Mexican president says Biden is using avocado ban as a political weapon against his country

Mexico’s president launched an avocado war of words against the US after the suspension of one of his country’s most profitable exports, claiming the ban is a conspiracy by President Joe Biden to protect American producers from losing to ‘quality’ Mexican products.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador dismissed the threat received by a US health inspector that led to last week’s suspension of avocado exports as a ruse.

‘The truth is there is always something else behind it, an economic or commercial interest, or a political attitude,’ López Obrador said.

‘They don’t want Mexican avocados to get into the United States, right, because it would rule in the United States because of its quality.’

The suspension has created an impending avocado crisis in the US, with the supply of the popular staple sold at fast-food restaurants and finer dining establishments expected to run out in the next two weeks.

The US has not yet elaborated on the threats the American inspector received from the Mexican facility and has not stated when the suspension would end.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said the US ban on Mexico’s avocados as part of a conspiracy theory to protect American producers from Mexican competition 

Avocado prices have reached $26.23 per nine-kilogram box, the standard of transportation

The US halted imports of avocados from Michoacán, Mexico, the sole Mexican provider of the fruit for America. Experts warn the suspension would deplete America’s avocado supply and cause prices to increase further after prices doubled since 2021

Michoacán is the only Mexican state allowed to export avocados to the United States

The suspension comes after a US inspector at a Michoacán facility received a threatening phone call. Violence runs rampant in the Mexican state where farmers have armed themselves to guard checkpoints at the facilities to ward off the cartel

Eight out of 10 avocados purchased in the US come from Michoacán, Mexico, the only state in the country that the US imports from since 1997 as the fruits in the facility were certified to be free of dangerous pests that could threaten American growers.

Steve Taft, president of Eco Farms in California, said he has been hearing from wholesale clients worried about running out of the key ingredient for guacamole and avocado toast.

Michoacán is ‘the big bully on the block. They dictate the market, so we have to be careful not to get carried away,” Taft said, according to Bloomberg.

He expects prices to rise by as much as 25% depending on the length of the ban.

Avocado prices hit $26.23 per nine-kilogram box, double what they cost last year. The price is nearing the highest in two decades, behind only a brief spike above $30 last July because of global demand and the end of the growing season in Mexico.

Guacamole lovers have seen the price of a single avocado rise to as much as $2.50 at their supermarkets from just $1.24 last month. They cost 99 cents in January 2021.

Mission Produce, the biggest distributor of avocados in the U.S., said the company is doing what it can to ‘mitigate the impact as much as possible,’ including trying to source additional products around the world.

The Dominican Republic is the next largest avocado producer in the world, but the majority of the harvest is sold within the country.

Francesco Brachetti, the co-founder of Avocaderia, an avocado bar in New York City, said consumers won’t see the full impact of the avocado blockade because there’s a lag between fruit ships and when it’s sold in the US.

‘The last couple of years have been unique, so we’ll take it with caution and wait for this situation to evolve,’ Brachetti told Bloomberg.

In the past six weeks, Michoacán has exported more than 135 thousand tons of avocados to the US, the Mexican government said. The state is the world’s largest avocado exporter, yielding nearly $3 billion a year for Mexico.

The US said it has reached a deal that could allow avocados from the neighboring Mexican state of Jalisco to be exported to the US later this year.

The US health inspector was allegedly threatened by someone in Jalisco after he blocked their shipment of avocados, leading to the ban being imposed on February 11.

Raul Lopez, the Mexico manager of the market research company Agtools, told the Washington Post that prices would only continue to rise as the US depletes its avocado supply amid the suspension.

‘In a few days, the current inventory will be sold out and there will be a lack of product in almost any supermarket,’ Lopez said.

‘The consumer will have very few products available, and prices will rise drastically.’

Chipotle Mexican Grill, known for its guacamole and Mexican food, said it was working with its suppliers to ensure it has enough avocados on demand.

 Chipotle is ‘working closely with our suppliers to navigate through this challenge,’ the company’s Chief Financial Officer Jack Hartung said in a statement.

‘Our sourcing partners currently have several weeks of inventory available, so we’ll continue to closely monitor the situation and adjust our plans accordingly,’ Hartung said.

