FOOD SUPPLY SHOCK TOWER / CASE 01: AVOCADOS
I've worked in sourcing. I'm also a college student tired of grocery price jumps. Avocados are my first food supply shock case: could a buyer cover a disruption before I need to switch?
THE VISION Spot supply shocks and know when to switch foods. NEXT · PLANNED: potatoes · chicken · broccoli · apples · blueberries · lettuce
01 / AVOCADO SOURCING DECISION
2025 U.S. imports · protect continuity.
UNVERIFIED · Contingency volume2025 U.S. imports · peak —.
UNVERIFIED · Weekly size and free volume2025 U.S. imports · peak —.
UNVERIFIED · Contract and gradeU.S. receipt windows, not free supply · USDA ERS [2]
— Mexico share in Jan–Apr 2024. Peru peaks in summer; winter needs a separate contingency. [2]
02 / EVIDENCE
2024 reporter exports, not routes or spare capacity. The Netherlands may re-export. [3]
Already traded, not spare capacity · FAOSTAT [3]
Annual $/unit · HAB/Circana [12]
Import tonnes · USDA ERS [2]
Monthly import tonnes · USDA ERS [2]
Annual import $/kg · USDA ERS [2]
January shipping-point Hass cartons: $48.94 vs $23.05 a year earlier. Mexico's crop was forecast 8% lower; the inspection pause came February 12–18. [11]
Retail units rose 4% and annual ASP rose 12% to $1.19 per fruit. Large fruit was scarcer; a June inspection pause also occurred. Neither effect is isolated. [12–14]
Large-size share rose from 40% to 50% of Mexico's season-to-date U.S. shipments. Mid-March 2026 FOB was near $1/lb, about one-third of a year earlier. [8]
03 / SCENARIO
Change assumptions. Results are import-equivalent tonnes. Method ↗
Flex and buffer are assumptions, not verified capacity.
— of reference imports. Replace with retailer POS and contracts.
Loading monthly source baseline…
Gap as a share of baseline imports. Click to set extra flow and buffer.
Lost Mexico flow = observed monthly Mexico tonnes ÷ days in month × 7 × weeks × loss share; subtract assumed extra non-Mexico flow and one-time buffer, floored at zero. An eight-week run repeats the selected month's rate. This is a stress test, not a calendar or price forecast. [2]
04 / SOURCING RESPONSE
Protect Mexico. Confirm crossings, packhouses, and usable inventory. Observed concentration · retailer plan unverified
Buy seasonal options. Trial Peru and Colombia by week, size, grade, and pack. Observed timing · capacity unverified
Adjust promotions before stockouts. Tie decisions to confirmed receipts and DC inventory. Analyst recommendation · retailer data needed
Buyer execution needs POS and contracts. Grocery swaps need local prices and availability; neither is modeled here.
I want one place to see whether the foods I eat every week are becoming harder or more expensive to source—and whether a practical substitute is available before a shock reaches the shelf.
Avocados are the first sourcing case. Cross-food comparisons, local shelf feeds, and swap alerts are planned, not live features.
BEFORE COUNTING REPLACEMENT SUPPLY
Historic shipments prove a lane existed. These answers determine whether it can cover a specific retail order.
STATUS · UNVERIFIED COMMERCIAL INPUTS. None is inferred from national production or bilateral exports.
THE SYSTEM / EXPLORE
Annual production and trade · Monthly U.S. imports
2024 comparison year
Country shading represents production volume. Select a country to inspect it.
— of U.S. imports came from Mexico. Its supply was about — times the shipments from every other origin combined.
GLOBAL DESK / 2024 OBSERVED DATA
Production is where fruit was grown. Trade rows are exporter-reported bilateral sales, including possible re-exports. They are relationships between countries, not shipment routes or uncommitted supply. [1, 3]
FAOSTAT avocado production, 2015–2024. Hover or focus a year for its reported total.
Metric tonnes; all avocado varieties. [1]
Largest 2024 exporter-to-partner records in the FAOSTAT snapshot.
Reported partner flows, not physical routes; transit and re-export may be involved. [3]
Top destinations summed across exporter-reported partner rows, 2024.
