Fresh Avocados are extremely rare. California Avocados are rare because they only grow in less than 1% of California. But most California Avocados are sold to processors and the end product that winds up at grocery stores is OLD avocados. The rarest of them all is Fresh, Organic, California Grown Avocados. These avocados are known as Green Gold as they are the Holy Grail of the avocado industry.
The shocking truth about the avocado industry is that most all the avocados consumers are buying are OLD Avocados. That's true whether it's California Avocados and especially true for imported avocados which could even be worse as imported avocados don't have the same regulations. Most avocados consumed in the United States are imported. In fact, most of America's fruit is imported. California grows over half the nation's fresh produce, but most California Avocados don't leave California because California is the largest consumer of avocados.
Old Avocados Are Cheap Avocados!
Since most avocado farmers sell their entire crops to processors, it's very easy for an avocado farmer to sell their whole crops in one or two harvests for the entire season. Many avocado farmers don't even harvest their own avocados, they let the third party processors, that are buying their whole crops, do it for them. It's an entirely different business when an avocado farmer sells direct to consumer. We have to ration out the avocado supply throughout the season with daily pickings and ship thousands of individual orders directly to consumers. It's a much more labor intensive process, but this is how it should be done because selling old avocados is a dirty business.
Customers want fresh avocados, they don't want to be misled and manipulated. The industry standard is to withhold information for the purpose of misleading consumers into thinking that the avocados they buy at the grocery store are farm fresh when they are not. The truth is that most organic avocados are chemically treated to preserve them. It's a lot more expensive for avocado farmers to sell directly to consumer, we have to have the infrastructure in place, the employees, and the scalability to ensure this model is sustainable on a massive scale. We need to sell hundreds of thousands of pounds of avocados direct to consumer in order to sustain this model or we're just playing in the sandbox.
The ONLY way to get Fresh Avocados in the United States is to buy directly from an avocado farmer in California, Florida, or Hawaii. Avocado Farmers have about two weeks after harvest to deliver Fresh Avocados directly to customers. Most of the companies selling avocados online are actually selling old avocados they bought wholesale from the processor. They are not selling fresh avocados, direct from the farm, that were picked within 2 weeks.
If you want Fresh Avocados, be sure to buy California Avocados when they are in-season because if you're eating avocados out of season, then you're eating old avocados.
The good news is we can change the industry for the better with your support. We can deliver Fresh, Organic, California Grown Avocados directly to you within days and you can support our small family farm working hard to deliver the best avocados in the world. We want you to have the freshest, healthiest, and most nutritious avocados. It's time consumers demand a higher standard, we call it the Green Gold Standard!
"There is a supply for every demand." ~ Florence Scovel Shinn