CALIFORNIAN AVOCADOS WILL BE IN SHORT SUPPLY FOR 2009

The avocado crop from California in 2009 is expected to produce about 210 million pounds of avocados, a fall of around 30% on the 2008 crop and about half of what farmers had hoped for. Hot and dry weather hit this years crop just at the wrong time, which damaged the fruit that was just beginning to mature on the trees.

 

California, which produced 330 million pounds of avocados last year, is by far the largest producer of avocados in the United States, supplying 85 percent to 90 percent of what is grown domestically.

 

The state is also responsible for much of the supply and development of the premium Hass variety of avocado. Although archeologists have found evidence that avocados were cultivated in Mexico as early as 500 B.C., the coveted Hass is traced to a single tree in the backyard of Rudolph Hass in La Habra, California, in the 1920s. That tree is the genetic origin of every Hass avocado in the world.