I may end up with avocado on my face, but when I read this week that an avocado producer was planning to list on the New York Stock Exchange, my first thought was: bubble. Avocados are fantastic fruit, just as tulips are fabulous flowers, but we know how that bubble burst in the 1600s. Camposol, the biggest suppliers of Hass avocados to the US, plans to raise about $400m (R5.7bn) in the listing, Bloomberg reported this week. The company, based in Peru, intends to expand production with some of the funds it raises. Demand for avocados has soared worldwide, driven, as common wisdom goes, by millennials' penchant for smashed avo on toast. The fruit is big business, and, in some regions, a dirty one. Mexico is the world's largest producer, followed by the Dominican Republic and Peru, according to Statista. Cartels in Mexico have muscled in on production of what is referred to in that country as green gold. Farmers have faced kidnappings and extortion, and the police have been deployed f...
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