Farmers Fight Import of Mexican Avocados : Agriculture: State growers, citing threat of pests, oppose plan to allow fruit across border, but competition also is concern.

Fearing their orchards and livelihoods may fall victim to free trade, Southern California avocado growers are battling a U.S. Department of Agriculture plan that would allow fresh Mexican avocados into U.S. supermarkets for the first time since 1914.

Southland farmers, whose orchards produce 95% of the U.S. avocado crop, say they fear the move would lead to an invasion of Mexican fruit flies and other pests. But they also concede that they cannot compete with Mexican farmers, who have significantly lower water, land and labor costs.

The USDA proposes to inspect the Mexican orchards and restrict their avocado shipments to the Midwest during winter. But California’s growers fear that the imported fruits will be so much cheaper than home-grown varieties that a black market will redistribute them nationwide--including to California, where pests could endanger local orchards.

“The USDA [inspectors] can barely keep up with the stuff that comes in from other countries, much less from all these other states,” said Steven K. Taft, president of Eco Farms, an avocado packing firm in Temecula, and owner of 1,000 acres of avocado trees. “If Mexican avocados come in at $5 or $6 a box and we have a $20 market here, that will be a tremendous incentive to figure out a way to get the stuff here.”

Avocados are the latest farm product to cause turmoil in the wake of the North American Free Trade Agreement, the U.S.-Mexico-Canada pact that went into effect in January, 1994. Acrimonious cross-border disputes have already flared over shipments of oranges, tomatoes, wheat, cattle and other commodities.

NAFTA generally gives U.S. and Mexican farmers permission, over time, to freely sell crops across their common border and in Canada. But the homely avocado is an exception--excluded from NAFTA at the behest of California growers--and it now stands out like an overripe peach in this supposed free-trade environment.

Arguably because of U.S. concerns over seven troublesome Mexican pests, including the anastrepha fruit fly and the seed weevil, the ban on U.S. imports of fresh Mexican avocados remains in place. (Processed avocado from Mexico is not restricted.)

Lobbying hard for the ban were California farmers in San Diego, Riverside, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, which accounted for nearly all the $235 million worth of avocados produced in California last year. And except for small shipments from Florida and Chile, California growers have the U.S market to themselves. Hawaiian avocados are also banned from the mainland because of pests.

Now California’s growers have cranked up again to fight the latest avocado scheme.

“We object to the euphoric rush to facilitate trade deals and, in the process, emasculate legitimate, scientifically based quarantines that protect agriculture,” said Mark Affleck, president of the California Avocado Commission, a trade group representing 6,000 growers.

The ongoing ban has been a sore point in U.S.-Mexico relations because Mexico produces huge quantities of the fruit--about four times the U.S. output--and because it needs export dollars more than ever in the aftermath of the peso crisis. Carlos Casas, head of the Mexican Trade Commission’s office in Los Angeles, says Mexico has shipped avocados to Europe and Japan for years “without a problem” for farmers there.

And the protected U.S. market is highly lucrative, as any supermarket shopper might surmise. Over the past year, the retail price for a single avocado has gone as high as $1.79.

Mexican trade officials say the exclusion of their farmers from the U.S. market violates the spirit, if not the letter, of NAFTA. They say the ban is based on political and not scientific grounds, the result of clout wielded by farmers who want to keep a profitable market to themselves.

“The California farmers claim it’s a problem with the worm, but that’s not the real reason,” Casas said. “The real reason is they don’t want any additional competition.”

In full agreement is Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports magazine. Harry Snyder, co-director of the group’s San Francisco office, said the avocado import barrier “protects California growers and harms California consumers and the California economy and it ought to be done away with.”

“Avocados . . . are a great food, and protecting a handful of avocado growers should not be government policy any longer,” Snyder said. “It’s a test of USDA’s new open-market direction and their intent to improve the lot of consumers.”

Bryan Silbermann, executive vice president of the Produce Marketing Assn., a Newark, Del.-based trade group representing supermarkets, restaurants and growers, said letting more avocados in “at more affordable prices” could allow a more consistent supply, and in turn would expand the market for the pricey fruit.

“If the USDA feels that there is a protocol put in place that would allow pest-free avocados to come into 19 states and provide a more plentiful supply, then it’s to the advantage of both our industry as well as the American consumer,” Silbermann said.

Since NAFTA, Mexico has been pressuring the USDA to relax the ban and come up with a way to allow some of the Mexican fruit into the United States. The plan put forth by the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service agency does just that.

It would allow Mexican avocados to be shipped to 19 Midwestern and Eastern states from November through February, which are low-volume harvest months for most California farmers. If the plan is approved, Mexican avocados “grown in approved orchards in approved municipalities” in Michoacan state could start crossing the border as early as mid-1996.

Victor Harabin, a plant scientist and head of the USDA’s permit unit, said the government is satisfied that the plan “does not pose a risk to U.S. growers.”

It “would get orchards in Mexico surveyed and examined for the presence of the pests we are concerned about, and then get avocados from there to the United States without subjecting U.S. crops to attack,” he said.

The USDA does not contend that Mexico has fully eradicated its pests. But the department says California orchards will be protected if distribution of Mexican avocados is restricted to cold-weather months in states no closer to California than Illinois.

“The science we have received indicates this can be done safely. None of these pests can survive below certain temperatures, and during those months all of those states have temperatures lower than that. So we are creating a climatic barrier,” said Janna Evans, a USDA legislative analyst.

But Southland growers insist that Mexican fruit will be priced so much cheaper than U.S. avocados--from half to one-third the wholesale cost of U.S. fruit--that a black market will quickly develop. They fear that transshipment of Mexican avocados destined for Chicago will land in California within days and that the USDA will be unable to police those shipments.

Grower Taft estimates that Mexico’s entry into the 19 states as proposed by the USDA would immediately cost U.S. farmers about 6% of their annual sales.

The USDA has scheduled a public hearing on the avocado import plan Aug. 30-31 at the California Center for the Arts in Escondido.