(Bloomberg) — U.S. demand for most of Mexico’s $3 billion avocado exports a year may have driven over 40,000 acres of deforestation in the country over the past decade, according to a report.

Top providers to supermarket chains such as Walmart Inc. and Trader Joe’s Co. have been growing their avocados in areas that were in many cases cleared illegally with fires, according to a report from Climate Rights International and Guardian Forestal released this week. In early 2024, companies they tracked continued to source from that land even when shown evidence of deforestation in their supply chains, the nonprofits said.