As many farmers in drought-prone regions are re-thinking what they grow, it’s agave that has captured recent interest and momentum with its promise of drought resilience and a path into the potentially lucrative world of spirits.
This story was produced in partnership with Civil Eats.
Photo (above) courtesy of Craig Reynolds.
Raul “Reppo” Chavez surveys his agave crop on a sunny morning north of Sacramento, California. His largest plants sit at the top of a hillside, while the youngest and smallest are down by the road. “They look real good,” he says, nodding.
The plants’ giant leaves are arranged like the petals of open roses, but they’re as sharp as eagle talons reaching out of the earth. Chavez and many others who drive by find the agave field striking. Cyclists out for rides stop to take photos. Mexican-American girls celebrating their quinceañeras pose in glimmering gowns among the plants, which stand out as different from the olive, citrus, and almond orchards typically blanketing the region.
Chavez, a native of Tonaya, Mexico—where mezcal is produced—grew up with agave growing in every direction and learned the skills of a jimador, or agave farmer, from relatives. He’s leasing the plot from a family that used to grow grapes there. Three years ago, the family he works for ripped out the vines in an effort to conserve water and gave him the green light to plant agave.
Now, as the West grapples with the worst drought in more than 1,000 years, he’s among a small but growing group of farmers in California, Arizona, and Texas who are turning to these hearty plants, which can survive with little to no water.
As many farmers in drought-prone regions are re-thinking what they grow, there are some other familiar workhorse crops that require little irrigation and could step in to keep bare land from turning to dust—such as winter wheat, legumes, and safflower.
It’s agave, however, that has captured recent interest and momentum with its promise of drought resilience and a path into the potentially lucrative world of spirits.
A perennial succulent native to the arid Southwest U.S. and Central and South America, agave plants, with spiky leaves as stiff as cartilage, can grow to weigh up to 110 pounds, and the distilled spirits, made from the plant’s hefty heart, or piña, are soaring in popularity.
Since 2003, tequila and mezcal volume has increased by more than 200 percent, with a significant surge in demand over the last five years.
In California, Stuart Woolf, president and CEO of Woolf Farming & Processing, a prominent operation that grows massive tracts of almonds, pistachios, and processing tomatoes, has emerged as agave’s biggest champion. Last summer, Woolf donated $100,000 for an agave research center at University California at Davis.
Woolf, who used to rely on the state’s network of canals to deliver “surface water” to most of his 25,000 acres of farmland, hasn’t received a full allocation in years. He can pump from his wells to make up for that loss, but a sweeping state law, the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, aims to curb that practice.
“In all likelihood,” Woolf says, “I’m going to end up with more and more of my land being unable to farm because I just don’t have enough water.”
That’s how, three years ago, as the 63-year-old sipped on tequila, Woolf’s mind landed on agave, plants that are incredibly drought tolerant thanks to a twist in plant physiology.
Agave plants keep the openings in their leaves (the stomata) closed during the day to avoid water evaporation, reopening them at night to collect and store carbon dioxide, and engage in photosynthesis come dawn.
“All I have now is a test plot, land, and a desire,” says Woolf.
A New Climate Crop?
Woolf is in the San Joaquin Valley, a 5-million-acre stretch of the most productive agricultural land in the world.
It’s also the epicenter of California’s water crisis.
Unregulated pumping of groundwater has resulted in depleted aquifers, sinking land, and thousands of dry agricultural and drinking water wells. A recent study estimated that at least 500,000 acres of heavily irrigated land in the San Joaquin Valley will need to be permanently retired in the next 20 years.
All across the Southwest, the fallowing of land is already underway.
In 2022 alone, California farmers left hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland unplanted.
In New Mexico, the state legislature allotted millions of dollars to pay farmers to idle fields.
And in Arizona’s Pinal County, 30-40 percent of the 250,000 acres of irrigated farmland has been fallowed due to cuts in the water supply from the Colorado River. “By next year that number is expected to rise,” says Paul Orme, an attorney for several irrigation districts in Pinal County.
Doug Richardson, an agricultural consultant who owns Drylands Farming Company near Santa Barbara is an agave enthusiast, and not just for their ability to thrive in arid climates.
“They’re fire resistant,” he says. “We’ve done a lot of farm design where we do agave as a perimeter crop to act as a line of defense. A row of these succulent plants can keep a wildfire from encroaching.”
For nearly 20 years, Richardson encouraged mostly small-scale growers in the West to incorporate agave into their operations, and within the last 10 years he says his business has soared, with new clients in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona all seeking a less water intensive crop.
