Thursday Things: Avocado Crisis Edition
28 July 2022. Vol 4 No 30 By Dan McGirt. #155
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Do your part! Eat more avocados! Photo by Annemarie Grudën on Unsplash
Avocados Down Under. Avocados are tricky. You cut into one too soon, before it ripens, and you get an unchewable lump with the consistency of a baseball.
But wait too long and the avocado spoils into unappetizing brown mush. It might even go moldy. Yuck! Moldy avocado mush! No one wants that.
With avocados, timing is everything. And that’s why, right now, our friends in Australia are having an Avocado Crisis!
Here's Why Australia Is Currently Overflowing With Avocados
At first blush, “overflowing with avocados” doesn’t sound like a problem.
Oh, but it is. It is.
Some even call it an “avo-lanche”:
“A bumper 2021/22 crop in Western Australia was a turning point,” Ms Piggott said, “with industry estimates of avocado production in the state being up a staggering 265 per cent on the previous year.
You get the point. There’s a lot of avo in Australia. But what does it all mean?
Supply glut means Aussies will have to eat and export more avocados, report says
Australia’s avocado glut is “just the beginning” with domestic production tipped to jump by 40 per cent in the next five years.
A supply boom means households have been enjoying more avocados at cheaper prices.
Still … cheap, abundant avocados? How is that a problem? It sounds like guacamole heaven!
This year alone, the per capita supply of avocados is estimated to be up 26 per cent on the previous year, equating to 22 avocados for every Australian, according to the bank’s analysis.
Australia has a population of about 27 million people (roughly the equivalent of Texas). By my math, that’s comes to almost 600 million avocados.
You don’t want 600 million avocados to all go mushy at once! But there’s another problem:
A bumper crop, mainly in Western Australia and Queensland in 2021-22, caused a national oversupply which led retail prices to plunge to a record low $1 each in June last year, and again in early July.
Retail prices this year are 47 per cent below the five-year average for the fruit, putting pressure on farmers already dealing with rising production costs and labour shortages, RaboResearch associate analyst Pia Piggott said in the report.
Avocado farmers grew too many avocados and, due to the inexorable law of supply and demand, avocado prices have plummeted. Great for avocado lovers! Not so great for farmers trying to make a go of it.
How did this happen? I blame the Spider God.
You may recall the Temple of the Spider God from a Thursday Things edition last April: Knife-wielding spider god mural unearthed in Peru
An ancient ceremonial building that was built thousands of years ago in northwestern Peru's La Libertad region was decorated with a painting of a spider deity clutching a knife. Archaeologists discovered the mural in November 2020, after local farmers damaged the temple structure during the expansion of their sugar cane and avocado plantations.
Avocado farmers in Peru damaged Spider God’s temple. Perhaps as punishment the Spider God cursed the avocado farmers of Australia with too many avocados. Does that make sense? Probably not to you or me. But we’re not spider gods. They don’t think like we do.
An alternate theory: “This was driven by a 21 per cent increase in the hectares of avocado trees in WA that reached maturity and produced fruit in this season, coupled with optimal growing conditions in the state.”
But I think it was the Peruvian Spider God.
Anyway, the avocado growers of Australia are asking, nay begging, their compatriots for help in their time of need.
The representative body for Australia’s avocado industry has urged people to stock up on the fruit, which is rich in healthy, good fats.
“Like all growers, avocado growers have also been experiencing high input costs from increases in the cost of fertiliser, fuel and labour shortages,” Avocados Australia CEO John Tyas said last month.
“Despite this, avocados are being sold at prices that are offering excellent value for shoppers at the moment.
“While households are feeling the pinch with inflation, we recommend that shoppers take advantage of the health-giving properties of avocados.”
Really, you’re helping yourself at the same time.1
Australian avocado producers are pleading with consumers to ease a rare oversupply burden by buying more of the much-loved fruit.
Speaking on Wednesday, Avocado Australia chief executive John Tyas said the current price of avocados – as low as one dollar per fruit at major retailers – would drive farmers out of business if the situation didn’t change.
But what can the individual Aussie avocado lover do to help?
Northern NSW avocado farmer Tom Silver said the industry’s rapid expansion over the past two years has resulted in approximately double the number of avocados in the country this year.
