Higher guacamole? How avocado import guidelines helped minimize Mexico’s water air pollution – it holds classes for future US commerce offers

At picnics and World Cup watch events throughout the United States this summer time, individuals have been reaching for bowls of chips and guacamole. Most of that guacamole is constructed from avocados grown in Mexico – on orchards that, in what would possibly come as a shock, contribute much less water air pollution right now than they did a decade in the past.

There’s a narrative behind how these creamy fruits began to scrub up their act. It begins with a big avocado deal between the U.S. and Mexico in 2016. And it offers proof of how well-designed commerce partnerships can do rather more than promote commerce.

Those advantages are value remembering as officers from the U.S., Mexico and Canada negotiate the future of their free trade agreement.

How a commerce deal minimize Mexico’s farm air pollution

Growing avocados on a industrial scale requires a lot of nitrogen fertilizers and different agrochemicals. Rain usually washes these chemical compounds and fertilizers into close by rivers and streams. Nitrogen downstream feeds algal blooms that starve rivers of oxygen and kill fish, and it could contaminate the drinking water that native communities depend on.

Economists have lengthy argued that commerce can exacerbate these environmental penalties: Wealthy nations with strict guidelines for their very own growers purchase the dirtiest items from poorer nations with weaker laws, relocating the air pollution. Based on this “pollution haven” theory, America’s rising urge for food for Mexican avocados ought to have left Mexico’s water dirtier.

Instead, analysis my co-author and I performed exhibits the water got cleaner. We consider the necessities of a 2016 U.S.-Mexico trade agreement had been an enormous cause why.

In 2016, the U.S. started permitting avocado imports from throughout Mexico so long as the Mexican farms met the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s strict manufacturing requirements. Prior to 2016, Michoacán was the one Mexican state that exported avocados to the U.S.

The new standards required orchards to be licensed earlier than exporting their fruit to the U.S., a number of inspections at packing homes and ports, and phytosanitary certificates, which affirm that the fruit is freed from the pests U.S. regulators goal, comparable to avocado weevils and fruit flies.

To make sure the absence of pests, growers scout their fields and employ trapping devices, however they attempt to deal with solely the place surveys flip up an issue. That’s as a result of growers who depend on heavy spraying danger exceeding U.S. limits on pesticide residues, which might get shipments refused on the border.

With a everlasting monitoring program monitoring avocados at each stage of manufacturing, the chance of shedding entry to the profitable U.S. export market incentivized farmers to shift away from routine spraying towards a extra watchful administration strategy that, in flip, lowered their use of pesticides and agrochemicals.

Pesticides and fertilizers go collectively in avocado manufacturing, so we believe the pesticide reduction made every additional unit of fertilizer much less worthwhile, main growers to use much less nitrogen and phosphorus.

As farmers utilized much less nitrogen and phosphorus, much less of it washed off their land and into close by waterways, that means much less water air pollution was flowing downstream.

Why the avocado stipulations labored

I’m an environmental economist. Working with crop trade researcher William Townsend at California Polytechnic State University, we in contrast water high quality in Mexican municipalities that develop avocados with in any other case related municipalities that don’t, each earlier than and after the 2016 rules took impact.

If one thing aside from the commerce settlement adjustments had been driving the change, we’d count on each units of locations to reply equally. However, they didn’t. In truth, after the 2016 program, nitrogen concentrations in waterways near avocado-growing areas fell by about 10% within the span of some years in comparison with declines in related non-avocado-growing areas in Mexico.

This is a significant enchancment for rivers the place agricultural runoff is likely one of the dominant sources of water air pollution. A ten% discount in nitrogen air pollution in water corresponds to a couple of 6.6% reduction in use of nitrogen fertilizers. With the high cost of fertilizer today, having the ability to scale back fertilizer want helps farmers in addition to surrounding ecosystems.

There are some caveats, in fact.

The U.S.-Mexico marketplace for avocados is exclusive. It has massive demand for a high-value crop with a single dominant purchaser – about 90% of the 1.2 million metric tons of avocados Mexico produced in 2025 went to the U.S. – and a reputable system of phytosanitary certification for Mexican avocados. So, the identical economic framework at the side of enforceable requirements may not be as efficient for different crops in different growing nations.

Avocado farming in Mexico additionally has another critical drawbacks, together with connections to drug cartels in some areas. The enlargement of avocado groves has additionally driven deforestation and increased water use, which generally is a downside in areas the place water is already scarce. But the 2016 settlement confirmed that commerce insurance policies will help scale back avocado growers’ environmental impression.

Lessons for the brand new commerce deal talks

As the U.S., Canada and Mexico negotiate the subsequent iteration of a free commerce pact or pacts, agriculture is likely one of the negotiating subjects. Our analysis exhibits that the circumstances stipulated by the U.S. on merchandise it buys can ripple throughout the border.

So, as you attain for the chips and guacamole, do not forget that you’re dipping into proof that what Americans select to import – and the circumstances commerce offers impose – can form the atmosphere far past the U.S. border.