Holy guacamole! Avocados are set to rocket in price if Donald Trump follows through on his threat to slap a 25% trade tariff on Mexico - the world’s biggest supplier. It exports more than a million tonnes of the fruit worldwide every year, so a price surge could throw global supply chains into chaos. The news, I imagine, will have clean-eating influencers quaking in their eco-friendly bamboo yoga socks.
The avo-boom has gone hand-in-hand with the rise of social media. Instagram , Pinterest, Twitter (or whatever it’s called now) is flooded with artfully-curated and heavily-filtered shots of avocados. Sliced, diced, mashed, blended, wrapped into sushi, or smeared on the face - there is no end to the obsession.
And Britain’s appetite is insatiable, with more than 120,000 tonnes imported every year and rising. But little thought goes into the environmental impact. To grow just one avocado, it takes an average of 70 litres of water — around five times the amount required to produce a kilo of tomatoes.
In a surprising turn of events, this week gardening guru Alan Titchmarsh called out avocado-munching wellness warriors for their glaring hypocrisy. He pointed out that rainforests are being felled at an “alarming rate” to make way for plantations. “They are then shipped to our shores, often more than 5,000 miles across an ocean, as breakfast for supposedly environmentally friendly consumers," he finger-wagged, before suggesting a return to familiar breakfast cereals lik.
