Call to Action for California Avocado Growers to help influence the 2024 CAC Board Election

Call to Action for California Avocado Growers to help influence the 2024 CAC Board Election

Growers, your voices and votes are needed to make the 2024 California Avocado Commission board elections successful. The California avocado industry is at a crossroads, and your needs as a California grower have never been more crucial to be made the top priority as the new board members take their seats.

Some background is important to share. Over the last decade or so, a majority of the current board seats that are to be filled by “producers” have been occupied by members whose business and family interests often extend beyond just growing avocados, and include packing, marketing, and importing. These mixed allegiances have brought potential conflicts of interest to their representation and voting that may not have been well-managed. While these individuals can bring valuable perspectives to the directions the commission takes on policy, marketing, and budget issues, there is growing concern that their decisions have not aligned with the best interests of growers. Please read the material available on the https://americanavocados.org website that goes into detail about these issues. Our tithed money is what the Commission uses to advocate for us, and we have lost the ability to guide its use.

Over the last few years, many initiatives introduced by growers for the board’s consideration have been shelved or voted down, with arguments that clearly favored the handlers and importers of our community. This has resulted in an increasingly more difficult business environment for growers to prosper in, to the point where we have lost significant amounts of acreage and domestic production over and above what we know has been negatively affected by climate, regulatory burdens, the economy, and infrastructure, resource, and labor costs.

But we have not been heard at the ballot box. The 2023 board election was completed with only 262 first choice responses documented:

• Vote 2023

• 1ST CHOICE

• District 1 30

• District 2 57

• District 3 70

• District 4 54

• District 5 51

• TOTAL 262

The Commission, and the Hass Avocado Board, report that there are thousands of California avocado producers in the Commission’s membership directory, so this woefully tiny turnout percentage of potential voters should be a critical point of concern for the board to recognize and establish goals for improving outreach and involvement. It has not been.

To make matters more difficult, access to the membership has been stymied by the prevention of the directory being made available for interaction and communication. Thus, our present grassroots effort to bring more of us into the forum where actions that could affect our survival as an agricultural sector can be taken.

In order to assure the board’s inclusion of members who speak for us, it is essential that unconflicted avocado growers run for these seats, but even more importantly, get more of us to VOTE. Here is the schedule for this year’s election process:

As the upcoming California Avocado Commission (CAC) elections approach, it’s time to consider the impact you can have by, yes, voting, but also running for a seat on the board. We have till August 26 to make sure we have candidates that will serve us.

This is not just an opportunity; it's a responsibility for those who truly understand the challenges and opportunities facing our industry. Please, contact fellow growers, correspond with us on our website, ask questions, and decide to take a role in shaping the future of our industry. American avocado farming, the livelihoods made by it, and the family legacies it can create, may depend on it.

https://americanavocados.org