Dancing with the Devils Fruit

A fools hope and a dreamers wish.

My relationship with the avocado is bitter-sweet. A gentle attention, the arrival as a key feature in the greatest of all sandwiches or ‘subs’ as they say elsewhere. For a short time, I survived on little else whilst half mad in coastal, northern Peru. The crescendo, the return to realisation and then, the nostalgia. 

When the avocado boom really hit, I was over it and not in the ‘I saw them at the fuckbunker before they got signed and made the big time’ kind of way. I never wore a hoody with a knobbly, green, round person on the front although I have got a dashing set of trunks. I felt nor showed no sense of gleeful superiority, everyone was welcome to their fill as far as I was concerned, because I had certainly had mine. 

Before the boom it was gentle and dignified. It began creeping in some time ago. I remember a home economics teacher triumphantly chastising my class (of 11 or 12 year olds, circa 2002) for not being able to immediately name “the fruit that contains fat”. Good fat, of course, and lots more good where that came from. Vitamins and minerals, antioxidants. Good. Good. good. Health. Health. Health. Not surprising that it was picked (guffaw) by the hipsters and the confused urbanites et al as the weapon of choice. Minerals for breakfast, sluggishly, lazily and relaxed in the morning. 

The clamour grew, but luxury was the buzz word, in my time. Moderation. Exotic treat. Never once, back then, did I ever hear anything pertaining to ‘staple British diet’. I can recently recall my ever-frugal Granny both shuddering and grimacing when she learned I would easily sell at least 40 ripe avocados of a morning service. Yes, this might have been the tip of the Hass, as far as I was concerned. 

This is all a bit outdated of course, and although I may appear to lead with personal trendsetting and so on, I am in Somerset, and we now get things later even than Cornwall because the fads bypass us for them. Even fiber broadband it seems. We can get netflix, but what good is one without the other? Anyway.

Is their a even a point to this ramble? Not really, not my own. I am simply passing on (or trying to)readily available knowledge that has been around for some time. I have been believing it myself, and acting on it in part. I changed my supplier to ensure that at least for half of the year my bounty was coming from southern spain or Israel instead of the year-round pillage of Mexican crops. But is this any better? A different devil maybe? Compromise perhaps. But not. Good. enough. Small change.

So, the avocado. Why should you pick up a beetroot instead? Well, because if it's minerals you are after, there’s little difference. Does this even matter? We (everyone who interacts with the environment, everyone who eats/exists etc) should obviously be doing more to control and restrict high impact, non-seasonal, imported produce. We should be promoting local, small-scale production systems and not, devilishly, succumbing to the whim of confused urbanites and quickly outdated middle-classism.

Moreover, perhaps we actually should, as long as the rise of the farm shop continues to follow the moral path in which it seems to be going- by farm shop I mean any avenue by which the fruits of local, small-scale production operations are able to distribute their wares . These are quite gaping generalisations but ones that I am content to leave in, in the name of humour and honour. Humour and honour. 

Simply, there are huge ecological implications for the western worlds demand for the avocado. They require vast amounts of irrigation, sometimes depriving or diminishing the fresh water supply of local communities. If we don’t know about irrigation, we must know about deforestation. Global deforestation is obviously something we should be actively engaging with, and preventing at the very least by our purchasing or delivery power. Keeping up with global avocado demand ensures a hand in deforestation as ever-expanding plantations are sown. Flooding, soil degradation. Add here into the mix (or lack of), monocultures or ‘avoculture’. “do you even avoculture of your own anymore?” - a decline in biodiversity adds to the ecological woe. 

Throw in further, processing and transportation. Also not good for the avocados declining reputation - emissions, food miles, input intensive. Got an idea yet?

Choose the beetroot! and that’s before we’ve even needed to mention the purported social destruction caused by the monopolisation by criminal cartels of Mexican avocado production and trade. Because it’s welcomed by governments as much as the ‘street’ consumers, avocado racketeering is a more appealing commodity than coke. 

Clearly, the avocado trade is not the only scourge of the earth at present, but they do seem to be somewhat representative of that western perversion to think and lecture a certain way, but act somewhat contrastingly to that message.

Be strong. Beetroot.