We need to realign our priorities to combat the trends that are putting domestic growers at increasing risk of being forced out of the market by unfair, unregulated, and corrupted import trade competition.

There is no intention of stopping imports. We need the growers and suppliers of foreign avocados to provide the volume of fruit that our consumers require. What we are demanding is that the import industry comply with the same rules of the road that we do. We need to make it clear to our community and its leaders that there are critical unmet needs in making that a reality. The message must get out to our state and federal oversight bodies, as well as elected officials, AND TO THE PEOPLE, to champion our commitment to the American consumer to ensure the safe, healthy, sustainable and ethical production of foods for purchase and consumption.

The most important message we need to share right now is this: your grower vote is needed to assure the Commission of its ability to be OUR advocate, to use its influence and position to represent us, and champion our messages where they need to be heard.

VOTE VOTE VOTE

The 2023 CAC board election garnered only 262 first choice votes, out of the thousands of reported members.We need to take a larger role in the elections of our board members, and make sure they represent us and our interests.In the coming weeks, you will receive a ballot from the CAC to elect new representatives. As you consider your options, think carefully about whether the candidates will genuinely stand up for growers like us.

Here’s what we’re putting high on the list of things to deal with:

· Trouble on the grove.

o Because of the R&D and investment by the domestic California avocado growers, the avocado is now a staple component of the American diet. However, the economics of the market over the last several years have created a crisis in maintaining the viability of the domestic avocado growers’ enterprise. We are noting the shrinking of California avocado acreage as profits have plummeted, harvest sizes dropped, and many groves are being abandoned or liquidated at catastrophically low prices.

o California growers are seeing a continued set of stresses on our harvests as well as our profitability. This is a conflation of many factors: erratic, unpredictable weather conditions and their effects on tree health and fruit production; escalating costs for electricity, and supplies, but most dramatically for water; regulatory requirements to fulfill safe use of pesticides, fertilizers, soil amendments; and the safety, availability and pay for skilled labor.

o All of that could perhaps be coped with, save for the most critically unmanaged aspect of our ability to sell our fruit and realize income to meet our expenses: the continuing competition from foreign sources who are allowed to export to the US market at prices well below what covers our production expenses. And this is aided and abetted by those importer entities whose representatives sit on our industry boards making policy decisions that hurt the domestic growers for whom they are mandated to advocate.

· Troubles at the Boards.

o Failures of the Board of the California Avocado Commission to honor its obligations to the California producer. The governing board of the CAC has become dominated by members of the importer/packer/shipper/farm management services parts of the community. Many of them have qualified for board seats reserved for growers through a family or business-related ownership of avocado groves, or through a “causing to be produced” loophole that misleadingly allows the equaling of association with farm management of a grove to that of a producer, but yet are not required to pay assessments as growers.

o The potential conflicts of interest and commitment created by the dual allegiances as growers AND handlers have not been effectively managed. While the CAC board is supposed to execute policies to the benefit their own country’s farmers, it has moved instead to suppress actions which would have benefited growers, while advocating for and operationalizing proposals to increase the volume of avocado sales regardless of country of origin.

o The lack of input by growers into the priorities being established for resources controlled by the Hass Avocado Board. HAB was created to focus on its capacity as a source of market growth in the US, but it was originally created to safeguard domestic avocado growers as the market grew. Which it has not done. In spite of this now-entrenched imbalance in mission priorities, the HAB has not allowed or initiated a referendum on its work in the 23 years since its creation. This is in violation of its formation principles.

· Trouble over the border. Environmental concerns and the increasing involvement of organized crime in the Mexican avocado industry. (See the reference list on the website for 8 years of reporting and documenting this failure of governance and enforcement). This past April we saw a second suspension of avocado importation from Mexico due to physical threats to American inspectors in Michoacán (the previous one occurred Feb 2022). Our difficulties in competing with that import pipeline, on which our importer colleagues depend for much of their financial success, is now being seen in the context of continuing reporting on the violence being done to the local economies of importing Mexican producers by:

§ Organized crime and cartel control of the growing regions

§ Expropriation and illegal and unethical deforestation of land repurposed for use by their avocado industry,

§ The lack of uncorrupted oversight and governance in the avocado growing regions, and the loss of effective inspection, governance and management of the import avocado pipeline

§ The likelihood of a continuing lack of Mexican government vigilance over the region.

§ The impact of these violations on the ethical sourcing agreements that our handlers are obligated to abide by.

The lack of aggressive lobbying to protect us and the American consumer from being complicit in the Mexican crisis is a part of the negative and unappealing picture that is being painted of how avocados are grown and marketed, and should be increasing attention to how we do things differently, safely, and sustainably, here in California.

We need the CAC and the HAB to re-establish policies and programs which will facilitate the flourishing and success of our work in supplying our fruit to the country and the world.

Get on the mailing list to be able to contribute your ideas, questions and opinions to everyone, and get regularly updated with the progress we are trying to make. And contribute to our work on behalf of all of us. Be well, and stay safe. And vote.