MEXICO CITY — The eyes of Michoacan were on Dan Glickman during his visit here this week as up to 10,000 Mexican farmers--who contribute to the livelihoods of 100,000 of their countrymen in the poor Mexican state--awaited the U.S. agriculture secretary's word on a ripe topic: avocados.
For the Michoacan lobby, which has been fighting with California with increasing fervor and sophistication for the right to sell Mexican avocados in the United States, Glickman's words were encouraging.
"On the issue of avocados, the [Agriculture] department is considering the promulgation of rules that would allow Mexican avocados, under certain circumstances, into the United States," he said. "And those decisions should be made fairly soon."
In the next two months, analysts and department sources say, the U.S. government is likely to partially ease what Mexican advocates call 82 years of blatant protectionism for California's $220-million-a-year avocado industry. Under the plan, Mexico could export avocados to 19 states in the Northeast, but only from November to February.
Even that, asserts the Santa Ana-based California Avocado Commission, opens the door to pestilence--and sharp price reductions--that could endanger an industry providing 20,000 jobs in Riverside, Ventura, San Diego and Santa Barbara counties.
The issue on both sides of the border is bugs, principally the seed weevil and the fruit fly. For decades, the U.S. government has quarantined Mexican avocados, saying pests could travel on Mexican avocados and infest California crops.
Enter the North American Free Trade Agreement, which took affect two years ago. NAFTA's goal was to eventually drop trade barriers among the United States, Mexico and Canada. It led to shifts in U.S. government attitudes, including on the topic of the Mexican avocado ban.
Scientists in the U.S. Department of Agriculture's animal and plant health inspection service began investigating whether Mexican avocado imports truly threaten California. After raucous hearings that began in Washington and ended in Escondido in August, the inspectors said that risk is low.
For Xavier Equihua--the 30-year-old lobbyist who represents Michoacan avocado growers in Washington and had pushed hard for the hearings--those findings were a victory. He has also won support for new rules on Mexican avocados from more than 50 U.S. legislators, including Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, a Los Angeles Democrat.
