Avocado farming in Lebanon has expanded from small-scale household and local-market production to widespread cultivation driven by rising demand. Zaita, South Lebanon, 2025. Photo courtesy of Cynthia Ghoussoub.
Few foods spark as much passion as the avocado.
While it has become a staple item on many menus in brunch restaurants and an undeniable asset in Lebanon’s famous dessert cocktails, it has been the subject of many environmental, social, and even economic controversies.
Away from its creamy texture and unique flavors, avocados have taken the world— Lebanon included—by storm. Only ten years ago, they were barely the topic of conversation in grocery stores, farmer circles, or even agricultural development mediums. Today, the avocado hype has dominated the agricultural and food scene.
This article seeks to explore the avocado’s rise to fame within the Lebanese context, exploring the development sector’s interventions in propping the fruit while also delving into the avocado’s role in the present and future of farming in Lebanon.
Rows of avocado trees line cultivated hills in the South, where more farmland is now devoted to the crop. Zaita, South Lebanon, 2025. Photo courtesy of Cynthia Ghoussoub.
The life changer
Hussein, a large-scale avocado producer, and I had just reached the top of a hill overlooking his lands in Akkar, one day in the spring of 2023. The sea on the horizon had turned red as the sun set.
“Hi, my babies,” Hussein enthusiastically greeted the avocado trees below us. Some are almost two years old, and some were just recently planted, having made their journey from a nursery in South Lebanon.
“See that land over there?” Hussein said as he pointed towards the other side of the valley. “I just acquired it.” He smiled, proudly commenting on his most recent rental deal. “But that’s the last one, and then khalas.”
“For real this time?” I asked, raising my eyebrows.
“Well, we will see,” he laughed.
Farmer Mohamad Hijazi walks through the avocado orchard he manages for export. Zaita, South Lebanon, 2025. Photo courtesy of Cynthia Ghoussoub.
Hussein often stresses that the avocado completely changed his life. Like many other leading avocado producers in the country, he swapped his citrus trees for the (relatively) newly arrived fruit.
He has no intention of selling his produce inside the country; all of the avocadoes he produces mainly go to the Gulf. His avocado export is also increasing to European countries, as he obtains the costly and necessary certificates to sell his produce there. His prior capital— combined with resources from development projects implemented in Lebanon— also enabled him to secure all the technical equipment, without which avocado production isn’t possible.
As we made our way back to the car, parked by the excavator—which was rented to prepare the newly acquired land, Hussein waved again. But this time, he didn’t greet his trees: he was greeting laborers who were setting up the fifth and final solar panel station, which would be used to pump water to irrigate the avocado crops.
Acquiring and maintaining an avocado orchard is no simple task, given the high costs of essential equipment and advanced technology. However, in current debates, particularly within the development sector, the avocado is often portrayed as a crop that can transform not only Hussein’s life but also significantly improve economic conditions, encouraging farmers and persons of interest to invest in the upkeep of an avocado orchard. This is not only due to the fact that the avocado is, without question, the reigning cash crop in the market, but also because of the symbolic status it has grown to hold in global societies.
Grown mainly for export, Hass avocados are valued for their long shelf life and market demand. Zaita, South Lebanon, 2025. Photo courtesy of Cynthia Ghoussoub.
The queen of fruits taking her throne
I vividly remember the first time I tasted an avocado. I was fifteen and visiting my friend in a northern Czech mountain village. Her older sister, whom I looked up to, had just returned from a trip to Japan, bringing a new dining habit with her. She sliced up a green food item I had never seen before, passed the plate over, and invited me to try. I thought it tasted absolutely disgusting. However, there was no way of admitting it and still looking as cool as I deeply desired. So, I put another piece of that mushy mass in my mouth, having no idea that over a decade later, avocados would become the main subject of my ethnographic research— eventually bringing me to Lebanon— and a star item of pop culture.
The whole avocado “coolness” didn’t emerge from thin air. It’s a product of careful marketing and perfect timing, seamlessly aligning with the cultural moment it arrived in. In what feels like no time at all, the avocado became the reigning cash crop globally. The story of its rise to popularity began in California in the first half of the past century, following Californian commercial cultivators’ decision to become a competitor for Southern and Central American producers. Californian growers and the California Advocacy Society initially promoted the green fruit as a luxury item, after avocados were advertised as the “aristocrats of salad fruits” in the popular American magazines, The New Yorker and Vogue.
