Avocado Fact or Fiction?

For a movie with “avocado” in the title, there are surprisingly few scenes in which they are featured. Although there is a lot of talk about their importance, the opening scene of the movie is among the few where one is actually seen. In it, two ill-fated men wander “deep” into the avocado jungle and spot an avocado growing on a tree, but even non-experts are likely to notice it looks a little … off.

“First off, it’s not an avocado tree that the fruit is hanging from,” said Focht, a UCR staff research associate in the botany and plant sciences department. “It looks to be a Shamel Ash or some other common Southern California ‘weed’ landscaping tree. Avocado leaves are very different than that.”

Focht notes, however, that avocado trees in general are quite varied, likely because the plant was only recently commercially domesticated. In fact, UCR’s avocado scion breeding program maintains one of the largest avocado germplasm collections in the world.

In this scene, which some may recognize takes place in UCR’s Physics 2000 lecture hall, government officials speak with Dr. Hunt about the “avocado belt” and the supposed importance of avocados in maintaining U.S. national security. Among the many “facts” learned: 98% of the U.S.’s avocados come from California; the avocado belt stretches from Bakersfield to the border of Mexico; and Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, and even the Soviet Union are also major avocado producers.

(“Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death”/Phantom Productions)

“We know that San Bernardino, Riverside, San Diego, and Imperial counties are not jungle land, inhabited by cannibal women or otherwise, but I think the grain of truth that grew into this fantastic alternative Southern California landscape is that until fairly recently, San Diego County was the biggest avocado producing county in the state, and California does produce the most avocados in the U.S.,” Focht said, noting production has since been shifting to other areas, including Ventura County and the Central Valley.

On a global scale, Mexico is the biggest producer of Hass avocados — which dominates the commercial market — at around 60%, while the U.S. is the biggest consumer at 50%, he added. Latin America as a whole makes up around 76% of planting area by acreage, whereas California is only 4% of the global planting area. Other important importers into the U.S. market are Peru, Chile, and recently, Colombia. In terms of national security, Focht doesn’t think the U.S. has too much to worry about, at least when it comes to avocados.

“Although it’s kind of funny in this scene that the avocado colonel with his terrific stage eyepatch is very concerned about the ‘communist’ market share, the majority of the avocados grown in, for example, Cuba are of the more tropical lowland varieties that tend to do well in Caribbean and tropical climates, and these do not pose a serious threat to the ‘avocado industrial military complex’s hegemonic control over the market,” Focht said.

Here we see Dr. Hunt, Bunny, and Jim reach the edge of the avocado jungle. Discerning viewers may notice it doesn’t exactly look like a jungle. Even Bunny makes a comment saying as much. Focht’s best guess is this was filmed at UCR’s Agricultural Operations site, noting the block of citrus growing on one side of the fields and the line of Washingtonia palms in the background.

“As for the avocado plantings to their stage left side as they pull up in the jeep, these look something like how a commercial grove would look in that they are roughly evenly spaced and in rows,” Focht said. “The trees themselves, however, are not Hass and might be composed of several other avocado varieties instead. If it was on AgOps, this was probably an experimental grove.”

In terms of their native environment, avocados don’t grow as a single block or monoculture and are part of the understory system in the neotropical forests, tending to grow up from underneath other established larger trees, he said. Focht added that avocados are originally endemic to Mexico and Central America and the first human records of them come in the form of Mayan images at a tomb in Palenque, Chiapas. It wasn’t until the 1800s that Californians started to bring up avocado seeds, but the first trees to fully grow and fruit are thought to be those of Judge Ord in Santa Barbara sometime later in the 19th century.

While it may lack accurate avocado information, Focht does admit, “on some levels, the premise of this movie is pretty outlandish and amazing.” And for his part, J.F. Lawton went on to write such hit films as “Pretty Woman,” “Under Siege,” and “Chain Reaction.” But Lawton’s first movie holds a special place in UCR history.

You can watch “Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death” for free on Amazon Prime and Tubi.