The company did not say how much the prices for its dishes that use avocado would go up, only that the company has already been contending with higher costs.

Moe’s Southwest Grill, another popular Mexican-food chain in the US, and Taco Bell did not immediately respond to DailyMail.com’s request for comment

Jonny Hernandez, a San Antonio restaurateur who owns 11 eateries, told Kens5 he has enough avocados for two weeks and expects dishes featuring the food to increase by 50 percent.

‘It’ll start affecting prices tomorrow,’ he said. ‘We’re already dealing with labor and supply issues… That is going to compound everything.’

The US has halted avocado shipments from the violence-ridden Mexican state after an American health inspector was threatened, Mexico’s agriculture ministry said Saturday.

The health worker had been carrying out an inspection in Uruapan, a city in Michoacán, a gang-plagued region that’s among Mexico’s deadliest states. It has for decades been used as a drug-trafficking hub and the situation has only worsened amid frequent armed struggles for power between rival cartels.

Health officials did not disclose the specific nature of the threat, but it was serious enough to pause imports pending the results of an investigation by the US Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and Department of Agriculture, the statement said.

Lopez told the Post the inspector had allegedly found avocados from the state of Puebla in the Michoacán facility that were intended to be exported to the US, which is not allowed.

‘The people from the facility tried to intimidate and then [threaten] the inspector, so he reported it to the USDA, then they decided to pull out all the inspectors and close the border indefinitely,’ Lopez explained.

Michoacán growers in 2019 began taking up arms to protect themselves against thieves and drug cartels robbing them of their ‘green gold,’ using AR-15 rifles to defend themselves against deadly cartels

Mexican drug cartel members have been for years threatening members of the lucrative avocado industry.

Michoacán growers in 2019 began taking up arms to protect themselves against thieves and drug cartels robbing them of their ‘green gold,’ using AR-15 rifles to defend themselves against deadly cartels.

Soaring US consumption has lifted the region out of poverty in the past decade, with Mexico in 2020 exporting more than $2.7billion US of the fruit, according to Statista.

But the cash flow has also brought growing rates of extortion, kidnapping, and avocado theft.

The situation has become so dangerous that hundreds of avocado growers have formed a self-defense group called Pueblos Unidos to protect their fields.

A bullet hole is pictured on the window of a house, in El Aguaje, Michoacán in Mexico, on February 9, 2022, a region that’s become overwhelmed by drug violence

It isn’t the first time the US Department of Agriculture’s officials has been threatened.

In August 2019, a team of inspectors were ‘directly threatened’ in Ziracuaretiro, a town just west of Uruapan in Michoacán. While the agency didn’t specify what happened, local authorities said a gang robbed the truck the inspectors were traveling in at gunpoint.

 The US lifted a ban on Mexican avocados in 1997, decades after the ban was implemented in 1914 to prevent weevils, scabs, and pests from entering U.S. orchards.

The dangerous situation in gang-controlled Michoacán was again highlighted in January when footage showed drug cartels using drones to drop explosives onto inhabitants of a Tepalcatepec forest.

It was the latest demonstration of unchecked violence in the region as the drones, controlled by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, rained down explosives on the shacks.

Footage from the attack emerged just weeks after the nearby city of Chinicuila in Michoacán reported that roughly half of its population fled, many illegally into the US, to escape the cartel’s violence.

The rise in avocado prices comes as wholesale inflation in the US surged again last month, rising 9.7 percent from a year earlier in another sign that price pressures remain high at all levels of the economy.

The producer price index for final demand, which measures inflation before it reaches consumers, jumped 1 percent last month after climbing just 0.4 percent in December, the Labor Department said on Tuesday.

Companies facing higher wholesale and raw materials costs have shown no hesitation to pass along the higher prices to consumers, and the latest data suggests that further increases are coming at the retail level.

With consumer price increases hitting a 40-year high of 7.5 percent last month, President Joe Biden faces plunging approval ratings ahead of the midterm elections and is now considering a plan to suspend the gasoline tax for a year to provide angry voters relief at the pump.

Last week, the government reported that inflation at the consumer level soared over the past year at its highest rate in four decades, squeezing households, wiping out pay raises, and reinforcing the Federal Reserve’s decision to begin raising borrowing rates.