Nonetheless, it found a larger consumer base when falling from the hierarchical ladder towards a cosmopolitan middle class. As the avocado became the topic of many trendy articles, the California Avocado Commission sought to further protect the public image of the avocado, and started by requiring every avocado farmer to contribute a percentage of their income for the industry to continue shaping the avocado as a miracle food boosting one’s health. The masses in California began consuming them even more rapidly, until the craze reached all individuals across the United States. Similarly, the avocado hype train reached Lebanon and found its own ways into local cuisine. Nevertheless, most avocado eating habits were highly influenced by the Californian blueprint as it is tightly connected to its consumer´s socio-economic status.
For instance, my anthropologist friend and I carried out what we call the “avocado walks” in the northern city of Tripoli. We would walk in the streets and ask residents whether they eat avocados, and if so, how they liked to eat them. With the responses collected, we could have drafted a map of the differing socio-economic conditions in the city. In the old city center, many said they ate avocados “before everything became expensive,” referring to the time before the 2019 economic collapse in Lebanon. Many cannot afford to buy the fruit, despite it being grown just a few miles outside of the city. Those who can still purchase avocados in this neighborhood typically consume them as sweet cocktails or with honey. Moving closer to middle class neighborhoods, avocados begin to appear in salads, and once we cross into wealthier areas, they can be found on toast. A few blocks further towards the town of Mina, avocados are served on fancy bread or made into sauces for fajitas. Many consumers in the town enthusiastically refer to its health benefits. Back in California, large budgets were spent to market avocado exactly like this—a ‘superfood’ full of fats that don’t harm your fit figure.
Hijazi peels an avocado and offers a taste to a visitor during a field tour. Zaita, South Lebanon, 2025. Photo courtesy of Cynthia Ghoussoub.
Slowly but surely, avocados also took over pop culture, seen tattooed on Miley Cyrus’s arm or featured in countless memes online. The fruit’s cultural notoriety skyrocketed after an Australian real estate magnate claimed that young people cannot afford housing simply because they spent too much on avocado toast. From that moment on, avocados became a symbol in tongue-in-cheek conversations about the increasingly precarious economic conditions faced globally.
However, amidst all the pop culture references, avocados have a darker side connected to their agriculture and consumerism. They became the newest symbol of ethical consumerism as a movement once awareness emerged about avocado gangs murdering farmers in South and Central America and about water-deprived villages, where all resources were used to irrigate avocado orchards instead. The controversy in their maintenance caused them to gain a disputed reputation amongst certain liberal and leftist circles in the Global North. Patricia, a European woman who came to the Levant region to work in the humanitarian sector, tells me a story of a party she had attended where she was being shamed for eating avocados by other humanitarians, just as they were snorting countless lines of cocaine.
The scene shows how the avocado—among other symbols—has become the most visible representation of ethical consumerism. The practice of choosing products that align with moral, social, or environmental values that in the same time diverts attention from broader systemic issues. Additionally ethical consumerism also provides middle-class individuals with a tool for feeling superior as it echoes in the comment relayed to me by another expat worker from the Global North. I am so happy that I live in Lebanon, so I can eat avocados without shame. Anyone who eats avocados in Europe cannot call themselves a leftist,” he states with zero recognition of his current reliance on Lebanese resources.
And so, the debates rage on, with everyone trying to assert moral high ground. Meanwhile, the poor avocado might wish to defend itself. After all, it never stole anyone’s water—humans made the choice to prioritize profit-driven agribusiness over equitable resource distribution.
Even if the avocado does not rise to defend itself, that does not mean it is not a powerful actor in this story. Beyond its symbolic status and its marketing title as a superfood, it has been assigned the role of a potential savior of the Lebanese economy. This narrative has been strongly constructed and promoted through the involvement of development institutions.
A crate of freshly picked avocados, packed after the morning harvest. Zaita, South Lebanon, 2025. Photo courtesy of Cynthia Ghoussoub.
