Friday, February 22, 2008

Avocat

Lebanon is the second largest producer of avocados in the Arab World. A grand title for relatively little production: barely 5000 tons produced per year on 345 hectares (Morocco produces 16,500 tons). This year Lebanon exported 145 tons to Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. I like this, most of this product is consumed locally, and some of it is exported. Avocado is a very nutritious fruit. Problem is that the price is still very high (between 4,000 and 5,000 LBP or $2.6 to 3.3$-per kilo) making it a food for the richer classes. And increasing the production to export some more wouldn't harm anybody...

2 comments:

Leila Abu-Saba said...

Avocado is suited to Lebanon's coastal climate, is it not? And it's not *that* hard to grow either, but what do I know.

Seems to me that this would be a good fruit tree for people's yards, adding calories and nutrition as well as beauty. From the Wikipedia entry I see that (like lemons) you can leave the fruit on the tree for a long while, picking fruit as needed to ripen off the branch.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avocado

I love avocados, and I miss them this year - there was a freeze in Cali. in 2006, so most of our avocado crop failed. We only have Chilean avocados in the store that I can see, and I don't buy Chilean produce unless I am blessed to be visiting Chile.

Marcy Newman said...

so interesting that you posted this, rami. a student informed me last night that she was reading some zionist material that stated the avocado and grapefruit were introduced to the region by yehud. any insight into the history of this fruit in the levant?