The Country That Produces The Most Avocados Worldwide

There's really nothing else quite like using an avocado. The delicate richness it provides to dishes doesn't have another analog. It's not that avocados are useful in every dish, but when you need what an avocado offers (any of the many varieties of avocado), you can't really reach for anything else. There's a reason it's become such an integral cuisine to numerous global cultures — but considering it's become such a global fruit (despite its usages, it's technically a berry since it grows on a tree), which country — or countries — produce the most avocados?

If you expect this to be some random country you'd never guessed, you'll be disappointed. The country responsible for the world's most significant avocado production — by a wide margin — is where avocados originally hail: Mexico. But while Mexico is so far ahead of every other country in avocado production that it's almost comical, that doesn't mean there aren't other countries that rank highly further down the list — and some of those legitimately are surprising.

The history of the avocado in the Americas is long, far predating the Spanish colonization of Latin America. Avocados were long grown from Mexico all the way into the Peruvian Andes, but the available evidence indicates that they were first grown roughly 10,000 years ago in Puebla, located in southern central Mexico. So it's no surprise that Mexico still produces the most avocados of any country in the world — and on a per capita basis, they consume the most, too (in total consumption, they rank just behind the United States).

What is surprising, however, is just how many more avocados Mexico produces than anywhere else. Second place on the list of avocado producers is Colombia, which produces around 980,000 tons per year. Mexico, though, sits at approximately 2,443,000 tons — as much as the following three countries on the list combined.

But avocados now truly are a global crop, as the rest of the top ten producers prove. You might think Latin America and the Caribbean would rank highly here. They do — in addition to Mexico at number one and Colombia at number two, Peru sits at number three with around 777,000 annual tons. At the same time, the rest of the top ten include the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Haiti, and Chile. The United States, for all of California's reputation for avocado growth, sits barely outside the top ten.

But sandwiched amongst those Western hemisphere countries are a few you might not expect to see. Asia is represented here (Indonesia clocks in at number four, while Vietnam sits at number nine of the top ten), but so is Africa, specifically Kenya. Avocados are a profitable, easy-to-grow crop as long as you have the climate for it, and every country where they're heavily grown sits within the same general broader equatorial band. And production will only go up as avocados become more prevalent in markets like Europe.