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North America’s appetite for avocados is enormous. From its own emoji to avocado toast and guacamole, the fruit is a fixture on menus and in produce departments. Last year, the USDA reported that during the last 15 years in the U.S. alone: “per-capita avocado consumption has increased from two pounds per person to seven pounds per person” – with Mexico supplying the demand.

According to Canadian Manufacturing, increased consumption has resulted in rapidly rising prices and famers expanding their orchards to meet the need – often at the expense of central Mexico’s pine forests. “Even where they aren’t visibly cutting down forest, there are avocados growing underneath (the pine boughs), and sooner or later they’ll cut down the pines completely,” Mario Tapia Vargas, a researcher at Mexico’s National Institute for Forestry, Farming and Fisheries Research, told Canadian Manufacturing.

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The ramifications extend past deforestation and its effects, as trafficking in avocados has been spurred by the heightened demand and skyrocketing prices, PBS NewsHour reports. “The economics have also attracted some nefarious actors, leading to gang warfare in the Michoacán state of Mexico. It’s estimated that 80 per cent of the avocados consumed in the United States are from this area, and because of the violence the business has generated, some now refer to fruit from the state as ‘blood avocados,’” Vikram Mansharamani writes for PBS NewsHour.