Security concerns for agency workers have led the United States Agriculture Department to suspend its inspections of avocados and mangos imported from Mexico “until further notice,” the U.S.D.A. said on Monday.

Produce already cleared for export will not be affected by the decision, but avocado supplies in the United States, which mostly come from the Mexican state of Michoacán, could eventually be affected if the inspections are not resumed.

The inspections “will remain paused until the security situation is reviewed and protocols and safeguards are in place,” a U.S.D.A. spokesman said in an email.

The agency did not say what had prompted the security concerns. But Mexican news outlets recently reported that two U.S.D.A. inspectors had been illegally detained at a checkpoint run by community members. In Michoacán, which stretches from the mountains west of Mexico City to the Pacific Ocean, some Indigenous communities have set up security patrols to defend themselves against criminal groups.

Based on the report, it sounds like the people who took the inspectors hostage were local residents who set up roadblocks to defend themselves from Mexico's monstrous cartels, and by some kind of mistake, or possibly a political statement to the Mexican state which isn't protecting them, they took the U.S. inspectors hostage, likely at gunpoint.

That triggered the reasonable response we see from the U.S., which is that the avocados don't get inspected if locals (for whatever reason, good or bad) are taking the inspectors hostage.

What it highlights is that the cartel situation is getting very bad and there's little hope for improvement so long as the socialist government is in power. The policy from that quarter is "hugs, not bullets" and the results speak for themselves. The Mexicans may do enough about this to please Joe Biden, given that it's a $2.8 billion industry for them that's getting halted, but this isn't the first time it's happened and based on what's seen, it's unlikely that the Mexicans will get to the root of the problem.

Based on the profits generated from Joe Biden's open border as well as Mexican complicity in keeping it open, cartels have gotten very rich, and as a result, are seeping into every aspect of Mexican business, the same Mexican business that supplies our groceries, oil rigging equipement, consumer tech, and other important things.

Avocados, like fish, are so delicate they spoil easily if they are not brought to market quickly, so it's not unusual for mafias (or cartels) to be attracted to such markets, shaking down farmers after all their hard work for their hard-earned profits, while the government is doing little to protect them.

Insight Crime reports that there are other aspects of this that make it even worse:

While organized crime groups extort legal producers at each step of the value chain, they also help expand the avocado industry by displacing and killing people on protected lands, razing protected forests, and “cleaning” large areas to be occupied by avocado ranches.

In 2022, avocados were Mexico’s second most valuable crop, after corn. The industry, now valued at $3 billion per year, is essential to Mexico’s economy.

Which is cruel stuff if you're one of the displaced people, the indigenous Indians, who are always getting kicked around in Mexico by the elites, and doesn't speak well for some of the farming landowners, either. That would explain the road block, which isn't explored much in the Times report.

An NGO called March On Foundation explains the problem this way:

The lucrative nature of avocado farming drew the attention of organised crime in Mexico as a means to supplement their income. Cartels and gangs have ventured into the extortion of avocado farmers. While gangs operate locally, cartels are bigger and operate internationally.

An estimated $188 million was extorted by organised crime groups from avocado farmers in 2009 alone. These organized crime groups require farmers to pay a percentage for every kilo of avocado produced and these quotas are enforced through tactics of intimidation and violence, such as kidnapping, sexual violence, and murder. Sometimes the lands of these farmers are seized all together. 

This situation has led some towns in the Michoacán state to take up arms to protect themselves (famous among them is the avocado police in Tancitaro, made up of civilians who ward off cartels and criminal gangs). The extortion and intimidation of avocado farmers and producers in Michoacán have resulted in conditions where human rights are abused for the avocados to be consumed, hence being categorised as a conflict commodity and informally referred to as “blood avocados”.

And for us in the states, it demonstrates a couple of things:

One, that Joe Biden can shut down anything problematic coming from Mexico any time he likes.

He shut down the border over the U.S. inspectors being taken hostage, so why hasn't he shut down the border over the string of murders being committed by some the hemisphere's worst gangs now entering the U.S. through Mexico with impunity?

When President Trump threatened to shut down the U.S. border, that got the Mexicans' attention, as well as its cooperation. That Biden hasn't shut down the border, which is the root source of the cartel's money stream, enables them to harass the poor Mexican farmers and Indians, and that's another big blot on his record. This avocado stuff wouldn't be going on were it not for the irresponsibility of Biden's government as well as the Mexican government.

Two, it's getting bad in Mexico as the cartel wealth swells and they branch out into many, many businesses, the avocado trade being pretty easy as well as lucrative. If conflict cannot be stomped out by either the government or the farmers and indigenous people defending themselves, many will flee north as refugees, and they will be real ones, not the characters rolling in through multiple borders and shopping for the country with the best package deal; they'll be people fleeing persecution to their first country of refuge. And that's already happening.

That will add a whole new layer to the migrant crisis if God forbid, Joe Biden is reelected president, and it will be multiplied as Mexican towns and farms empty out and illegals from Central America are brought in to work those farms until they can't take it any more and flee north, too.

What a terrible picture this is.

For now, it's a new round of Bidenflation, avocados getting scarce within a few days or weeks and the prices rising sharply.

Sound like a desireable thing? Like we have the money to pay for this, too? No, but it does sound like a Biden thing. Everything he touches turns to you-know-what.

Image: Pixabay / Pixabay License