Commentary
To tell this story properly, I need to explain grafted trees.
Most people do not realize that when you eat a recognizable avocado, a navel orange, a Fuji apple, or a Santa Rosa plum, you are not eating something grown from seed in the way you might imagine. Every Santa Rosa plum tree is a cutting taken from the original tree and grafted onto rootstock. Every navel orange. Every Fuji apple. The nursery is selling you a clone.
Some plants grow true to seed. Avocados do not. Stone fruit does not. If you plant the pit from a Hass avocado, you will not get a Hass avocado tree. You will get a completely new genetic individual.
In commercial avocado orchards, most trees are A-type flowering varieties like Hass, Gem, or Lamb Hass—the fruit destined for market. Avocados have a unique flowering cycle. A-types open female in the morning and male in the afternoon. B-types do the opposite. So for every ten to twenty A-type trees, growers plant a B-type—often Bacon or Zutano—to ensure pollination and consistent yields.
Yes, avocados can self-pollinate under the right conditions, but commercial production relies on that A/B rhythm.
Here is what consumers rarely see.
In large orchards, thousands of pounds of Bacon and Zutano avocados are often never harvested for mainstream markets. They are thin-skinned. They bruise easily. They do not transport well. They ripen unevenly. They are not ideal for global supply chains.
But if you are a small farmer selling direct to consumer, those avocados are extraordinary. They peel differently. Some have bright green flesh. Some have delicate, almost floral notes. If you are an avocado nerd like I am, you are constantly looking for the next remarkable tree.
On my old farm in California, we had hundreds of unique avocado trees. Some I named. Most had no name. Some were seedlings that sprouted when a pit rolled downhill and took root. Some were root stock that took over when a graft failed. Some trees were half grafted cultivar and half seedling. In an orchard more than fifty years old, genetic variation is not rare—it is inevitable.
Every seed produces a one-of-a-kind avocado tree. One in ten thousand might be commercially viable. That is how the Hass avocado came to dominate global markets. Rudolph Hass, a California mail carrier, planted seeds—likely from Fuerte avocados, which were the primary cultivar at the time. One graft failed. The seedling grew. That seedling became the Hass avocado.
One random seed.
Now consider Ana Ayala Farms. I wrote about them a few weeks ago.
Their right to sell food in California was suspended after three violations over three years. The most recent involved selling blueberries outside of the harvest window listed on their Certified Producer’s Certificate. The certificate estimated when their blueberries would be ready. Agriculture does not always follow estimates. Weather shifts. Bloom times move. Fruit ripens when it ripens. But because the sales occurred outside the anticipated dates printed on their Certified Producer’s Certificate, it counted as a violation.
They are currently appealing the suspension. With so much at stake, being unable to sell food for six months could put them out of business. This new citation now complicates that effort.
Recently at the Ojai farmers market, inspectors approached their booth again. They had two baskets of avocados—Hass in one, and pollinators labeled Bacon in the other. The inspector determined that some of the avocados labeled Bacon were actually Zutano and issued another citation.
Zutano is not listed on their Certified Producer’s Certificate. When they purchased the orchard a few years ago—from me—they were under the impression that the pollinator trees were Bacon. Some are Bacon. Some are Zutano. Some are likely seedling root stock that took over after a graft failed decades ago.
And the truth is, there are many trees in that grove that are not listed on their Certified Producer’s Certificate at all because there is no official name for them. They are seedlings. They are experiments. They are part of my long-standing project of cultivating and observing different kinds of avocados. In a fifty-year-old orchard, especially one stewarded with an eye toward genetic diversity, variation is not the exception. It is the rule.
But regulatory paperwork does not easily account for unnamed genetics. If a tree does not fit neatly into a recognized commercial category, it does not fit neatly onto a form. What is normal orchard biology becomes, on paper, noncompliance.
And because they are currently appealing a suspension that could determine whether their farm survives, another citation—even over something as nuanced as avocado variety—reinforces the appearance of ongoing violation at the very moment they are trying to defend themselves.
In a cloned system, where millions of identical trees are propagated from a single mother tree, you can track varieties with precision. In nature’s system, every seed is an act of originality.
If you plant broccoli, you reliably get broccoli. If you plant a peach pit, you may get something wonderful or something inedible. The same is true for avocados. Each seed is unique.
The government wants to govern genetics.
But genetics are not static. They are shifting, evolving, mutating, transforming. Every seed is a new possibility. Every orchard is a living record of variation. The divinity of nature is not uniformity. It is expression.
If creation reflects its Creator, then variation is not a flaw. It is abundance. It is as if God delights in multiplicity — in taking shape and form and experience in millions and billions of variations. As if creation itself is an ongoing expression of life exploring itself.
Bureaucracy is built on categories. On boxes. On fixed names and predictable outputs. It can regulate packaging. It can regulate weights and measures. It can regulate food safety.
But it will never be able to inventory the creative force that produces infinite genetic expression.
You cannot reduce a living orchard to a spreadsheet.
And yet, increasingly, that is what we are trying to do.
It is small farmers who bear the cost when biology refuses to fit inside the lines.
