Farmers Upset Over U.S. Avocado Policy

Saying they have been betrayed by the U.S. government and citing the threat of foreign pests, local growers are up in arms over a USDA decision to lift an 83-year-old quarantine on Mexican avocados.

Dressed in jeans and boots, almost 160 angry growers gathered at the Doubletree Hotel in Ventura on Thursday to discuss the unpopular decision to allow the green fruits from Mexico into 19 northeastern states from November through February, starting this year.

“Basically, it’s totally politically expedient to the president to make NAFTA work at the expense of U.S. avocado growers by ignoring the phyto-sanitary reports of the last 75 years,” said Fritz Huntsinger, who has grown avocados in Somis for 20 years.

Those reports say Mexican avocados have lots of bugs. The fruit has been shut out of the U.S. market because the seed weevil and the stem borer are endemic in groves south of the border.

Under the Feb. 5 ruling, the USDA will rigorously inspect Mexican trees and packinghouses to ensure that they are pest-free, route the fruit through two special border stations where they will be reinspected, then label them clearly as Mexican produce and send them to the Northeast.

But California growers say those precautions are not enough.

“We’ve had two threats in three years,” said John Lamb, whose family has grown avocados in Camarillo for generations.

He referred to the persea mite, a bug that munches leaves and attacks young avocados, and avocado thrips, which defoliate the trees.

“All those probably come from south of the border,” added Ben A. Faber, a farm advisor from UC Berkeley.

There is a feeling among growers that the government has sold out to the Mexicans.

“We’re just a small chit in a bigger trade game,” said one grower, who asked not to be identified.

Domestic growers dominate avocado trade in the United States--supplying 90% to 95% of the U.S. market, according to Bob Bednar, chairman of the California Avocado Commission. California and Florida provide the bulk of the crop, he said, with about a quarter of California’s market coming from Ventura.

For now, many growers said they will hang tight. They discussed the possibility of suing the U.S. government, but many said that legal costs could be prohibitive. The consensus was that they will probably have to wait until something goes wrong in the process to take legal action.

Worst of all, say growers, once the green fruits begin to pour in, it will be hard to regulate where they go.

“We have 1,500 illegals coming over the border each day,” said Faber.

“And avocados are a lot smaller than people.”