A Hectic Avocado Shortage In NZ Is Driving People To Steal Them En Masse

While you’re happily chowing down on your smashed avo with lemon and feta on toasted sourdough, you should spare a thought for your poor brothers and sisters from across the dutch.
New Zealand is currently in the throes of a fairly profound avocado shortage, after a poor local growing season last year drastically affected the number of fruit produced by this year’s yield.
The avo shortage that hit Australia over the summer continues to wreak havoc on the breakfast plates of our Kiwi friends, which is not only experiencing supply issues, but unheard-of increase in demand.
Some 96,000 extra households began purchasing avocados in 2015, and the local industry (which normally has focused on the much-more lucrative international export trade) is buckling under the strain.
The fruit over there is selling for as much as NZ$4$6, and people and businesses are starting to get desperate.
So desperate that they’re stealing the shit out of them.
An actual avocado crime wave has swept across the land of the long white cloud this year, with as many as 40 large-scale thefts from avocado orchards taking place this year. All the thefts have been from farms on the North Island of the country, reportedly seeing as much as 350 avocados nicked every time.
The thefts have been happening in the middle of the night, with trees either “raked” and the ill-gotten loot collected in blankets, or hand-picked and spirited away from the farms.
The thieves have then been transporting the fruit to roadside pop-up stalls, or delivering them to grocery stores and small cafes or sushi stores where they’re sold black market-style.
Sergeant Aaron Fraser of the Waihi police department stated that the avocados, ripped straight from the tree, are not totally risk-free.

“These stolen avocados can carry risks. They are unripe, some have been sprayed recently and they may still carry toxins on the skin. But with the prices so high at the moment, the potential for profit is a strong inducement for certain individuals.”


Avo farms in NZ have been getting wise to the thefts, and have been installing extra security measures such as sensor lights and alarm systems. It’s expected that the crisis will end imminently, when a bumper new crop of the fruit floods the market.

TO REITERATE:
People in NZ have been straight-up tonguin’ for an avo so badly that people have been running a crime all up on avocado farms and selling them off on the black market.
THE BLACK MARKET.
FOR FRUIT.
Holy shit, New Zealand is the best.
Source: The Guardian.
Photo: Tom Kelley/Getty.

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