The awaited savior of the economy
In 2018, the Lebanese government decided to hire McKinsey, an American consulting company, to help them resolve the accelerating economic crisis. While the exact financial terms of the contract were not publicly disclosed, reports suggest that the deal for their services was valued at some several hundred thousand dollars. Some of my informants who were present during the process suggest it was a one million dollar contract. The company sent a couple of junior researchers who, after six months of research, came up with a lengthy PowerPoint presentation—a thousand slides, to be exact. Among other things, they concluded that the economic situation in the country was dire (a shocking revelation). One of their suggested solutions was for the country to focus on the plantation and export of avocados. Then, better times might be around the corner.
This moment is perceived by many as a point zero in the local avocado history, though this is not entirely correct. While some of the first cultivation experiments of avocados in Lebanon date back to the 1970s, the rise in production is closely tied to development projects targeting the avocado value chain. The first such intervention took place back in 2012, when a national development institution based in the Global North, funded the first large project. According to Hussein, the avocado farmer, that same year was the start of the “avocado revolution” in Lebanon. Since then, two other major development projects have been initiated, always funded by state development agencies, each from a different Global North country, in cooperation with the same local NGO.
Some representatives of the NGO proudly take credit for creating the avocado trend. During my first interview at the local organization responsible for implementing the avocado project, I introduced myself by saying I was interested in how the avocado hype began. Bilal, a 35-year-old Lebanese grants manager at an NGO I was interviewing, interrupted me: “How did it happen? That’s simple. We created it. It was just very clever marketing on our part.” Then he carried on stating that proximity to Europe has likely played a huge part. According to him, Europe “wants to be all green now,” so they would rather take Lebanese avocados than South American ones as Lebanon is geographically closer. And despite the clear focus of the development projects to mainly establish trade routes to Europe, some of the previously supported and now leading Lebanese avocado producers are already taking steps to export to East Asia. They’re establishing their own connections to start exporting to China for more profit, no longer adhering to the so-called “going green” narrative which the NGOs ‘intended’ for when launching these projects.
In the earlier phases, the projects aimed to involve a broader group of farmers and introduce them to the avocado business. Meanwhile, the current project focuses solely on building and maintaining export capabilities, working with a smaller group of participants. As a result, many beneficiaries happen to be individuals who would have succeeded either way but can also serve as success stories for development interventions. Additionally, some larger-scale farmers have been able to find extra streams of income as consultants in later project phases.
“It looks good to work with those who have the potential to succeed,” Maroun, a fifty-year-old agricultural engineer and manager of a previously implemented development project, informs me. “In the end, it benefits everyone. When the big [farmer] guys focus on export, they leave the local markets to the smaller ones.” The notion of everybody “benefiting” is crucial for the development narrative in the NGO world.
Hijazi and another farmer demonstrate avocado harvesting during a field visit. Zaita, South Lebanon, 2025. Photo courtesy of Cynthia Ghoussoub.
“If I plant more avocados, more people will work on my farm,” Hussein once told a class of agriculture engineers who were brought to his farm for an excursion, as a part of one of the project activities. “More people in the community will open cocktail shops. It will bring fresh dollars into the country, and young people will see there are opportunities here and choose not to travel,” he sentimentally added, as all his children left the country to study abroad.
Many are joining the avocado business, which promises fresh dollars—rightfully desired by people in the country. However, only a year after our first encounter, Bilal’s victorious tone had changed. “I have people calling me every day saying they want support with planting avocados. So, I tell them: nobody plants anymore avocados for heaven’s sake, we have enough already,” commenting on the rapid increase of the avocado orchards around the county. While there are no official numbers to validate the enormity of this increase, unofficial numbers put it at 400 hectares. Bilal doesn’t think his organization should be responsible for driving what he calls the “hype train.”
“Not everyone is going to succeed,” Bilal commented. “Some will go bankrupt and do something else; the market will solve that. But this is absolutely typical,” he continues. “We Lebanese are like this, if we see something that might work, we just copy-paste it.”
Part of the crop’s expanding footprint, young avocado saplings take root in newly cultivated plots. Zaita, South Lebanon, 2025. Photo courtesy of Cynthia Ghoussoub.
