Environmentalists the world over warn that the increasing demand for avocados is harmful to the environment because of the large water demands of the fruit that grows best in mountainous terrain. The Dominican Republic exported US$$57.6 million of avocados in 2017, or 1% of total global exports. The largest avocado plantations have taken over areas located in the Sierra de Bahoruco National Park, where the fertile soils and abundance of water make this a very profitable crop for the owner of the plantation.
Environmentalists have warned the plantation is contributing to deforestation of the land and depletion of vital water sources. The trees are planted at a height of 800m in the protected area of the mountains.
But the avocado plantations have found their main defender in Environment Minister Angel Estevez. Estevez insists avocados grow on trees and trees are good for the environment.
In a recent TV interview with Huchi Lora and Amelia Deschamps of El Dia, Estevez stated: “I will not topple a single avocado tree. What damage do avocado trees cause the high parts of the mountain?” he asked the interviewers. “
“Why is it damaging, why one tree does damages and another not?,” he insisted. A former minister of Agriculture, Estevez’s private company is involved in vending agrochemicals – fertilizers and pesticides — to farm companies.
Estevez argued during the TV interview that the government had not reimbursed the landowners, as established in the Dominican Republic’s general environment law, Law 64-00. He insists that under his term at the Ministry of Environment not a single avocado tree will be tumbled.
On the contrary, the Grupo Jaragua has complained that during the term of Estevez roads have been built within the Bahoruco National Park to facilitate the operations of the avocado plantations, one of the larger of which is owned by a brother of President Danilo Medina, Ángel Milcíades Medina Sánchez.
In Chile, in the province of Petorca, avocado farmers learned the hard way the damages the crop causes to the area, given that the plantations require large amounts of water. It takes up to 1000 liters of water to grow one kilo (about three avocados), a lot more than for other crops. In Petorca, the riverbeds have dried up.
Furthermore, it is now known that the intense farming of avocados leaves the soils more vulnerable to diseases, leading to the need of using pesticides. The pesticides can contaminate not only the soil (together with chemical fertilizers) but also the surrounding biodiversity (human lives included) if they get carried by the water. Moreover, over long periods of time, monoculture crops such as avocados also deplete the soil, taking away most of its mineral properties.
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Huchi Lora with Angel Estevez
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15 April 2019