Predicting the Avocadolypse in 2020

In this project, I am forecasting the price of Hass avocados in 2019-2020 using time series and ARIMA models. I have used a CSV file containing the average price and average volume of avocados sold in different regions.

Please feel free to look through the source code here.

I like avocados, however when I go out to eat, the rising price of guacamole leaves a bad taste in my mouth. So I looked for a dataset on avocado prices and found records from 2015 through early 2018. This led me to ask myself, Should I buy an avocado orchard the way Oprah did? To find out, I used time series and ARIMA models to forecast avocado prices and volumes through 2020

I started by comparing month-to-month pricing of both conventional and organic avocados. Both labels saw a massive price drop from October to December.-

I then created box plots for both labels to compare average yearly prices by state in the USA. The plots show that 2017 was a bad year price-wise for both labels in every state, with large price variation-

Here is the box plot comparing average prices by state for the organic label-

The time series models for both the volume and price of conventional label avocados show-

Similarly, here are the time series models for price and volume of organic label avocados-

To forecast, I combined the time series of the current data with ARIMA models to predict future prices and volumes. The results are-

Overall, the price and volume of conventional avocados seems somewhat stable, possibly due to bigger consumption. Organic avocado pricing and volume will likely fluctuate more through 2020. However, organic volume has tighter lower limits compared to conventional.

So I think I can wait one more year before buying an avocado orchard!

NOTE: Thank you for reading! Please email any feedback or corrections.