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If you are on this blog, it is because you love avocado: this green and yellow fruit “ that drives the world crazy '(to paraphrase an advertisement from some time ago) is definitely a phenomenon of costume.Yes, because customs and fashions, nowadays, have a great importance also in the kitchen: since chefs are famous as footballers and restaurants, in order to win yet another Michelin star, would be able to sell their soul to the Devil.So it happens that a fruit, or rather a drupe, able to wrap with its creaminess, to give a sensation of freshness to the palates accustomed to the spiciness of chilli and the acidity of lime or lemon, you find yourself being the protagonist of an international dispute that sees ecologists on the one hand and multinationals on the other: as if to say David against Goliath.
But Davide has weapons that, even if not excessively large, make themselves felt and manage to move public opinion, demonizing the poor fruit.
In Latin America, especially Chile and Peru, the avocado is the real green gold that brings huge earnings into the pockets of a few unscrupulous landowners.
All this without any regard for either the populations or nature: the first taken with the drought induced by the theft of water from the canals operated by the entrepreneurs to allow the growth of the fruit in a permeable and skeleton-free soil; the second tortured by wild deforestation carried out to make way for intensively cultivated avocado plants.
All this is fomented by the exponential growth of consumption, in industrialized countries, of this “pera green ” that knows no respite.
Among other things, the avocado grows only in a few soils, it is very sensitive to cold and wind, it is equally sensitive to salinity and to the calcium content in the water, so the production takes place only in a few places in the world.
To satisfy the hunger of Europeans for guacamole, Spain is thinking above all, followed at a great distance by Italy.
Surely in Italy the most voted regions are the southern ones: among these in fact the lion's share is in eastern Sicily, followed by Ionian Calabria and Salento.
But then also the southerners are bad because they cultivate the "green monster"?
I must clarify that the cultivation in Italy takes place with different methods than those used in South America, using the same amount of water normally required for the growth of citrus fruits, planting with very large spans that give breath to the plant, using exclusively organic fertilizers, using vegetable mulch to retain moisture in the soil without favoring water stagnation, the real enemy of avocado roots.
Finally, I must proudly point out that the taste of Italian avocado, and especially Calabrian (since I am biased), is certainly better than foreign one, the supply chain is very short and transport does not require the use of ships equipped with refrigeration vehicles to keep the freshly picked avocaco intact, rather than its flavor!