“When you go to the shops, don’t just buy a ripe one, buy a few hard ones for the next couple of days,” Mr Silver, an avocado grower in northern NSW, said on Wednesday.
It’s simple: EAT MORE AVOCADOS!
Sydney-based nutritionist Kristen Beck said the nutritional benefits of avocados remained “under recognised”.
“They have so many health benefits,” Ms Beck said.
She said “robust” scientific research demonstrated the benefits of avocados in aiding weight loss, maintaining a healthy weight and controlling your waist circumference.
Ms Beck said avocados are packed full of healthy fats which combat inflammation, and that it was a common myth the fruit could lead to weight gain.
“Eating avocados improves the absorption of healthy nutrients in other fruit and vegetables,” Ms Beck said.
Ms Beck said a healthy adult can easily eat as many as one avocado each day, so long as they were maintaining a healthy variety in their diet.
So remember: an avocado a day keeps the doctor away — and also helps the Australian avocado industry not collapse due to the wrath of the Spider God.
Paper, please. In non-avocado items, I read this essay last week and completely agree with its conclusions. Against Restaurant QR Codes.
During the Covid crisis, many restaurants — those that were even open, or allowed to stay open — replaced their printed menus with little QR codes that diners were expected to zap with their smartphones so as to be directed to a menu on a website or, in the worst cases, a static pdf image of a menu with tiny print that doesn’t scale up. You are then expected to pinch, zoom, and squint your way through the options to make your selection.
Why, other than pure sadism, did restaurants do this? Supposedly to protect us from Covid. Never mind that it’s an airborne virus and isn’t particularly transmitted by surface contact. This all started during the Disinfect All The Things! mania of early 2020. People were wiping down their mail, their pets, and everything else with hand sanitizer. Even their hand sanitizer dispensers, I assume. You remember.
So, okay, maybe in the early pandemic days when we didn’t know much about Covid, replacing menus with QR codes was at least arguably justifiable as a precaution. Why are restaurants still subjecting their customers to this nonsense now, in 2022?
What is driving the proliferation of the QR service system? Restaurateurs cite public-health concerns (though Covid doesn’t spread meaningfully on surfaces) and sustainability (though restaurant menus barely contribute to global waste). The genuine reason is labor costs, which have risen sharply following stimulus spending and the lifting of pandemic restrictions.
Ah, yes. To save money. But QR codes are the devil!
Ordering each course requires the diner to redirect his attention to the mobile device. The QR service system all but guarantees that the phone will remain at a patron’s fingertips throughout the meal.
This omnipresence makes the system pernicious. The deleterious effects of smartphones on our ability to focus on what matters are well-known. In 2018, University of Texas researchers found that the mere presence of a smartphone on our persons reduces our cognitive abilities, such as the capacity to sustain conversation.
Bad enough that we’re all tempted to keep our phones out and on the table during a meal.2 QR code menus force us to do so.
There are also digital privacy concerns, but read the article for that.
Also many restaurants have dim lighting. This, combined with tiny print and/or poorly laid out digital menus, makes it extremely annoying to survey the menu and figure out what I want.
I always make them bring me a real menu when I eat out. How about you?
Disco didn’t market itself! If you’re interested in history, music, marketing, or the history of music marketing, this little report from the Journal of Marketing October 1977 issue is interesting.
Disco. Birth of a New Marketing System
In the early 1970's, a new musical form, geared to a glittering social minority, began in the metropolitan East Coast. On the whole, reaction by the general public to this new music, a synthesis of jazz and soul, was hostile. They termed it vulgar, bland, and unnaturally loud-its supporters called it disco.
Most popular music in the 1970s was marketed through radio airplay. To create a hit and drive record sales, bands and record companies had to get DJs to play their songs on the air. But disco was very dance focused and the popularity of disco dance clubs made them an alternate path for creating hits. This eight-page case study describes how that happened.
Disco never dies. Photo by Dustin Tramel on Unsplash
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Eating avocado twice a week cuts risk of heart disease by a fifth, study finds:
Eating two or more servings of avocado a week can cut the risk of heart disease by a fifth, new research has found.
Researchers identified a link between consuming healthy fats and heart health, finding that those who ate avocado frequently slashed their risk of coronary heart disease by 21 per cent, compared with those who did not.
As reported in a previous edition of Thursday Things.
And never mind posting pictures of your dinner on Instagram like some kind of obsessed maniac.