These totals are not final consumption. The Netherlands, for example, also reports avocado exports. [3]
Output includes domestic use and fruit already committed to other markets. The largest growers are not necessarily the largest suppliers to the U.S.
FAOSTAT production, tonnes, 2024. Countries only; world total includes smaller producers.
Monthly shipments reveal where a supplier is already active. Historical timing is evidence of market presence, not a guarantee of spare capacity.
USDA ERS fresh-avocado import volume. Calendar months of selected year.
THE ANALYST'S READ / THREE TESTS
Each measure answers a different question. Keep the denominator and the year in view.
USDA ERS yearbook estimate. This is a share of domestic availability; the Mexico share above is a share of imports. [5]
Compare annual origin shares, 2017–2025. The 2024 scenario remains fixed to the latest common year with the FAOSTAT trade matrix. [2]
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U.S. imports by recorded origin and calendar month, 2024. Shares are observed; bars do not represent spare capacity. [2]
SUPPLIER OPTIONS / OBSERVED FLOWS
These are sourcing candidates, not a ranked capacity forecast. U.S. lane sizes come from 2025 imports; non-U.S. export volumes and destinations use 2024 reporter data. [2, 3]
Domestic shipments rise in spring and peak in summer, according to USDA ERS. They can complement summer imports, but are not part of this import-reallocation model. [8]
APHIS updated the systems-approach requirements for Hass avocados in 2025, including a joint operational workplan and pest controls. ERS records no U.S. import flow in this snapshot for 2024–25; this is a qualification prospect, not modeled replacement volume. [9]
Peak three-month windows are descriptive shares of each origin’s 2025 U.S. shipments. A destination such as the Netherlands is the reported trade partner, not necessarily the final consumer or physical route. The Dominican Republic’s U.S. supply is predominantly non-Hass, so product fit requires separate assessment. [8]
AT THE RETAIL EDGE / PRICE EVIDENCE
Retail prices sit downstream of import costs. These two USDA measures capture different parts of that market and use different units.
National grocery-store promotions · report loading
Advertised prices are promotional offers, not transaction-weighted checkout averages. [6]
USDA ERS estimate of the average price paid for fresh avocados in 2023, based on Circana retail scanner data. [7]
One is a weekly advertised price per fruit; the other is an annual transaction-based estimate per pound. The Atlas does not subtract them or feed either into its import-cost scenario.
RETAIL FORMAT / THE HIDDEN CAPACITY TEST
A sourcing plan must specify pack format and fruit size as well as origin. The Hass Avocado Board's Circana analysis shows why this matters. [10]
Circana multi-outlet scanner sales reported by HAB. Share is measured in individual avocado units, including fruit inside bags—not the number of bags. Calendar years 2019–2022; historical context, not a 2026 market-share estimate. [10]
Bagged fruit's share rose from 19.0% in 2019 to 28.4% in 2022. Small 4- and 5-count bags generated 54% of bagged avocado dollar sales in 2022. [10]
Ask prospective suppliers for packhouse throughput by bag count and fruit size, packaging materials, ripening specifications, and delivered cost by SKU. Tonnes alone cannot confirm a retail-ready replacement.
04 / DISRUPTION TEST
Start with the volume the U.S. imported from Mexico in 2024. Then ask how much of other suppliers’ exports to non-U.S. markets might be redirected. This is a one-year allocation thought experiment, not a forecast.
Assumption, not observed free capacity. Only origins with observed 2024 U.S. imports are included. Try 100% to test the conditional ceiling.
Applied to the 2024 U.S. average import unit value. It is not a retail-price or market-clearing forecast.
Conditional import-equivalent gap under selected assumptions. This is not a forecast of U.S. shortage.
Conditional replacement gap within the current U.S. supplier set. Existing buyers would lose every redirected tonne.
For the redirected volume only; excludes price changes on existing imports and domestic supply.
RISK REGISTER / EVIDENCE TO ACTION
Risk signals are observed. The responses are analyst recommendations to validate with suppliers, buyers, and import authorities.
