Over the last 10 years, per capita consumption has gone from one pound to seven pounds of avocados per year. After a nearly 125% increase in price of avocados, they're getting back to a normal level. Texas International Produce Association's Dante Galeazzi said we might have seen the effects at the grocery store, or our favorite Tex Mex restaurant.
“They probably limited the avocados they were using as well. And, if the opportunity provided, then they might have removed it from the menu. That would definitely make sense if you went from one day paying $30 a box of avocados to the next day paying 90 or $100 a box,” said Galeazzi.
For more than a decade, Mexican drug cartels have also affected the cost of avocados by extorting farmers.
“The cartel had gotten ahold of some of the information regarding Mexico country’s more prominent or larger farmers and they were using that information of the major famers to target them for exploitation, blackmail, kidnapping, anything they could to leverage that person and get money from them,” said Galeazzi.
He said usually weather influences prices of produce.