Headline should be "The drug cartels are wreaking havoc in Mexico". They would be trying to extract rent from any industry, the industry just happens to be avocados.
From the article, expanding avocado farms is leading to drought and deforestation. Increased use of pesticides is making the pickers sick and poisoning the ground water
Or, even better, don't buy food that has to get transported thousands of miles. Stick to local and seasonal cuisine. That is also the most pro-environmental option.
In today's world local cuisine is not better for the environment. It's worse. Transportation costs are extremely minimal but fertilizer and other growing costs are way higher. Using only local cuisine is actually worse for the environment than using food that grew in the best place possible for it.
This is false. Local food is generally more expensive because real estate and labor costs are way higher. Nutrients and electricity (the inputs with direct environmental impact) account for a tiny fraction of the cost of production.
Yields may be slightly lower, but farmers won't grow crops that aren't relatively optimized to the environment. No one's growing avocados in Missouri (except perhaps in a tropical greenhouse, which likely is designed to self-sufficiently sustain its environment).
This article is pretty weak. It’s just a haphazard jumble of “drug gangs extort money from avocado farmers” and “agriculture has potentially harmful impacts on the environment” with no attempt to quantify, dig deeper, or present evidence about any of its claims. The seed of a good story is here, just no effort to perform novel reporting.
