A popular café in the UK is leading the charge against trendy avocado breakfasts – pulling the fleshy fruit from its menu over environmental and sustainability concerns.

The Wild Strawberry Café in Buckinghamshire said it was "plain wrong" to continue serving the popular fruit, which has to be flown thousands of miles across the globe before landing on our plates.

In a post on Instagram, the café also said the demand for the fashionable "superfood" was driving criminal cartels in Mexico.

The café, which reportedly serves up 1,000 avocados a week, said it "thought long and hard" before taking the decision - but said it wanted to keep its focus on locally sourced ingredients while addressing the issue of food miles and sustainability.

 

 

 

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Dear customers, we have some news for you. As of today, we will no longer be serving avocado in the yurt. This.is.not.a.joke. 🥑 Controversial? Absolutely...We’re as acquainted as the next person to our weekly intake of smashed avocado toast but this is something we have thought long and hard about. Let us explain... 🥑🥑 1. Seasonality. Locally sourced ingredients have been woven into our identity from day one. Whether it’s our home grown courgettes, apples or pumpkins, our menu flexes with the seasons as we let the produce of the Chilterns and surrounding areas inspire and inform our recipes. All our meat is sourced within 25 miles, we use local yoghurt, eggs, Chiltern rapeseed oil, to name but a few. There will always be exceptions, we do not claim never to use a pinch of an Indian spice, a drizzle of Italian olive oil, or a crumble of Greek feta. These are all beautiful things and arguably there is not a local alternative, nor would we want one. Our cooking is inspired by many of the cuisines of the world and it would be contrite to think it should be any other way. However, the sheer quantity in which avos were being consumed was making us feel uneasy as they were so at odds with our local ethos. We believe in this and want to truly practise what we preach. 🥑🥑🥑 2. Food miles. it doesn’t take a genius to work out that food tastes better when it hasn’t been flown 5000 miles. But more importantly, at a time when climate change concerns have never been more real, transporting ingredients in fuel guzzling planes from Central and South America, Africa and beyond just to satisfy our whim for the latest food trend, when we have a plentiful supply of perfectly delicious, nutritious food on our doorstep is just plain wrong. 🥑🥑🥑🥑 3. Sustainability. The Western world’s obsession with avocado has been placing unprecedented demand on avocado farmers, pushing up prices to the point where there are even reports of Mexican drug cartels controlling lucrative exports. Forests are being thinned out to make way for avocado plantations. Intensive farming on this scale contributes to greenhouse emmisions by its very nature & places pressure on local water supplies.

A post shared by Wild Strawberry Cafe (@wildstrawb_cafe) on Nov 26, 2018 at 10:15pm PST

“At a time when climate change concerns have never been more real, transporting ingredients in fuel guzzling planes from Central and South America, Africa and beyond just to satisfy our whim for the latest food trend, when we have a plentiful supply of perfectly delicious, nutritious food on our doorstep, is just plain wrong,” the post reads.

“The western world's obsession with avocado has been placing unprecedented demand on avocado farmers, pushing up prices to the point where there are even reports of Mexican drug cartels controlling lucrative exports.

“Forests are being thinned out to make way for avocado plantations. Intensive farming on this scale contributes to greenhouse emissions by its very nature and places pressure on local water supplies.”

It comes after a 2016 warning from Greenpeace Mexico, which said the "high use of agricultural chemicals and the large volumes of wood needed to pack and ship avocados" was likely to harm the environment and local populations.

A 2012 report by Mexico’s National Institute for Forestry, Farming and Fisheries Research found that avocado production in Michoacan tripled and exports rose tenfold between 2001 and 2010.

The research suggested the surge in demand caused a loss of forest land of about 690 hectares (1,700 acres) a year between 2000 and 2010.