objections to the untrammelled movement of goods.
“There’s a limit to free trade where it starts to knock out industries,” he said. “You’ve seen Trump get excited about that when people start dumping product. Then it crosses the line between what’s free trade and what’s abusing the supply chain.”
The global forecast for avocado production suggests that countries like Japan and Spain will see growth in production, and that's 'where California growers really should be anxious,' said Matt Nelson, who has been growing the fruit in San Diego since the late 1990s.Nathan VanderKlippe/The Globe and Mail
For Mr. Ohst, growing avocados was a mid-life crisis, on a plot of land he bought in 2016 after years spent racing sailboats. “I had this wound-up spring about real dirt,” he says.
The trees were diseased when he took ownership, but he nursed them back to health and took classes to learn irrigation. It all cost money, but income tended to keep pace. By Mr. Ohst’s math, wholesale prices rose by a compound rate of 3.1 per cent over more than three decades – until the beginning of this year. Then prices nose-dived.
“Now, when more imports come in it’s far more painful to California growers than it used to be,” he says.
In Mexico, meanwhile, trade in the fruit – likened to “green gold” – has been interwoven with drug cartels, according to reporting by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime and others.
For California growers, that is another argument they hope will appeal to the President.
“It’s a mess. And Mexico is now setting the prices and running the show,” said Paula Coxe, Dan’s wife.
Besides, she said, there is good reason to bolster U.S. production. “We found out during the pandemic we do not want to be dependent on importing for everything,” she said.
But “we can’t compete with import prices. In California, our labour rates are high.”
Around Fallbrook, growers are also navigating a changing environment. Temperatures in the area now hit 46 degrees Celsius, about five degrees hotter than in the past. Persistent drought has escalated the price of water. For Tina Wolferd, water bills alone climbed over US$100,000 a year.
“It’s ridiculous,” she said.
She has taken action, using government support to switch to trees that are less thirsty, while improving her water management. “I’m anticipating my bill to hopefully cut in half with this,” she said. There is value in keeping orchards on the land, she said, pointing to the noticeably cooler temperatures amid the well-irrigated trees.
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People “forget how important it is to have all these trees for the air, for the climate and everything,” she said.
They worry about imported diseases that could harm U.S. avocados, after bacteria from Asia withered much of the country’s citrus crop.
But mostly, they want to assure their own future.
The global forecast for avocado production is “where California growers really should be anxious,” said Matt Nelson, who has been growing avocados in San Diego since the late 1990s. Mexico expanded its acreage by 15 per cent in the past year alone. Industry forecasts suggest Japan will see increasingly large production in coming years, while Spain expects a 20- to 30-per-cent growth in its crop this year.
Some of those numbers lie at the root of the “panic in the community now,” Mr. Nelson said.
“Nobody knows how bad or how long it’s going to last. But California growers – we have the highest cost of production of anybody in the world. So we’re the first ones on the chopping block when we get these oversupply situations.”