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Saturday, 18 January 2020
Avocados hit sweet spot in China, while sucking Chile dry
Chinese consumers have embraced the
craze for the fruit only in recent years, but that is making life ever
more difficult in one of its source countries, the programme China’s
Growing Appetite finds out.
Spaghetti topped with avocado slices being served at an avocado restaurant in Shanghai.
PETORCA, Chile: It is a superfood, packed with vitamins, minerals and
fibre. And in China, avocado has also become a social media superstar
since a fitness craze took the country by storm about six years ago.
More
and more people are working out, toning up and showing off on social
media, including what they eat to help burn fat and gain muscles.
In Shanghai, one avocado restaurant is taking to social media at a
whole new level, with its marketing done entirely through word of mouth
online.
Kiss Avocado even has a pink decor to attract girls who
would “take selfies and post on social media”, said co-owner Lynn Yin.
And as the Chinese middle class grows, more of them are eating such
trendy foods.
Avocado-related content on Chinese social media.
A decade ago, China’s volume of avocado imports was low: 31.8 tonnes
in 2011. But it has increased by more than 1,300 times, to 43,000 tonnes
in 2018.
Previously, an avocado from Mexico retailed domestically at about 50
yuan (S$10), in no small measure because of a 40 per cent total tax rate
for the fruit.
But in 2014, Beijing granted market access to
Chile. And under a bilateral free trade agreement, Chilean avocados have
since entered with zero export tariffs. By 2017, half of China’s
avocados came from the South American country.
The fruit now costs
about 10 to 15 yuan, whereas in Chile, the price has tripled to 3,200
pesos (S$6) per kilogramme, observed FoodyChile tour guide Colin
Bennett.
“When I first moved here (12 years ago), it was 1,000 pesos a kilo,” said the American, who settled in Santiago, the capital.
Locally produced avocados in Chile.
The price increase, however, is not the only concern in the world’s
third-largest producer of avocados. As its exports increase, so too have
its environmental problems.
And the programme China’s Growing
Appetite questions whether Chinese consumers should wake up to how their
“food-print” affects other countries. (Watch the episode here.)
WATER SHORTAGE
Chilean
activist Rodrigo Mundaca knows all about his country’s problems with
big avocado plantations, especially in Petorca, a major
avocado-producing region in central Chile.
It has the kind of warm climate and stable temperatures for the fruit to thrive, except that a lot of water is needed.
Petorca, a three-hour drive north of Santiago.
The amount of water it takes to produce one avocado is enough to grow
three oranges or 14 tomatoes. And plantations have been extracting
“more water than authorised”, said Mundaca, who is fighting to protect
local communities’ access to water.
A 2011 investigation by
Chile’s water authority showed at least 65 illegal underground channels
bringing water from the rivers to private plantations.
The investigation led to criminal convictions of some agribusinesses, but that was not enough to stop them from trying again.
They
still dug riverside wells to irrigate their fields, Mundaca pointed out
at one such site that was fenced off to keep it out of sight.
“This
is a river. It’s a national good for public use,” he said. “You can’t
simply install underground water (systems). This is fully illegal.”
One of many water diversion installations in Petorca, said the activist
One of the province’s rivers, the Ligua River, was declared depleted
as far back as 2004 — “overexploited” by avocado producers, he added.
In
the past 10 years, however, central Chile has also been living with a
mega-drought. So nearly half of the country’s rural homes — some one
million people — do not have regular access to drinking water nowadays.
As
the groundwater level continues to drop, the local government has
resorted to trucking water to Petorca’s rural residents. They are among
380,000 people in Chile receiving water from tankers as part of
emergency measures declared last year.
Asked if the plantations
can be stopped from drawing too much water, Petorca municipal
government’s water affairs manager Carolina Vilches replied that the
municipality “doesn’t have the power to evaluate the environmental
impact of agriculture”.
“The ministry that has that power doesn’t
consider agriculture as something that could impact the environment.
Therefore the impact isn’t assessed,” she said.
WATCH: Avocado madness in China is sucking Chile dry (3:47)
VILLAGERS VS FARMS
It is obvious, however,
that families are struggling with the lack of water. “(The most
difficult thing) is seeing how everything dies — it’s terrible to see
our little plants die — (and) washing up with so little water,” said
Zoila Quiroz.
Her family, who have lived in the Petorca valley for
generations, used to get water from a stream four kilometres away. But
it dried up, and they do not own rights to dig a well to get water.
That
is not the case for the avocado farms surrounding the family on all
sides. “The avocado trees have more rights than us, the human beings,”
added Quiroz, wishing that the farms could all go.
“I think this is the only part of the world where water is sold like candy.”
Zoila Quiroz (right) talks to CNA.
It turns out that in Chile, water rights are treated like property
and granted in perpetuity by the government. With the drought, and
plantations sometimes drawing more water than they have rights to, there
are no more rights to allocate.
While villagers are losing out in
this way, Allent Vega Diaz disagrees that the criticisms are fair. The
farm manager from Cabilfrut, the biggest avocado exporter in Petorca,
pointed out that Chilean law “doesn’t discriminate between the uses of
water”.
Nor does he think the government should change the law.
“The government needs to invest to secure water for the population.
People without water need water; they don’t need laws,” he said.
“This area needs agriculture. Agriculture is the main activity in this area.”
Chile's green cash crop.
He added that Cabilfrut has about 3,000 hectares of orchards but is
using only about 200 hectares “because we don’t have water for all the
areas”.
He is waiting for the next rainy season so that
plantations can be irrigated and production restarted — even as Chile’s
worst drought in 60 years spiked last year, with rainfall hitting new
lows.
A BETTER WAY?
Seeing as Petorca’s
water problems began before China became a market, CNA correspondent and
Chongqing native Wei Du noted that “in a way, it’s really not our
fault”.
“But now we’re part of the problem … it does make you wonder, isn’t there a better way?” she questioned.
.
Wei Du and Rodrigo Mundaca heading to a riverbed.
There is, according to Mundaca, the leader of water rights
movement Modatima. “Nowadays there are some markets such as Denmark’s
that have restricted the purchase of avocados from Petorca … because
these companies have left our communities without water,” he cited.
The
fruit has also been removed from menus elsewhere in Europe. But he
pointed out that the agribusinesses have “signalled publicly that if the
European market ceases to import Chilean avocados, they’d move on to
China”.
Some top producers in the region are already selling up to
a third of their crop to China. That is a disproportionate share, given
that China accounts for about 10 per cent of Chile’s avocado exports.
Having
seen how China’s changing eating habits can affect other countries, Wei
said: “We’ve been told for decades now that eating extravagantly is
what the good life is about. So I wonder, is it time to set new ideals?”