World Perspective : MEXICO : Politics, Pests Fuel Debate on Michoacan Avocado Imports

The eyes of Michoacan were on Dan Glickman during his visit here this week as up to 10,000 Mexican farmers--who contribute to the livelihoods of 100,000 of their countrymen in the poor Mexican state--awaited the U.S. agriculture secretary’s word on a ripe topic: avocados.

For the Michoacan lobby, which has been fighting with California with increasing fervor and sophistication for the right to sell Mexican avocados in the United States, Glickman’s words were encouraging.

“On the issue of avocados, the [Agriculture] department is considering the promulgation of rules that would allow Mexican avocados, under certain circumstances, into the United States,” he said. “And those decisions should be made fairly soon.”

In the next two months, analysts and department sources say, the U.S. government is likely to partially ease what Mexican advocates call 82 years of blatant protectionism for California’s $220-million-a-year avocado industry. Under the plan, Mexico could export avocados to 19 states in the Northeast, but only from November to February.

Even that, asserts the Santa Ana-based California Avocado Commission, opens the door to pestilence--and sharp price reductions--that could endanger an industry providing 20,000 jobs in Riverside, Ventura, San Diego and Santa Barbara counties.

The issue on both sides of the border is bugs, principally the seed weevil and the fruit fly. For decades, the U.S. government has quarantined Mexican avocados, saying pests could travel on Mexican avocados and infest California crops.

Enter the North American Free Trade Agreement, which took affect two years ago. NAFTA’s goal was to eventually drop trade barriers among the United States, Mexico and Canada. It led to shifts in U.S. government attitudes, including on the topic of the Mexican avocado ban.

Scientists in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s animal and plant health inspection service began investigating whether Mexican avocado imports truly threaten California. After raucous hearings that began in Washington and ended in Escondido in August, the inspectors said that risk is low.

For Xavier Equihua--the 30-year-old lobbyist who represents Michoacan avocado growers in Washington and had pushed hard for the hearings--those findings were a victory. He has also won support for new rules on Mexican avocados from more than 50 U.S. legislators, including Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, a Los Angeles Democrat.

During a visit here, timed to coincide with Glickman’s trip, Equihua argued that lifting the ban against Mexico’s crop will help California growers who now supply 95% of the United States’ consumption. That is because it will expand the avocado market in the Northeast in a low-season for California production.

“We want to be partners with the California growers,” he said. “We want to help raise awareness and consumption of avocados in the U.S., and that can only help the California avocado industry.”

He also cited a recent study by the Colegio de la Frontera Norte that showed that allowing Michoacan to export avocados to the United States could create so many jobs that illegal emigration by men from that Mexican state--now the largest source of illegal immigrants to the U.S.--would decrease.

But Tom Bellamore, vice president of the California Avocado Commission, said the critical issue is not immigration but potential pest problems.

“It is a science issue, and it should be judged as a science issue,” he said, stressing that some of the United States’ foremost agricultural experts have said the infestation risk is higher than Agriculture Department inspectors believe.

*

Dixon Roensch, a native Texan who has spent most of his 25 years in Michoacan growing avocados, concluded: “I never saw a single seed weevil or fruit fly.”

He and other Mexican growers, who control 45% of the world avocado market, say the U.S. ban has been a cruel joke--not only on them but on American shoppers, especially those in the Northeast.

They pay up to $2 for a California avocado, while Canadians spend 60 cents on the same fruit from Michoacan.

“I understand the position of the grower in California,” Roensch said. “But what about American consumers? They’re entitled to good avocados at a decent price.”