Ian Beger, the farm director at Castle Hot Springs, a luxury resort north of Phoenix, worked with Richardson to plant about three acres of agave so that the resort could offer hyper-local spirits.
Water savings was not Beger’s main motivation, but he believes if he and other well-resourced growers can work out the kinks and better understand the viability of this novel crop, that may help bring other farmers along.
“Unless it has significant promise, no one is willing to risk their livelihood to grow it,” he says.
‘Agave Spirits’ on the Menu
Long before George Clooney kicked off a celebrity tequila brand deluge that heightened agave’s worth, Indigenous and rural communities relied on the plant for food, and used its fibers for textiles, rope, and even roofing material.
On a cloudless, bright autumn morning north of Sacramento, Craig Reynolds walked through around 1,000 agave plants. Olive and nut trees used to stand here, but about eight years ago when the landowner, a friend of Reynolds’, had to start rationing water, he agreed that planting agave made sense.
An almond orchard requires about four-acre feet of water, and Reynolds estimates an agave plot of the same size requires about a tenth of that amount.
Founder of the California Agave Council, a trade group of 40 growers, distillers, and retailers formed this year, Reynolds is a newbie farmer who worked in California state politics (and witnessed a lot of hand wringing over water shortages) before retiring.
While there are hundreds of species, he has planted mostly blue agave, the variety used for tequila. Harvesting the piña, the pineapple-shaped heart of the plant that gets fermented for distilled spirits, demands patience, as agave can take six to eight years to mature.
Still, Reynolds says over time farmers can build up their acreage so that every year there are plants ready to harvest. And he’s found a lucrative, boutique market in craft distillers. “I can get $15,000 per acre, which is a lot compared to most crops,” he says.
The spirit distilled from his agave is clear and smooth—essentially tequila in taste but not in name. Like Champagne must originate in France, agave spirits can only be called tequila if the agave is grown inside the Mexican state of Jalisco, and is made from Agave tequilana, or blue agave.
Similarly, mezcal, which can be made with many varieties of agave, must be produced in one of 10 designated states in Mexico.
It’s not clear how much of a market there may be for U.S. made agave spirits, but Reynolds and Woolf say before addressing that issue, the research center at U.C. Davis will examine California’s advantages and disadvantages in growing this crop.
“An important question on the minds of growers is how well can they survive in areas where maybe no water is available [aside from rainfall],” says Ron Runnebaum, an associate professor of viticulture and enology at U.C. Davis.
Research will likely also focus on how agave handles the occasional frost. Are there species best suited for California? And will the long, hot San Joaquin Valley summers speed up plant growth?
“It would be great if they could figure out a developing agave plant that would mature faster, grower larger, and have greater sugar content where you could actually produce more distilled spirits per acre than elsewhere,” says Woolf, adding that efficiency in a California agave market will be key to keeping it competitive, since labor and other costs are lower in Mexico.
The Developing Agave Market
Raul Chavez understands agave’s appeal in the U.S. Southwest.
“You can plant a lot of acres. You don’t use too much money, don’t use too much water,” he says, adding that a relentless gopher is his only major headache. “You need a market, but the market is coming.”
Beyond distilled spirits, there is agave syrup; the plant can also be used as a fiber additive to foods, and agave can make animal feed, which could pose an alternative to water-thirsty alfalfa grown in drought-riddled Southwest, says Ronnie Cummins, founder of Regeneration International. The nonprofit is dedicated to regenerative farming and land management and strives to plant 1 billion agaves worldwide, in part to help farmers with access to little water.
Cummins has worked with ranchers in Texas to blend fermented agave leaves with the pods from native mesquite trees to create a low-water, sustainable cattle feed. “We think that the west Texas ranchers who already have mesquite (trees) on their property are going to be very amenable to this,” he says.
Cummins says a growing number of farms in the Northern Guanajuato state of Mexico are already relying on agave for animal feed, while also harvesting the piña for mezcal or tequila.
And because agaves help store water in the ground, the plant is helping native vegetation to return to barren, overgrazed lands. It can become, he says, an intact, productive agroforestry system.
“Do this right and you can preserve the natural biodiversity that’s already out there,” he says.
At a time when rainfall is increasingly unpredictable and reservoirs in the West are reaching historic lows, Cummins hopes the sudden interest in agave leads to an agricultural transformation in areas facing a long, dry future.
Anne Marshall-Chalmers is a Senior Reporter at Civil Eats.