Copy-paste agriculture
I borrow Bilal’s rather disrespectful remark to refer to another phenomenon—highly commercialized and industrialized type of agriculture. This type of practice usually takes the form of monoculture—the cultivation of a single crop over vast areas. While it promises higher yields, it simultaneously disrupts crucial biodiversity, depletes soil fertility, and leaves communities vulnerable to economic and ecological shocks. In Lebanon, the scarcity of suitable food limits large-scale monoculture, specifically avocados, yet this model still continues to embed farmers in endless cycles of dependency on external inputs like large amounts of fertilizers.
With the notion of copy-paste agriculture, many pictures unfold in front of my eyes… I remember the farmer who showed me his citrus trees, proudly announcing that when the next week comes, they will all be gone to make way for avocado trees. I also recall another farmer who pointed at the banana trees planted in the middle of an avocado field telling me he initially believed that the two crops would get along well, which would allow them to coexist in one field. Unfortunately, they did not, which meant that all the bananas would have to be removed. Such a mono-crop approach is supported by the development sector, which preaches “effectiveness” and market-oriented, technological solutions.
Grafting attaches the stem of one avocado variety to the roots of another, improving disease resistance, soil adaptation, and stable fruit production. Zaita, South Lebanon, 2025. Photo courtesy of Cynthia Ghoussoub.
In a conversation with Maroun on the future of Lebanese agriculture in the face of the climate crisis, he claimed to be optimistic as the country has great experts, but he worries if there will be enough capital for everything. The same concern applies to land use. Bilal, who studied agricultural engineering before joining the NGO he currently works at, tells me that monoculture to this extent exhausts the soil greatly, but he is sure that by the time it will be a serious problem, there will be fertilizers strong enough to reverse the process. Simultaneously, the arrival of solar panels may increase water usage, as they reduce costs after the initial investment. Widespread techno-optimism exists against the backdrop of unequal access to existing technologies. And the avocado requires a whole range of it.
Overall, starting and maintaining an avocado orchard is a costly business that is not accessible to everyone. Avocados cannot grow without irrigation, which requires a variety of costly equipment. At the same time, it needs large amounts of water yet cannot tolerate being drowned in it. Therefore, the land must be prepared into “raised beds,” long piles of soil where the avocado trees are planted. In recent years, the avocado business has attracted a high number of doctors, lawyers, and developers, and others with significant entry capital but no prior experience in agriculture. Farmers who did not receive the needed information on avocado maintenance early enough in the process face a much higher risk of root rot and the subsequent loss of their livelihoods.
Mohamad Hijazi is one of many farmers betting on avocados to carry Lebanon’s agricultural future. Zaita, South Lebanon, 2025. Photo courtesy of Cynthia Ghoussoub.
Who is the avocado for?
Many of those involved in the avocado hype train ride sincerely believe in its power to turn economic conditions in the country around. This has led to a lot of solidarity among farmers, even large-scale ones. It usually manifests by sharing information. While some claim that their production is an expression of their love for the land and belief in Lebanon’s future, and others build a special bond with the avocado itself, everyone is open about the fruit mainly being a desired source of money.
To some extent, it is hard to blame their choices, especially in the context of the lack of state support programs, rarely functioning international interventions that always carry a side agenda, and hardly accessible and up-scalable alternative projects. Meanwhile, the ‘copy-paste’ agriculture approach gains power every year as we approach climate collapse. It’s ready to pick out another cash crop that will one day follow the avocado, whatever that next tropical fruit or vegetable may be.
End Note: As this text is based on the outcomes of my ethnographic research, which embraces the anonymity of its informants, it is crucial to emphasize here that Hussein is not just one individual. Given that anonymization is challenging in such a small field as large-scale avocado farming, I created a collective persona—Hussein—who represents farmers primarily engaged in avocado production, involved in some development projects, and mainly exporting their produce abroad. Furthermore, all other persons and entities unless named have been anonymized and/or given a pseudonym to protect their privacy.
Layla Bartheldi
Layla Bartheldi is a Ph.D. anthropology student at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague. Barthedli’s research focuses on the current practices of the development aid industry in the agriculture field in Lebanon, specifically in the context of rising avocado production, and centers around the questions of neocolonial patterns, extractivism, and distribution of resources.
