Demand in the United States for one popular food is driving deforestation in Mexico.

Stephanie Sigh speaks with a researcher about what can be done to stop it.

Green gold, midshipman's butter, the alligator pair, or as most of us know it, the avocado.

It's become a staple in a lot of our diets and in recent years sales have skyrocketed. The U.S. alone imports around 80% of

Mexico's crop that's $3 billion of avocados. But the growing demand for avocados on toast and guac is having a steep

environmental and human cost. Daniel Wilkinson is Senior Policy Advisor at

Climate Rights International.

Daniel, thanks so much for joining us.

You have this report out about the avocado industry in Mexico.

It's called Unholy Guacamole.

How much, first of all, has demand for avocados grown in recent years in this country and around the world?

Well, it's been skyrocketing. The consumption of avocados in the US has tripled since 2020 and we also see similar sort of growth in Europe and in other markets around the world.

So as a result of that I understand that over 25,000 acres of land in Mexico has been

illegally deforested for avocado production. Explain what is happening and why

enforcement measures aren't in place.

Well, what's happening is that there are enormous profits to be made selling avocados to the

U.S. market and so people are clearing forests illegally to install

avocado orchards there's some estimates as much as 70,000 acres just in the

last decade and there's many more tens of thousands perhaps hundreds of

thousands of acres of forest land currently standing but that are at

risk of clearing. The deforestation is almost entirely illegal and much of the water use as well is

unauthorized it's basically water theft which is also illegal but the law simply

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