USDA’s decision to pull Aphis inspectors out of Michoacan and Jalisco has prompted serious concern, says California Avocado Commission
California’s avocado growers might be looking forward to a bumper harvest next year. But on the day they predicted a larger crop in 2025, they also voiced their anger that the government will allow Mexico to conduct its own inspections on orchards that grow avocados for export to the US.
In a letter to US Secretary of Agriculture Thomas Vilsack dated 24 September, California Avocado Commission chair Jason Cole and vice-president for industry affairs and operations Ken Melban lamented the USDA’s decision to no longer send its own inspectors.
Under the new arrangement, Aphis staff will continue to manage the process from within the US, but the country will have to rely on inspectors employed by Mexico’s Agriculture and Rural Development Ministry to prevent potentially invasive pests entering within imported fruit.
“This action reverses the long-established inspection process designed to prevent invasions of known pests in Mexico that would devastate our industry,” Cole and Melban wrote in the letter.
“The pest prevention program adopted by Aphis decades ago has worked in large measure because Aphis inspectors have been directly involved in all significant aspects of the programme’s operation beginning with orchard certification,” they continued.
“It is well known that their physical presence greatly reduces the opportunity of others to ‘game the system’.”
Earlier this year, the US government suspended inspections for ten days after two USDA inspectors were apparently threatened during routine orchard checks in Michoacán, which alongside Jalisco is one of only two Mexican states permitted to export avocados to the US.
“As reports of corruption and violence in Mexico continue, including regions authorised for avocado exports to the US, it’s unimaginable the US government would consider abdicating inspection responsibilities to Mexico,” Melban said at the time. “US farmers will not be protected under such a programme, one intended and designed specifically to protect US farmers’ economic interests.”
Crop set to grow
Meanwhile, the Commission has revealed that fruit set across many of the state’s avocado growing regions is “considerably higher” this year than in previous years, prompting several growers to project that a bigger harvest in 2025 compared with recent seasons.
Bountiful rains in the 2023 and 2024 seasons were partially responsible for a relatively small crop in 2023, and a delayed harvest in 2024. But the rains are also said to have contributed positively to soil and tree health.
“The Commission is very enthusiastic about the possibility of larger crops in the near future,” said its vice-president of marketing Terry Splane. “However, we’re tempering that enthusiasm with caution, as many factors could positively or negatively affect the size of the 2025 California avocado crop, such as excessive heat, wind or frost. It’s just simply too early to know for sure.”
Many of California’s avocado growers have invested in new plantings and, as a result, a lot of older, less productive trees have been replaced. It is estimated that 3m new avocado trees went into the ground between 2013 and 2023.
To support next season’s harvest, the Commission said it planned to expand this year’s newly launched California avocado advertising programme, with a focus on local, sustainable production.
