Environmental impacts of my meal

 





For my most recent meal I had a Caesar salad with avocado. For this blog post I wanted to mainly focus on the environmental impacts of avocado since it is something I consume quite regularly. Prior to this post, I was aware that avocados have pretty amazing health benefits. After reading an article, I learned a few more things about just how beneficial avocados are to the human body. As the text mentions, avocados can improve digestion, lower bad cholesterol, and even decrease the risk of depression while also being extremely beneficial for your eyesight. So far these seem to be very great benefits to a largely consumed Item. Another fact that I learned is that avocados are grown in the US, though a large  majority of them are grown abroad in countries such as Mexico and Peru. 

 

Though the benefits of avocados are amazing, it seems as though they are slowly creating problems agriculture wise. Due to being in high demand, avocados have essentially become a monoculture crop and for a majority of these places this means because of its high demand, it is essentially being grown more than other crops. Even though this is a pretty big deal, it seems as though this is the least that we should worry about in terms of avocado production. Based on the information provided, it seems due to avocados high demand, it is essentially drawing all the nutrients from the soil, which is slowly degrading year after year. This basically means as time goes by soil used for avocado production is less fertile and not as viable in terms of growing new crops. 

 

It's quite shocking just how great the environmental impacts are in terms of growing avocado because aside from what I listed, avocado production can also encourage deforestation due to the fact that farmers need more land for them in order to keep up with its demand.

Researching this topic,  opened my eyes as to how deep the environmental impacts are regarding avocados. As we consume it so frequently we tend to look over just how much goes into keeping up with the rising demand of growing this crop and its potential dangers to our environment. Though avocados are great, I do not feel they're worth the potential of deforestation as well as the harm they may cause the growth of other crops.


Krosofsky, A. (2021, August 19). Lean, mean, but not so green: How avocados impact the environment. Green Matters. Retrieved November 25, 2022, from https://www.greenmatters.com/p/avocado-environmental-impact





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