Organized crime is once again strangling the lime industry in the state of Michoacán as five lime-packing houses decided to strike and shut down operations to protest the lack of security.
The packing houses say they might continue their work-stoppage through Wednesday, the day farmers are set to harvest their crop. Lime farmers — many of whom expressed a willingness to join the work-stoppage — told Milenio newspaper that the packing houses are located in Apatzingán and Buenavista.
Both packers and farmers have been urging authorities to take action because, despite existing security measures, extortion remains a serious concern for the entire industry.
Elements of organized crime “demand payments from the producer, the packer, the shipper, the wholesaler and even at the final point of sale,” Juan Carlos Anaya, director general of GCMA, a farmers’ market consultancy, told Reforma newspaper. “The entire chain of production is threatened by insecurity.”
In June, the United States paused safety inspections for avocados and mangos in Michoacán due to a security incident involving U.S. Department of Agriculture staff. After a 10-day suspension, inspections restarted pending a new security model.
Last year in September, 600 soldiers deployed to Michoacán to re-establish security in the lime-growing region. Organized crime had targeted the state’s lime industry, causing prices to spike, while also exerting control over avocado production. The ongoing extortion practices are again causing lime prices to soar while reducing producers’ profit margins, Anaya said.
Michoacán is Mexico’s No. 2 producer of limes and is the world’s No. 1 producer of avocados. But it is not the only state facing extortion-related violence.
Minerva Pérez Castro, the president of Baja California’s Chamber of Fishing and Aquafarming, was murdered in July, just hours after publicly decrying ongoing extortion operations in the fishing and restaurant sectors in her state.
Also last month, Julio Almanza, president of the Tamaulipas Chambers of Commerce, was shot and killed in the border city of Matamoros. Almanza had blamed widespread crime, including extortion, for causing the Oxxo convenience store chain to temporarily close all 191 of its stores in Nuevo Laredo, another border city in Tamaulipas.
