For years, the global avocado industry has been analyzed—and often judged—from the perspective of competition between origins: which country enters markets first, who produces at the lowest cost, or who gains market share. However, while understandable, this view is increasingly insufficient to address the real challenges of the business.

Today, avocados are no longer just a fruit. They are a global category, with more informed and demanding consumers, deeply interconnected markets, and supply chains that rely far more on coordination than rivalry.

In this context, a key question arises:
What would happen if producing countries and the various links in the chain stopped seeing each other as direct competitors and started acting as strategic partners in the same industry?

Experience shows that the strongest industries are built not solely on individual efficiency, but on organized collaboration. Producers aligned on quality standards, exporters coordinated around market windows, importers committed to long-term programs, and services that support this vision. When this occurs within a country, it generates more stable and predictable industries; when it occurs between countries, it creates resilient global ecosystems.

The avocado has a unique structural advantage: its origins don't completely overlap, but rather complement each other. Chile, Peru, Mexico, Colombia, South Africa, Kenya, Israel, and Spain don't all compete simultaneously; they take turns, support each other, and can learn from one another. Sharing market information, post-harvest improvements, logistical lessons learned, and long-term visions doesn't weaken the industry; it strengthens it.

More than a race to place higher volumes in the short term, the real opportunity lies in developing the category, protecting its reputation, ensuring consistent quality, and building trust with target markets. That trust isn't improvised: it's designed, coordinated, and sustained over time.

Examples of this approach already exist. Organizations such as the Hass Avocado Board, the World Avocado Organization, ProHass, the Chilean Avocado Committee, and APEAM, among other associations, demonstrate how structured collaboration can strengthen the entire industry. Along these same lines, AvoBook was created to contribute to this conversation: to go beyond isolated data points and open a space for strategic analysis where collaboration ceases to be an abstract concept and becomes a concrete tool for creating shared value.

However, the challenge is not conceptual, but strategic. The avocado industry today faces not a demand problem, but a coordination problem. For its leaders, the real challenge is no longer producing more, but making better decisions: with whom to collaborate, under what rules, and with what timeframe. The open question is whether the industry will be able to transform the discourse of collaboration into concrete models that strengthen its collective competitiveness.

Because if the avocado industry wants to continue growing in a healthy, sustainable and profitable way, the path forward is not through less competition, but through better collaboration.

Pedro Hevia
CEO & Founder Puro Connection
pedro.hevia@puro.farm
Chili