This week reports appeared in the media that avocado sales in the UK would be declining and that a number of restaurants had removed the overvalued superfood from the menu for environmental reasons.
However, the World Avocado Organization says that this is totally not the case. In fact, in British avocados are shifting their shelves and restaurants in the country are increasingly processing the fruit in their dishes.
In the United Kingdom alone, sales have increased by 26% in the past year and more than 600 thousands MT of avocados were consumed in 2018. It is a common misconception that large quantities of water are needed for avocado cultivation. However, the water footprint per kilo of avocado is only one-fifteenth of the amount of water required for the production of the same amount of beef.
In addition, avocados are grown in regions where there is a lot of precipitation, such as Mexico and Colombia. When irrigation is necessary, water efficient systems are used on a large scale to ensure sustainable cultivation.
Xavier Equihua, Director of the World Avocado Organization:
In this kind of media reports, not only is the water consumption of the avocado sector greatly exaggerated, but nothing is said about many positive aspects of the cultivation of this crop for communities around the world, such as the large employment and the restoration of agricultural land.
Lesley Woutersen, one of the co-founders of the EconomicInform gives away all of his free time to the project. He is interested in stock exchange and digital assets. Lesley can be reached by lesley.woutersen@economicinform.com.
