Avocados come from trees. Where do the trees come from?

December 11, 2023 12:48 PM

Americans love avocados. It’s killing Mexico’s forests. (Alternate link here) The article discusses existing political approaches to solutions. But also, try growing your own! A worthy and fun long-term project. Here's an example of some people who decided to put some avocado pits in the ground. They're trying to grow a cold-hardy avocado that can thrive in the Pacific Northwest.
posted by aniola (26 comments total)

(If you're the kind of person who does all their gift shopping in museum stores, you probably already know about the avocado vase.)
posted by box at 1:05 PM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

I gave away my avocado plant before it became a tree. But I advise would-be growers: don't give up! The pit I started in water took so long, maybe 8 weeks, to produce a shoot...but then it seemed to grow more quickly.
posted by homelystar at 1:21 PM on December 11, 2023 [4 favorites]

Museum stores are cute and all; but worth mentioning that you can get a suitable vase much cheaper online. Under $20.
posted by snuffleupagus at 1:39 PM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

If you don't buy it in a museum store, you aren't allowed to pronounce it vahz.
posted by pracowity at 1:46 PM on December 11, 2023 [11 favorites]

I know a grocery store that started putting green/yellow/red Seafood Watch labels on all their fresh fish. They had to stop ordering fish that was labeled red, and almost entirely stopped ordering the fish that was labeled yellow. People just stopped buying them, once they knew. They stuck to the fish with the green labels.

I'd like grocery stores to be required to do that sort of thing for all food. There could be a checklist.

✔ A forest was razed to grow these avocados.
✔ Locals can no longer hunt for mushrooms where these avocados were grown.
✔ The trees that grew these avocados use 14x more water than the forest that grew here before.

Along with the contact information for the various public officials and government branches responsible for changing things.
posted by aniola at 1:50 PM on December 11, 2023 [18 favorites]

I'd like grocery stores to be required to do that sort of thing for all food. There could be a checklist.

✔ A forest was razed to grow these avocados.
✔ Locals can no longer hunt for mushrooms where these avocados were grown.
✔ The trees that grew these avocados use 14x more water than the forest that grew here before.

Along with the contact information for the various public officials and government branches responsible for changing things.

Nobody is stopping you from using your computer and a copy shop from making such signs yourself and putting them in grocery stores around your area. You might have to do it repeatedly, but nobody is stopping you.
posted by hippybear at 1:58 PM on December 11, 2023 [3 favorites]

It's pretty annoying that so many of the avocados wind up being thrown out by the grocery stores because they're bruised or going rotten. It's gotten to the point where we just don't even bother to check the bags any more because there may be just 1-2 out of 5-6 that are edible. I'm sure people who go to the rich white neighbourhood grocery stores get the nice avocados, but the shitty ones are still being grown and sent to Canada on trucks, and it's just a waste across the board.
posted by seanmpuckett at 2:52 PM on December 11, 2023 [2 favorites]

Nobody is stopping you from using your computer and a copy shop from making such signs yourself and putting them in grocery stores around your area.

During college, I worked at a pretty high end Whole Foods adjacent grocery store, in the produce section, and stopping folks from doing this (and taking them down) very much a part of my job description and direction. It happened if not daily, multiple times weekly. The level of ambient granola in your area may vary, and your local produce peon might catch flack for missing it. Don’t fuck with your local produce workers please. It is a shitty job that combines both backbreaking freight duties in cold environments AND customer service.

Not that I don’t disagree with the sentiment, but someone may very well try to stop you.

More on frost resistant avocados plz. Introducing range-expanding food varieties, by natural selection or GMO techniques is SUPER FUCKING RAD.
posted by furnace.heart at 3:08 PM on December 11, 2023 [21 favorites]

I only buy avocados grown in California, despite my local Ralph’s/Kroger stocking those from Mexico. Not in season but I can wait.
posted by Ideefixe at 3:33 PM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

First the avocados came for the millenials mortgages. Now for Mexico's forests.

You can have my 60 year old avocado tree when you pry it from my cold, dry backyard!
posted by drewbage1847 at 3:42 PM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'd grow one but they don't like zone seven, much less six. If any hybridizer is able to come up with a colder hardier cultivar, I expect that there's money to be made.
posted by BWA at 4:18 PM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

Can I…can I grow one indoors? Inside my house? Is that a doomed idea? My husband loves avocados, I think they’re unfit for human consumption, but I love him and want him to have avocados…and until that PNW-friendly varietal is available…
posted by Suedeltica at 4:28 PM on December 11, 2023

You will never have edible fruit from an avocado grown in your house, unless your house has an indoor climate and blasting sunshine of outdoor Southern California. At best, avocados grow into gangly, etiolated plants that never look great, in my opinion. But you can grow the plants in your house.
posted by SoberHighland at 5:02 PM on December 11, 2023 [3 favorites]

dang after mmphu-mmmph years i just started buying avogadros on the reg a month ago and yall come with this
posted by glonous keming at 5:08 PM on December 11, 2023

Look for California avos? That's what Ms. Windo has decided to do. Hard to find tho.

