The price of avocados has soared worldwide thanks to memes like avocado toast. Avocados themselves are now valuable enough for cartels. They're calling it green gold.
The bigger factor in increased avocado prices is Phytophthora Root Rot, a fungal infection which has destroyed whole orchards in many places. My father used to have a small orchard that made a little money but sadly all the trees were killed years ago.
From my third link: "Exports of avocados from the state of Michoacan, the top source of both the fruit and immigrants to Chicago, have risen fivefold since 2004." And that was in 2008. Mexicans are genuinely starting to be unable to afford avocado. This is decidedly bizarre to me, since it's a common staple food in Mexico. It's like hearing that potatoes are too expensive for the Irish.
I can't find accurate avocado prices worldwide, but the soaring prices over the last decade or so are easily attestable in Mexico, or at least their effects are. I think the prices have always been high in the US due to tariffs and transportation costs. So perhaps the prices haven't changed much, but the demand sure has.
Right, the increase in consumption is forcing people in producing regions to pay global prices. That's not an increase in global prices. I guess I wouldn't expect places outside the US to have particularly higher demand or prices (US is wealthy, really embraces Mexico derived cuisines).
I can assure you that in Australasia there is both high demand and high prices. Even in season, avocados are typically $2.50 ($1.80usd) each in NZ (and this is a crop that is widely grown locally).
It's worth noting that the 'smashed avo on toast' meme originated in Australia. It was a tongue-in-cheek jab at millennials who complain of being priced out of the property market but still have the temerity to visit cafes regularly.
I experienced this when I lived in Honduras, C.A. Avocados from Mexico and indigenous Honduran avocados cost the same as Canada, my country of origin. It was a shock to me as I immediately thought of the locals, however for a number of them they have their own trees that bear fruits/vegetables for them allowing them to bypass purchasing these food items.
A delicious food is worthless without culutural knowledge about how to prepare it. Thus the attribution of cause to the meme, not the fruit itself, which has existed a very long time.
Doesn't one generally prepare avocado toast by ... spreading avocado on toast? And maybe adding salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes, but that doesn't seem like particularly recent cultural knowledge - you do that to all sorts of foods. It's about as complicated as putting butter on toast.
The version I’ve been eating for a couple of decades goes like this:
Good bread is key, I like olive sourdough or something chewy with grain. Layer of avocado, layer of hummus, sprinkle feta cheese, sliced tomatoes, lettuce on the side as a “chaser” and... yum.
I guess that’s “cultural” in that it’s just adding avocado to a Greek thing. I’d guess that’s the story of how a lot of people got into various new produce... add it to the familiar.
It is easy to make an egg and cheese sandwich too, yet they don’t exist in every culture. Culture is knowing you can, and knowing when the details are “wrong”.
I don't think the avocado toast meme has spawned the popularity of avocados, but rather the other way around.
Avocados have become very popular in the low-carb/paleo/"health" community, alongside coconut oil, and various other trending foods.
I don't think that people have been lacking the knowledge to put avocado on toast until a meme about millennials never being able to buy a house due to spending too much money on avocado on toast.
They're also VERY popular for baby foods these days as well for the reasons you mentioned. Lots of people are trying to avoid too much sugar for their babies.
It's popular for baby foods for the same reasons that banana is - babies like it, it's fairly nutrient-dense, and it's soft so doesn't pose a large choking risk.
I think you're referring to that one M&W episode. Or are there many like that? I thought it was like thinking that every American rooms are stuck in 1970s yellow-brown color palettes based on napoleon dynamite.
I can remember that about 20 years ago at least 4 of my Aunties and Uncles had them as well as a few friends. They had well and truly fallen out of favour by the late 90s though.
Two of those articles are from 2008 - was avocado toast a meme 10 years ago?
Also, I'd read that last joke as more like a "guac is extra" joke (referencing Chipotle) in American culture, than anything about avocado production - in fact a Google Images search for "guac is extra" brings up the same dude tossing the same bills: http://weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/bitch-i-kn...
I was a bit facetious about avocado toast -- that's just a recent trend. Avocado has certainly become a lot more popular worldwide. Avocado toast is but one of the recent avocado recipes whose worldwide popularity has increased.
The joke in Mexican culture is about Mexican culture because avocados are becoming more expensive everywhere in Mexico, not just in some restaurant chain. Mexicans are genuinely starting to becoming unable to afford paying for avocado. The only reason the joke works in Spanish, (e.g. give me some premium gasoline and smear some avocado on it) is because a staple food is getting out of reach.
Well, for one thing the cartels have forced parts of the civilian population -- especially in Michoacan-- to work for them (farming poppy; processing raw opium; spies and lookouts). These people are then affected by narco inter-gang violence, since they are viewed as part of the organisation thay are forced to work for. This also explains the large number of "gang-members" killed, when the mexican state publishes numbers on the death toll of the drug war.
Another thing is a system of "taxation", narco gangs put on these people. They have to pay the taxman from the state, as well as protection money to the rackets.
For a great documentary on this topic (this and how the people are trying to defend themselvs) I can point you to "Cartel Land" -- available on Netflix.
That made me chuckle. At least as far as the US tax code goes, our decisions about who gets taxed what amounts are just as arbitrary, we just publish the amounts further ahead of time than the mafia tax collectors.
Funny enough, almost all forms of the mafia in fact do social works projects. Their scale has historically not been large enough to build bridges though, however they almost all fund social programs to one degree or another.
The Italian Mafia both in NY and Italy have done that. Escobar did it. Al Capone did it. Etc. One can certainly debate their reasoning for doing it of course (eg buying goodwill so they can continue their crime spree, set up an underdog appeal and so on).
Tancitaro produce a lot of high quality avocados. Cartels force people into paying some money or "tax" (it depends on how wealthy the person/company is) in exchange of "protection". They can punish / kill / kidnap people when they choose not to pay [1]. The problem is not only located at that town, other areas are affected and working in the same way.
The federal government do nothing to solve any of the issues, instead they pay large quantity of money for positive news [2], you don't see this kind of news on the TV. It's sad.
As far as I am able to tell, the town is not: a tourist area, on a main route to anywhere, bordering the US, etc.