Mexico supplied 83.4% of 2025 import volume. In 2024, 86% of fresh avocado imports entered through the Laredo customs district. These are separate measures, both pointing to concentrated exposure. [2, 4]
Map alternate entry arrangements and test continuity plans with existing Mexican partners before a disruption.
Mexico supplied 95.2% of U.S. imports in January–April 2024. Peru’s 2025 U.S. shipments peaked in June–August. A large annual export pool cannot automatically cover a winter shortfall. [2, 8]
Contract and test supply by month, size, and grade; measure the gap for the exact weeks that matter.
Peru and Colombia sell substantial volume outside the U.S.; USDA ERS reports that more than half of their fresh exports go to the EU. The 2024 FAOSTAT diversion pool is a stress-test ceiling, not free stock. [3, 8]
Verify contracts, packhouse throughput, and the economics of shifting fruit from existing customers.
USDA reports that most non-Hass U.S. imports come from the Dominican Republic. APHIS requirements also depend on origin and product; Guatemala’s Hass pathway has specific pest-control conditions. [8, 9]
Check cultivar, size, ripeness program, phytosanitary status, and current ACIR conditions before qualifying an origin.
FIVE-MINUTE BRIEFING
Production is widespread, but U.S. imports are concentrated in one origin.
METHOD & LIMITS
Observed: FAOSTAT annual production and bilateral exports; USDA ERS monthly U.S. fresh-avocado imports. All physical quantities are normalized to metric tonnes. USDA values are customs import values, not shelf prices.
Short-horizon tabletop: February or July 2025 USDA ERS monthly import tonnes are converted to a weekly rate by dividing by days in the month and multiplying by seven. Lost Mexican flow is reduced by an assumed uplift on observed non-Mexican imports and a one-time buffer measured as days of normal Mexican flow. The selected month is repeated for the chosen weeks; alternatives and buffer are hypothetical, not available capacity or verified store inventory.
Annual tail test: The separate Mexico-zero scenario holds 2024 U.S. import requirements fixed and reallocates a chosen fraction of other suppliers’ reported exports to non-U.S. markets. It assumes no first-year production growth, substitution, inventory drawdown, or logistics expansion.
Important limit: FAOSTAT “Avocados” is not a variety-specific match to USDA’s fresh-avocado series. Export and import reporters differ in timing and coverage. Annual exports do not establish monthly availability, quality, route, contractual freedom, or U.S. approval. The premium control illustrates arithmetic; historical data here cannot identify a causal price response.
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SOURCE LEDGER
Item 572, Avocados; element Production; 2024 and historical annual observations.
Fresh avocados, monthly country-of-origin volume and value, 2017–2025. Download updated September 15, 2026.
Item 572, reporter exports by partner, 2024. Bilateral trade relationships, not physical shipment routes.
Reports 2024 entry through Laredo, Philadelphia and Miami customs districts. Districts are not exact ports or shipment trajectories.
Fresh avocado import share of U.S. domestic availability, calendar 2024; updated February 10, 2026. This is a USDA balance-sheet estimate.
National conventional Hass, each; September 25, 2026 report. Major grocery retailer promotions, not a checkout price.
Fresh avocado average retail price per pound, 2023 Circana scanner-data estimate.
2025 import record, origin mix, seasonality, California and competing export markets; report dated March 26, 2026.
April 2025 update to pest-control and operational-workplan requirements. Check current ACIR conditions before procurement.
Circana multi-outlet retail sales, 2019–2022. Bagged share uses individual fruit units, including avocados sold inside bags; 2022 pack-size mix uses dollar sales. Historic format evidence, not a current-year estimate.
Mexico crop outlook, January import change, shipping-point carton prices, and February 12–18 inspection suspension. Shipping-point prices are not retail checkout prices.
Circana multi-outlet annual avocado category average selling price per unit, 2022–2024; this is sales dollars divided by fruit units.
Industry account of 2024 smaller fruit mix and large-size retail unit declines. Contextual evidence, not an identified cause of retail price change.
Documents a brief June 2024 inspection suspension for avocado and mango shipments from Michoacán due to inspector safety concerns. It does not estimate the avocado retail-price effect.
Boundaries: Natural Earth public-domain 1:110m countries. Data accessed September 26, 2026.