Whether you like to squash it onto your toast in the morning, millennial style, eat it to cut your cholesterol, with healthy unsaturated oil, or moisturise your face with it, if you live in the West, you're probably rarely far from an avocado.
That is very good news for South Africa's farmers, struggling with drought, who are switching to a crop whose farm-gate price has risen by 130% since 2008.
Already, South Africa generates around 1.85 billion rand ($137 million) a year from avocados, producing around 125,000 tonnes and exporting more than half to Europe. In 2008, they fetched an average 9.64 rand (70 US cents) per kilo – in 2017, it was 22.10 rand.
It takes six years to get an avocado plantation into production, but that is not putting farmers off.
"Forestry plantations are being felled and cleared, and avocados planted," said Derek Donkin, chief executive of the South African Subtropical Growers' Association. "There are also areas that were either bush or some grazing that's been planted to avocados."
Growing 1,000 Hectares Per Year
There are currently about 16,500 hectares (41,800 acres) of avocado plantations, and that area is growing by about 1,000 hectares (2,500 acres) a year.
Traditionally, avocados were grown in humid subtropical climates in the Limpopo, Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal provinces, but now they are being planted in the drier Eastern and Western Cape provinces.
Techniques such as drip irrigation, which drips water slowly on the soil, and planting orchids on ridges to reduce surface run-off, help to make the most of the water available.
"Traditionally, no one would ever dream about planting down there, but you need to pioneer, much like this farm was pioneered more than 100 years ago," said Craig Lewis, an executive at the producer HL Hall & Sons, on a farm near the northern city of Nelspruit.
The firm hopes that its trial plantation on the Western Cape – hit hard by drought this year – might allow it to extend what is now a six-month season to ten months, to supply a global year-round demand.
"Although South Africa is planting 1,000 hectares a year, we would like to plant a lot more," Lewis said.
Donkin said that the rate could hit as much as 2,000 hectares a year within the next few years.
Swapping Crops
On a smaller scale, Tom Mdluli manages 188 employees on a 6,000-hectare community farm in the Mpumalanga province, owned by a trust. It exports around 80% of its 260 hectares’ worth of avocados and is planning to expand by another 120 hectares.
Even the wines famously grown on the Cape may one day have to move aside for the avocado.
"They swap the annual crops – like maize, cotton and alfalfa – for more permanent crops," said Wessel Lemmer, a senior agricultural economist at Absa Bank. "They even take out vines."
News by Reuters, edited by ESM. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: European Supermarket Magazine.
