How would an organic production system compared to a conventional production system of avocados in Mexican cultivation regions impact the sustainability of the industry in the next ten years?

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Supervisors: Desmet, Carlos
Faculty: Louvain School of Management
Degree label: Master [120] : ingénieur de gestion, à finalité spécialisée
Abstract: As attractive as the avocado fruit is on the market, there are many environmental concerns regarding its mass-production in Latin American countries and more particularly in Mexico, which is the biggest avocado producer in the world and still uses conventional cultivation systems instead of sustainable or organic ones. The thesis provides a quantitative simulation of organic and conventional production practises for the next ten years in Mexican regions. Different scenarios with different circumstances have been tested, including tax, soil degradation and unsatisfied demand, as well as a combination of these. The simulations show as results that the most sustainable tested outcome is that when the soil degradation is high enough in the conventional production systems that it pushes farmers to produce in an organic way. In addition if the demand doesn’t need to be fully covered there are no deforestations, the produced quantities are much lower and provide within the highest profits of the tested scenarios.