If the prices of a margarita or guacamole have been too high for you lately, blame it on a key ingredient of the Mexican treats — the lime. Prices for limes, imported almost exclusively from Mexico, hit record highs this year, and demand remains high. But now the price is dropping and farmers couldn't be happier.
You can see it firsthand at the outdoor wholesale lime market in Apatzingan, Michoacan. Dozens of buyers stand in the dirt parking lot waiting for beat up pick up trucks full of limes to roll in. The men rush to the backs of the trucks, filled high with crates of limes. Here the round fruit is known as green gold.
Lime buyer Geraldo Fernandez scrambles up the back of the crates and peers over the top. In Spanish he says, "the trucks barely stop and the limes are sold...they're selling like hotcakes."
While Mexico's other lime producing states were hit hard by bad weather and a fungal outbreak earlier this year, as we've reported, the orchards in Michocan have been flourishing, netting record profits for the state's farmers.
But with every boom comes the bust. And prices are falling fast.
Better weather and a bountiful spring crop in the state of Veracruz have supplies back to normal.
Fernandez thumbs through another box of limes. He tells the driver he'll give him 80 pesos — about six bucks for the whole 40 pound box. He says just a month or two ago he was paying these guys as much as 35 dollars a box.
Prices in the U.S. are dropping, too. Last week the U.S. Department of Agriculture said consumers paid on average 30 cents a lime, compared to 90 a few months ago.
But Michoacan farmers aren't complaining about the precipitous price drop. Most are still enjoying their record profits. But the biggest boon to them is that for the first time in a decade, many say they are no longer at the mercy of Mexico's ruthless drug cartels.
i i