An avocado shortage is looming next spring.
California farmers expect to harvest the smallest avocado crop since 1990 and possibly even as far back as 1980. Hot weather in June, at just the wrong point in the growing season, is responsible for the shortfall.
Lucky for football fans, there is still plenty of the green- fleshed fruit — the basic ingredient of guacamole — to last well beyond the bowl season, experts say. But by Cinco de Mayo, shoppers could be paying more.
The crunch will come in late spring and early summer, when imports from Mexico and Chile are at their lowest.
Prices shouldn’t explode, but they’ll creep into the higher range of what consumers expect, said Wayne Brydon, field service manager for the California Avocado Commission.
“Retailers see avocados as a prime produce item that already has good margins, and they probably won’t want to raise the price far up,” he said, but “they have some room to maneuver.” Americans eat about 3 pounds of avocado per capita per year, with people in the West and Southwest eating more than the average.
The shortage will be more pronounced in guacamole- crazy Texas and the eastern half of the nation, because California growers will favor longtime customers in Pacific coastal states, Arizona and Nevada, Brydon said.
Yet even during that three-month period of May to July when California avocados are king, there still could be enough competition to help regulate prices, said Avi Crane, owner of Prime Produce International, an avocado packing house in Orange, Calif. Jerry Hirsch, Los Angeles Times
