For this weeks assignment I decided to watch and review and episode from the Netflix docu-series Rotten. This series focuses on the food industry and all the problems created in the process of supplying these foods. Each episode tackles a different industry of food, I decided on watching the episode that immediately stood out to me upon opening the list, The Avocado War. When I saw this title I knew I had to choose it to be the documentary I was going to review because avocados are such a part of the mainstream culture as well as my own diet. The documentary sets out to show the effects of the industry by first laying out the history of avocados and their rise in popularity towards the end of the twentieth-century. After this I believe this episode could be divided into two main points, the fight over business and the fight over water. Rotten first started to grab my attention when the episode went from talking to a farmer in southern California to Michoacán, Mexico, the highest avocado producing state in all of Mexico. This part of the show did a good job telling the plight of the locals in the avocado industry through interviews with local farmers and activists. They talked about how after the collapse of the cartel drug trade in Mexico many cartels moved on to controlling the next most profitable export, Mexican avocados still are a very profitable item in the North American trade market since unlike southern California they can be produced year round. This has led to a cut throat business mentality in this industry of Mexico, with farmers or their families being kidnapped and held for ransom, in the form of money or avocado crops.
After showing how American demand for avocados year round has led to the creation of avocado cartels, the Rotten filmmakers head to the Petorca Province in Chile. The Petorca Province is the highest avocado producing area in Chile, despite the avocado not being native to the country it grows well on the areas high up hillsides. However, the documentary starts to show that although the terrain may be ideal the country lacks one vital element necessary, water. The show soon makes the viewer aware that Chile is also distinct from other countries in that in their country water is not a basic right that people have but instead must be obtained through permits. This has led to the majority of the water in Petorca being controlled by the areas elite and avocado farms, which takes the water from the remaining wells up into the hills to water the orchards. The episode features an interview with one farmer who only holds a small piece of what is now a dirt farm on the drought ridden valley floor, he very sadly admits defeat at the hands of the big farms who took all the water from the two nearby rivers and drove is farm into ruin. Rotten also makes a point of how even drinking water is something that locals have almost no access to and how it is most certainly linked to the avocado farms and the demand they get from North America.
I think that Rotten does a good job at showing the effects of the avocado industry in California, Mexico, and Chile. What I think they really do well is show all the different ways in which this little known social issue affects so many things such as the environment, the consumers, the local populations, the farmers, and the business owners. In this one episode each of these different groups were represented and given their chance to speak about their struggles and how they had personally been affected by this fruit. Although at times the episode had its clear moments of bias it was still able to broadly cover multiple subjects and their roles within the industry as well as their individual perspectives. As for the impact of the episode I feel that it does a very good job at creating talk around a topic that is often forgotten or not even considered and showing some otherwise uncommon thoughts about the way we should regulate the avocado trade much like the coffee trade. However, beyond that the episode really only serves as an informative introduction to a very deep and complicated issue.
Sources
Prod.Zero Point Zero. “Rotten.” Season 2, episode 1, Netflix, 2019.
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