#财经新势力新春季 #
To avoid exhaustion, drug dealers make sure they get about half the profits of avocado growers by making precise calculations to make sustainable leek cuts.
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On January 5, local time, Mexican drug traffickers made another big news, creating a large-scale riot in the city of Culica, resulting in the death of 7 military and police officers.
When people think of notorious Mexican drug dealers, drugs come to mind.
In fact, Mexican drug traffickers have a "business" that goes far beyond drugs, and they have long extended their black hands to agriculture.
Why has the little avocado become a sweet potato in the eyes of drug dealers?
Avocado is an emerging fruit in North America in recent years, which is considered to have the characteristics of high nutritional value and low calories (in fact, it is not, but due to the success of marketing, many people are misled), which is very in line with the concept of green and healthy life and is widely sought after.
Avocado, an emerging net red fruit in recent years
The global avocado market was 71.6 billion yuan in 2020 and is expected to exceed 90 billion yuan in 2026, with a very impressive growth rate.
The expansion of market demand stimulates the increase in planting scale and yield.
Avocado production increased from 5.061 million tonnes in 2014 to 7.7 million tonnes in 2020, an increase of more than 50% in just six years.
The scale of plantings increased from 536,000 hectares in 2014 to 772,000 hectares in 2020, an equally impressive increase.
World Avocado Planting Area and Production Source: Prospective Economist
Mexico is the number one avocado producer in the world, producing 2.3009 million tons of avocados in 2019, more than one-third of the world's avocado production that year.
World Avocado Production Ranking Source: Prospective Economist
Mexico accounts for an even larger share of the world's avocado trade, with world avocado exports of about 2.3 million tonnes in 2020, of which Mexico accounted for 1.3 million tonnes, more than half of them.
Avocados produced in Mexico are mainly sold to the United States, where more than 80% of the avocados come from Mexico.
In 2018, the Mexican state of Michoacán alone exported $3.5 billion worth of avocados to the United States.
A small avocado can bring great economic benefits.
The avocado industry made money, and it was targeted by drug dealers.
There are two main reasons why drug dealers target avocados:
One is that avocados do make money.
Second, drug dealers have not been doing well in recent years, and the future is not optimistic.
As we all know, the United States has been frantically legalizing drugs over the years.
It stands to reason that the legalization of drugs should be good for Mexican drug traffickers, because it means that more people will take drugs and the demand for drugs will be greater.
18 U.S. states and Washington, D.C., allow the legalization of marijuana for recreational purposes
But the opposite is likely to be true, and Mexican drug traffickers used to make a lot of money on the U.S. market largely because of the low production of drugs in the United States.
Mexico, relying on its geographical advantages, smuggles drugs produced in South America into the United States, and middlemen make a difference.
After the legalization of drugs in the United States, local production can be made, and imports will continue to decrease in the future, and the middleman business of Mexican drug dealers will be greatly affected.
As a result, drug dealers "cross the sea and show their talents" to find new business opportunities, and avocados, an industry that can obviously make money, are naturally impossible to let go.
In Mexico, the main production area of avocados is Michoacán, which is located on the eastern coast of the Pacific Ocean, with sufficient precipitation and sufficient sunlight, which is suitable for growing avocados.
Avocados in the orchard
The state is quite full of drugs, and drug dealers are very rampant.
Maria Santos Gorosita, former mayor of Tiquicchio, Michoacán, was killed by the drug trafficking gang "Michoacán Family" for his strong anti-drug efforts.
After the "victory", the "Michoacán family" was extremely arrogant and extended its hand to countless industries, including avocados.
The Michoacán family's main means is to collect conservation fees, which they will require avocado growers to pay at least twice a year, ranging from thousands to tens of thousands of pesos per hectare.
This protection fee is exquisite.
Too little is collected, drug dealers do not have a "sense of gain".
Harvesting too much can lead to bankruptcy of growers.
To avoid exhaustion, drug dealers make sure they get about half the profits of avocado growers by making precise calculations so that they can "cut leeks" sustainably.
In addition to collecting protection fees, robbery is also an important means of generating income, and the "Michoacán family" will rob vehicles transporting avocados on the highway, and then sell the goods themselves, which is simply an empty glove white wolf.
Today, in Michoacán, the robbery of avocado trucks occurs every day, with an average loss of 12 tons per day, which is obviously not a small amount.
After the "Michoacán family" made a fortune relying on avocados, other drug cartels also entered the avocado industry.
For example, a drug trafficking syndicate called the Knights Templar relies on avocados to make more than 1.32 billion yuan a year, while their main business, drug trafficking, makes less than 200 million yuan a year.
With drug dealers so rampant and the Mexican government doing little about it, are avocado growers left to their knees?
Of course not, it's ridiculous that you have worked hard for a year and have to share most of your profits with drug dealers.
Since the government does not act, it is only on its own.
Known as the "Avocado Capital of the World", the town exports more than $1 million worth of avocados every day and generates $1.5 billion a year for Mexico.
The town is also a "fat sheep" in the eyes of drug dealers, and growers suffer from it.
In 2013, because they could not bear the brutal exploitation of drug traffickers, farmers in the town of Tanci Tarot, one of the core areas of avocado cultivation, took the lead in organizing and forming a 5,000-strong militia to defend themselves.
Armed with the organization of avocado growers
By 2014, the farmers went a step further, collectively donated money and formed a professional force of 80 people, equipped with professional equipment, to maintain local security, the effect of this series of measures was immediate, and the protection fee to be paid was indeed less.
The barrel of the gun is hard, the waist rod is hard.
Drug dealers do not dare to easily provoke a large number of self-defense organizations, and seeing the name of self-defense organizations so popular, more and more people choose to join.
Instead of receiving protection money, drug dealers turned their focus on robbery.
In June 2019, the Mexican Avocado Export and Packaging Association publicly stated that robberies had intensified.
The bigger problem is that the formation of self-defence armed groups essentially opens the door to local warlordization.
If everywhere uses the threat of drug traffickers as an excuse to build its own armed forces, Mexico will be completely out of order.
Therefore, Mexican President López does not support this approach and is trying to incorporate self-defence forces.
But it didn't go well.
The reason is also simple: if drug dealers are not solved one day, farmers will not feel safe and cannot absolutely trust the government.
For growers, they don't know if they will be alive tomorrow, and who has the energy to worry about the future of the country?