A farmer harvests avocados at an orchard in Michoacán. (Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP/Getty Images)The avocad

A farmer harvests avocados at an orchard in Michoacán. (Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP/Getty Images)The avocado in your Super Bowl guacamole is bad for the environment. You can make it better.Imported avocados (which now are most avocados on the U.S. market) contribute to rural poverty, environmental destruction, and crime. Fair trade avocados are rare and expensive, and the cost is justified.In Mexico, most of the small farms are family owned and operated collectively. After a collective meets the standards to become certified as Fairtrade, the requirements increase during the first six years, allowing the collective to gradually improve. Growers are guaranteed both a minimum price and a premium. Members have a voice in how the premiums are spent, e.g., education, sanitation, cash. One Michoacán collective used its premium to train and offset the start-up costs for local women to become beekeepers.Minimizing the impact of farming on the planet requires education and commitment. Fairtrade recognizes that soil and water are precious resources. By the third year of certification, growers must have assessed their soils’ susceptibility to erosion, develop plans to reduce past erosion, and enhance their soil through compost and green fertilizer. This helps to reduce water consumption because healthy, rich soil releases water more slowly — like a sponge.It is estimated that on Super Bowl Sunday, we eat more food than any other day except Thanksgiving. Do you favor guacamole or turkey? At least for me, the choice is clear: guacamole. However, at $10 per pound for organic, sustainably certified avocados imported by Equal Exchange, I’ll be eating less — but I will enjoy my guacamole more.But we also grow avocados in the U.S., specifically in Florida and Southern California. For almost 80 years the Calavo™ label stood for one of the most successful growers cooperatives on the continent. The owner-members voted to take it private early this century and is still considered a good “small company” stock. (1.2 billion U.S. dollars in 2019 is in somebodies estimation “small” but I digress.) Avocado growers have also embraced direct marketing. A quick search for avocados +direct will find plenty of sources.If you really want to be environmentally responsible, eschew the fruit entirely and settle for sustainable, locally grown products. No need for guac if you serve applesauce and prune dip.  -- source link
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