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Annette’s house used to be surrounded by cork trees, carobs and abandoned vine yards until 2017. In a matter of a few months, the landscape around her has turned into rows of little trees sprouting from harsh red soil. Today, after four years, the avocado plants are three to four meter high and almost ready for their first harvest of the trendy fruit, that is as healthy as photogenic on Instagram’s newsfeed.
The rural area around Lagos, in the Portuguese Southeast region of Algarve, was historically cultivated with citrous fruits like oranges and lemons, almonds and vines, plants that grow well in the very dry environment that characterised the region. In the last few years though, the increasing demand for avocados brought many companies to invest in the tropical fruit, moving away from traditional products. Few kilometres away from Annette’s house, a local company, Frutineves planted about 120 hectares of avocados in 2019, and this time Annette and other residents decided to take action.
The company started preparing the soil for the new avocado plantations, and many residents living nearby witnessed an unconsidered disfigurement of the native landscape and vegetation. Annette and other residents also realised that the water level in their private wells was much lower during the dry summer seasons compared to previous years.
The correlation between lower wells level and avocados wasn’t clear, as the area is one of Europe’s forefront of drying land. Here, seasonal droughts are, in …
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