And not sure how much worse those are than MX avos, seeing all the Olive and Almond orchards along I-5 in the central valley, (not to mention that douche with all the signs demanding more water).
posted by Windopaene at 5:26 PM on December 11, 2023

They're trying to grow a cold-hardy avocado that can thrive in the Pacific Northwest.

I've been making jokes (and wishes) about this for years. If someone made this happen it would be amazing, especially if they managed to make a seedless variety.

But the dark punchline is that if someone started a lot of indoor avocado sprouts and saplings right now and you wait long enough it will probably be warm enough in the PNW to transplant them outside by the time they were big enough to start fruiting.
posted by loquacious at 5:47 PM on December 11, 2023 [3 favorites]

Portland and most of the Willamette Valley is an armpit in the summer, but I gather it doesn't last long enough; or they don't overwinter well.

Avocado trees go absolutely nuts on Kauai (I once knew a very roly-poly yellow lab who lived underneath one there), but of course large plantings would have the same undesirable effects as other tropical places.
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:03 PM on December 11, 2023

We keep a few as houseplants. They do well, they're super cute, and I move them outside in a covered part of our deck in the spring and summer. The thing about them is that they are somewhat finicky; they need some goldilocks type conditions to do well.

The biggest issue in the Willamette Valley is that not only does it get too cold more than a couple times a winter (cultivated monocrop hass can resist a short period down to 30F), but the worst part though is that they cannot handle water well until the temperature rebounds and they start to regrow their leaves. Their roots rot super fast under post-frost conditions, especially when they're young. We get the worst combination of cold then wet that gets them.

You could probably grow one exceedingly well in a sunken greenhouse in the right spot here.
posted by furnace.heart at 7:42 PM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

It’s killing Mexico’s forests.

For some time now, avocado sales have also been funding Mexican cartels (unfortunately, organized crime has diversified into just about every conceivable corner of Mexico's economy and avocados, as a pretty lucrative export commodity produced by independent growers who are not well positioned to fight back, are a particularly attractive target) so arguably it's not solely forests being killed.
posted by Nerd of the North at 9:30 PM on December 11, 2023 [2 favorites]

There has been a big push in South Georgia to grow avocados because climate change has made peaches increasingly unsuccessful. Unfortunately, an introduced pest that kills our native laurels like sweet bay and sassafras will also attack avocados. It has now spread to Florida and is affecting their avocados as well.
posted by hydropsyche at 3:31 AM on December 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

There has been a big push in South Georgia to grow avocados because climate change has made peaches increasingly unsuccessful.

I think peaches are getting harder to grow in GA due to variable winter weather with a mix of warm and cold. So basically the peach trees come out of dormancy early in like January and bloom away and then get hit by a (normal) freeze in February or possibly later that wipes out a crop. Since avocados are so cold-sensitive, this will probably hit them too, potentially killing the trees.


My inlaws in CA have an avocado tree -they don't take great care of it, basically treat it like a normal tree, but it doesn't even fruit every year there. They are seriously fiddly trees. They also fruit way up in the top, so you can't pick them without a ladder or climbing! I'd recommend growing basically anything else. The tree is nice though. It's big and shady, like a higher quality pecan tree or something.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:42 AM on December 12, 2023

Here's a good and relevant article on peaches
posted by aniola at 9:11 AM on December 12, 2023 [2 favorites]

Sorry, I guess I should have explained that in addition to the problem with late freezes, which absolutely could affect avocados or any other crop, peaches also need a certain number of chill hours each winter, which is not a need of avocados (as you note, quite the opposite). As winters in South Georgia increasingly feature few to no chill hours, that is the limitation on peach growth, which would not be a limitation on avocado growth.
posted by hydropsyche at 9:43 AM on December 12, 2023

oh, no, i was just sharing the article on peaches because i thought it was really cool that the native americans grew peaches from pits all over the continent instead of from grafts, and so they got a really diverse range of peaches, some of which were apparently amazing. because planting from pits you get diversity like that.

I imagine that there would be a LOT of duds/decorative houseplants trying to plant avocados from pits in appropriate regions or climates adjacent to appropriate regions, but it would be really cool if people took it up and just tried because all there is to lose is a plant that never would have had a chance otherwise anyway, and there's so much to gain.

besides, it's not like there's megafauna around to spread avocado seeds these days. Avocados are a human-propagated tree in this era. Long live the avocado!
posted by aniola at 3:26 PM on December 12, 2023 [2 favorites]

>Avocados are a human-propagated tree in this era.

And there are fewer and fewer of us that happen to swallow the seed and deposit it later along our rambles.

I try to do what I can.

Still impressed by the peach people.
posted by sebastienbailard at 6:17 PM on December 12, 2023 [6 favorites]

My favourite plant fact is about the avocado: The formal name of its flowering process is protogynous diurnally synchronous dichogamy.
posted by Pouteria at 3:04 PM on December 13, 2023 [2 favorites]