By Kent Paterson
President Donald Trump’s decision to delay for 30 days the implementation of tariffs on Mexican products averted higher costs for the legions of football fans gearing up for Superbowl Sunday. As is the ritual now, many pass the day drinking beer or other spirits and gobbling down guacamole and tortilla chips. Mexican suds and avocados are a vital part of this ritualistic day of feast and fun. On Superbowl Sunday and the rest of the year, the U.S. is by far the biggest market for exported Mexican avocados, the primary ingredient of guacamole.
Cited in the Mexican daily La Jornada, the Association of Avocado Packers and Exporters of Mexico reported about 110,000 tons of avocados, or more than 250 million of the fleshy fruits, were shipped to El Norte during the month of January in anticipation of Superbowl Sunday gluttony. For now, U.S. guacamole lovers won’t feel pain in their pockets from higher prices resulting from tariffs.
But the Mexican avocado export business denotes a much deeper problem, an environmental one of far-reaching magnitude. Currently, avocado production in Mexico is the subject of complaints filed by Mexican citizens in the Montreal-based Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC). The CEC is a trinational agency founded as part of the side agreement to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994. The CEC was essentially renewed in the 2020 free trade successor ageement to NAFTA approved by the three member governments.
Overseen by the senior environmental officials of the U.S., Mexico and Canada, CEC staff receive citizen submissions that allege violations of environmental laws of a given member nation.
If a complaint is not dismissed, CEC staff roll up their sleeves and compile a comprehensive report on the legal and environmental facts of the allegation for approval by the three top environmental officials of the member nations. This factual record is then sent to the government in question. Next step, it is up to that government to take action.
Since 2023, avocado production has triggered two citizen submissions filed by Mexican citizens in the CEC. The first one is centered on the environmental impacts of avocado cultivation in the southwestern state of Michoacán, which produces an estimated 75 percent of the avocados consummed both in Mexico and abroad.
In recent decades, vast swaths of the state have been cleared for growing avocado trees. In 2019, the Mexican daily La Jornada reported that 60 percent of the forest cover in four important regions of Michoacán had been cleared of their forests.
According to the latest numbers reported in a recent edition of La Jornada, somewhere between 434,896 and 442,318 acres of avocados are presently cultivated in Michoacán. To visualize that number, imagine avocado trees (instead of pecan trees) covering long belts of land equivalent to more or less to five Elephant Butte Irrrigation Districts, the swath of rich farm land that runs along the Rio Grande south from Elephant Butte Reservoir in New Mexico to the Texas border at Anthony.
Due to brisk demand from U.S. consumers, the volume of avocados exported to the U.S. shot up from 747,000 tons in 2014 to 1,170,000 tons in 2024, according to a private agricultural consulting firm cited by La Jornada.
In response to the first citizen complaint, the CEC noted the following:
In submission SEM-23-002 (Avocado Production in Michoacán), the Submitter asserts that Mexico is failing to protect forests and water resources in Michoacán from environmental impacts and deforestation caused by the continued expansion of avocado plantations. In particular, the Submitter claims that Mexico is failing to uphold provisions of the Mexican Constitution and various federal laws focused on environmental impact assessment, forestry conservation, sustainable development, water quality, climate change and environmental protection.
The Submitter maintains that forests play an important role in providing wildlife habitat, supporting biodiversity, mitigating climate change, conserving soil, filtering water, and recharging aquifers, among other contributions. The Submitter underscores the remarkable growth of the avocado industry in Michoacán in recent decades, positioning it as the main exporter of avocados in the world, most of which are exported to the United States.
The Submitter acknowledges that not all avocado producers have the same type and degree of environmental impacts but asserts that research has shown that the majority of avocado production in Michoacán generates high levels of environmental impacts and that deforestation rates in Michoacán for avocado plantations are among the highest in Mexico and Latin America.
For security reasons, the CEC withheld the names of the submitter.
Eyeing Michoacan’s economic success, other Mexican states have jumped on the bandwagon of the so-called green gold bonanza. Newer plantings, for example, have appeared in the neighboring state of Jalisco. And there, too, avocado growing has triggered a citizen complaint to the CEC. Also filed in 2023, the Jalisco submission contends that illegal logging has accompanied the avocado boom.
In summarizing the submission, the CEC wrote in part:
The submission alleges that Mexico is failing to effectively enforce procedures for changing land use from forest land to agriculture. The submission maintains that the process established in the law was not followed with regard to an area known as “Los Amoles” in Cuautla, Jalisco, and that people entered the land illegally, cut down trees in this area without authorization, transported the wood, and sold the wood commercially, resulting in deforestation and land use change, as Los Amoles is allegedly being converted to an avocado plantation.
Due to security concerns, confidentiality regarding authorship of the submission was requested.”
Apart from environmental concerns, avocado production especially in Michocan and Jalisco has been a magnet for organized criminal activity.
In replies to the CEC, Mexico’s federal government urged the dismissal of the citizen complaints, citing dozens of industry inspections, administrative proceedings against alleged violators and modest reforestation programs in affected areas since 2018.
According to the CEC, the Mexican government also sent information to Montreal reporting the establishment of monocultivar working groups designed to coordinate different agencies in a mission of preventing further forest loss and minimizing “adverse effects on climate, basins, ecosystems, and society that arise from the increased production of high-value cash crops, such as agaves (tequila and mezcal), avocadoes and berries in the State of Jalisco.
Of course, the big money for agave-based spirits, avocados and berries is in El Norte.
As of 2025, the two avocado-related citizen submissions remain without final disposition in the CEC. As for the CEC itself, the future of the agency will likely be mulled in the trinational jousting over the current U.S. Mexico Canada Agreement, set for renegotation in 2026.
In the big picture, the CEC avocado cases beg fundamental questions related to the U.S.-Mexico relationship, international commerce, U.S. consumer behavior, and the survival of the planet. Are migitation actions too little, too late? When is too much of a good thing too much? Despite the well-known consequences of farm monoculture, why do such agricultural practices not only persist but increase?
Meantime, it’s a safe bet to assume that guacamole consumption in the U.S. will retain its festive flavor on Superbowl Sunday and beyond.
.