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SANTA ANA ZIROSTO, Mexico (AP) — It’s a lengthy and generally harmful journey for avocados destined for guacamole on tables and tailgates in america in the course of the Tremendous Bowl.

It begins in villages like Santa Ana Zirosto, excessive within the misty, pine-clad mountains of the western Mexico state of Michoacan. The roads are so harmful — beset by drug cartels, frequent criminals, and extortion and kidnap gangs — that state police present escorts for the vans courageous sufficient to face the 40-mile (60-kilometer) journey to packing and delivery crops within the metropolis of Uruapan.

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Truck driver Jesus Quintero begins early within the morning, gathering crates of avocados picked the day earlier than in orchards round Santa Ana, earlier than he takes them to a weighing station. Then he joins up with different vans ready for a convoy of blue-and-white state police vans — they lately modified their title to Civil Guard — to start out out for Uruapan.

“It’s extra peaceable now with the patrol vans accompanying us, as a result of it is a very harmful space,” Quintero mentioned whereas ready for the convoy to drag out.

With a whole bunch of 22-pound (10-kilogram) crates of the darkish inexperienced fruit aboard his 10-ton truck, Quintero’s load represents a small fortune in these elements. Avocados promote for as a lot as $2.50 apiece in america, so a single crate holding 40 is price $100, whereas a median truck load is price as a lot as $80,000 to $100,000.

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Mexico provides about 92% of U.S. avocado imports, sending north over $3 billion price of the fruit yearly.

However it’s typically not simply the load that’s stolen.

“They’d take away our vans and the fruit, generally they’d take the truck as properly,” Quintero mentioned. “They’d steal two or three vans per day on this space.”

It occurred to him years in the past. “We have been coming down a dust street and two younger guys got here out they usually took our truck and tied us up.”

Such thefts “have gone down quite a bit” because the police escorts began, Quintero mentioned. “They’ve stolen one or two, one each week, however it’s not day by day prefer it was once.”

State police officer Jorge Gonzalez mentioned the convoys escort about 40 vans a day, guaranteeing that round 300 tons of avocados attain the packing crops every day.

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“These operations have managed to chop the (theft) price by about 90 to 95 p.c,” Gonzalez mentioned. “We accompany them to the packing home, to allow them to enter with their vans with no downside.”

Grower Jose Evaristo Valencia is comfortable he doesn’t have to fret if his fastidiously tended avocados will make it to the packing home. Packers rely on preparations they’ve made with native orchards to fill promised shipments, and misplaced avocados can imply misplaced clients.

“The primary folks affected are the producers,” Valencia mentioned. “Individuals have been dropping three or 4 vans on daily basis. There have been a number of robberies between the orchard and the packing home.”

The police escorts “have helped us quite a bit,” he mentioned.

As soon as the avocados attain Uruapan or the neighboring metropolis of Tancitaro — the self-proclaimed avocado capital of the world that greets guests with a large cement avocado — the trail to the north is considerably safer.

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The cargo north of avocados for Tremendous Bowl season jhas turn out to be an annual occasion, this 12 months celebrated in Uruapan. It’s a welcome diversion from the drumbeat of crimes within the metropolis, which is being fought over by the Viagras and Jalisco cartels.

On Jan. 17, Michoacan Gov. Alfredo Ramirez Bedolla “kicked off” the primary Tremendous Bowl avocado shipments, actually, kicking a soccer via tiny goalposts on an imitation soccer subject.

Behind him, an enormous tractor trailer bore an enormous signal studying “Let’s Go! Tremendous Bowl 2023.”

It was an try by Michoacan growers to place behind them final 12 months’s debacle, when the U.S. authorities suspended inspections of the fruit in February, proper earlier than the 2022 Tremendous Bowl.

The inspections have been halted for about 10 days after a U.S. inspector was threatened in Michoacan, the place growers are routinely topic to extortion by drug cartels. Some Michoacan packers have been reportedly shopping for avocados from different, non-certified states and attempting to cross them off as being from Michoacan and have been offended the U.S. inspector wouldn’t go together with that.

U.S. agricultural inspectors need to certify that Mexican avocados don’t carry ailments or pests that will hurt U.S. orchards. The Mexican harvest is January via March, whereas avocado manufacturing within the U.S. runs from April to September.

Exports resumed after Mexico and america agreed to enact “measures that guarantee the protection” of the inspectors.

“This season we’re going to recuperate the arrogance of the producers, growers and shoppers. By rising the export manufacturing, we hope to ship 130,000 tons this season,” the governor mentioned.