At Mission Produce’s farms in Peru, the coming avocado harvest is being measured in a range wide enough to hold 10 million pounds. That is the slightly strange precision of the avocado business: a crop can be abundant and still depend on which weeks the fruit reaches a packing shed, a truck and, eventually, a customer’s kitchen.
Mission’s third-quarter results point to a company moving more fruit even as prices softened. Revenue rose 26% to $450 million, while avocado volumes increased 38% year over year, according to the company’s quarterly report coverage. The arithmetic favors volume, at least for now, though it is not the same thing as a stronger price per pound.
Peru Sets the Late-Season Tempo
For fiscal fourth quarter 2026, Mission expects avocado production to be about 10% higher than in the same period a year earlier. The company’s own Peruvian farms are projected to produce 120 million to 130 million exportable pounds this season, compared with 105 million pounds in the prior harvest, according to the company’s production outlook.
That forecast matters beyond Peru because Mission is also expecting a larger share of this year’s crop to be sold during the fourth quarter. The company said that timing should benefit California growers, whose fruit enters a market increasingly shaped by overlapping origins and tightly managed retail programs.
A Crowded Calendar, Not Just a Bigger Crop
For an avocado grower, the important variable is rarely production in isolation. It is production meeting the market at the same time as fruit from another country, another district or another orchard. More late-season sales can create an opening for California fruit, but they can also make packer schedules, maturity decisions and promotional calendars more consequential.
The forecast arrives against a backdrop of weather that has made avocado production less tidy. UC Agriculture and Natural Resources’ July discussion of heat damage advises growers to assess trees before intervening; lightly heat-stressed trees may recover without aggressive pruning, while flowering and later production can depend on how severe the damage was. That heat guidance is a useful counterweight to a clean corporate volume forecast.
Mission’s quarter therefore offers two different readings. Its sales figures show what a large avocado marketer can do when volume is available. Its farm outlook shows where that volume may come from. Neither one settles the price California growers will receive, because that will depend on the arrival pattern, fruit quality and how buyers distribute orders through the quarter.