Growers Get Update on Battle Over Mexican Avocados

Angry and fearful for their livelihood, more than 80 growers crammed a small ballroom in Ventura’s Doubletree Hotel on Wednesday to hear about the ongoing battle to continue the federal quarantine on avocados imported from Mexico.

The meeting’s air was heated, and not just because of too many bodies packed in too tight a space. Local avocado producers say importing the Mexican fruit without measures to ensure that the crop is free of pests would only aggravate an onslaught of exotic invaders that has beset the industry since the beginning of the decade.

Local producers and industry lobbyists say that if the exotic pests allegedly harbored in Mexican fruit become established in California, damage in the hundreds of millions of dollars could be inflicted on California’s avocado industry, responsible for 95% of the nation’s crop. They say a $50-million to $80-million loss would be sustained in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties alone.

Some growers say the damage has already been done.

‘It’s already affected us because since 1990, we’ve had two pests from Mexico come in,” said Larry Rose, who grows avocados, citrus and kiwi fruit for Brokaw Nursery in Saticoy. “It’s discouraged growers from planting new trees.”

Rose said avocado producers have been facing an onslaught of persea mites and avocado thrips from Mexico for the past six years, forcing growers to adopt costly new measures to control the invaders, which have no natural enemies in California.

“Five years ago in California, avocados were almost organic,” Rose said. Now, with persea mites making the leaves drop from trees and thrips causing rust-colored blotches on the fruit, growers have been releasing billions of beneficial insects and spraying some groves with oil to ensure that their crops meet quality standards.

Compared with the threat of Mediterranean fruit flies, Oriental fruit flies, seed moths and weevils allegedly found in Mexican avocados, but not yet found here, mites and thrips are a minor irritant, growers say.

“If [those pests] get established here, all you have to do is say the word and we’ve lost New Zealand and Australia [as markets] and, depending on the political situation, also Japan,” said Don Reeder of Pro-Ag Inc., an agricultural management firm based in Moorpark.

Reeder bristled at the suggestion that the industry is merely trying to prevent competition by opposing efforts to import Mexican fruit into the eastern United States.

“I think that’s hogwash,” Reeder said. “I think we can compete with them. They’re going to develop a market for us there if they come in, and there’s a possibility they can help us.”

Avocado growers and industry representatives say their problem is not with competition from lower-cost imported fruit, but with the lack of assurance from the U. S. Department of Agriculture that shipments across the border won’t contain undesirable stowaways.

They are also unhappy with what they believe have been tit-for-tat tactics by the Mexican government, which has blocked shipments of peaches, plums and nectarines from California’s San Joaquin Valley.

“We’ve been the trading chip in order to make the NAFTA dream a reality,” said Mark Affleck, president of the California Avocado Commission. “Our stone-fruit farmer friends in the valley are being held hostage in Mexico because of the avocado problem.”

Despite looming concerns, avocado growers left the industry meeting pleased with how their battle with the USDA has been going. New data obtained in Mexico revealing the extent of the country’s avocado pest problem has put the brakes on shipments across the border, at least for now.

“The chances of them making it this calendar year have been greatly reduced by all the scientific input sent in to the USDA in the past six months,” Affleck said.