China still relies on avocado imports despite expanding local planted area

Avocado, a precious tropical fruit, has extremely high nutritional and health value and is widely used in foods, medicine, health care products, and daily chemical products. In recent years, with the increase of the consumption power of Chinese consumers and the awareness of this fruit, the demand has gradually increased, which has further driven the expansion of the planted area.

Globally, this fruit is mainly cultivated in the Americas, Africa, and Asia, with the Americas being the world’s largest avocado producing region, accounting for more than 65.6% of global production, followed by Africa, accounting for 13.6%.

In China, due to the constraints of the growing environment, the planted areas are mainly located in Guangdong, Hainan, Fujian, Taiwan, and Yunnan. In recent years, with the improvement of Chinese consumers’ consumption power, the market demand for avocados has continued to grow, which has driven the local planted area to expand. In 2020, China’s planted area was close to 25,000 hectares, showing a year-on-year increase of 5.4%.

Although the planted area in China has been expanding, the market still relies on imports due to low local production that is unable to meet the huge demand. China has maintained a trade deficit in recent years in terms of avocado trade. Affected by factors such as the Covid-19 pandemic and China-US trade war, the country’s avocado imports declined in 2020, falling to 27,000 tons. Peru, Chile, and Mexico are the main producers of China’s avocado imports, with Peru being the top exporter in terms of volume.

Source: Xinsijie

Source: Fresh Plaza

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