How my Agave Journey Begins

When I first moved to Los Angeles from the Midwest in 2019, I felt like I had moved to a completely different country. The bustling city of Los Angeles and the whole Southern California region were so different from what I was used to. The climate, culture, architecture, traffic, and landscape were a dramatic contrast to Illinois, Wisconsin, and Indiana. Yet, for me, different wasn't a bad thing. After spending the previous year doing travel software contracts around the US, I was more than ready to try something new and settle down somewhere. Although I had never even visited Los Angeles before moving there, I liked to think that I was welcome there as a Mexican American in a city so rich in Mexican American history. I enjoyed learning about this history, but to me, my family's history in Los Angeles was the most important. You see, my grandfather spent years living and working in Pasadena and Los Angeles, working in agriculture under the Bracero program. While his family was in Mexico, my grandfather worked the fields and orchards of Southern California, among other places in the American Southwest. Although he only spent four years in the Los Angeles area, I recognized the sacrifice this was for my family. His work provided a great living for the family back in Mexico, but more importantly, his hard work eventually provided him and his entire family with a pathway to citizenship.

Nowadays, Southern California looks quite different than when my grandfather worked here. The orchards he used to work in have all since been replaced with subdivisions and housing. Even though the agriculture is gone, I couldn't help but notice all the fruit trees that still grow between houses and business properties, remnants of a past era. Something else I noticed, however, were the huge and plentiful agaves used for landscaping. With water use being a huge topic in 2019, and even more so today, I was highly critical of wasteful landscapes. In Los Angeles, the grass lawns I once coveted as beautiful in the Midwest were now ugly to me. Why would people choose to waste so much of our water on grass? Many communities at this time had already begun the process of implementing drought tolerant landscaping and watering restrictions, but it was apparent that not all communities were participating in this change. During this time, I came to admire the desert-landscaped lawns, many of which had beautiful agave plants. Back then, I ignorantly thought many of these were Blue Weber Agaves that could be made into tequila, but boy, was I wrong!

As I learned more about desert plants and landscaping in the region, I eventually recognized that there were a huge variety of agave species thriving in Southern California. I loved finding new types I'd never seen before and how they complemented the desert-themed landscapes. It wasn't until 2022 that I first read an article about California Agave Spirits being a potential competitor to tequila and mezcal. Upon discovering that farmers and distillers were interested in farming agaves in California, I was fascinated with the idea of using them as a drought-tolerant crop in water-scarce areas. Being that this was also near the time that I started trying different mezcals, I was incredibly interested in what California agaves could taste like in a distilled spirit. Would they taste smoky, earthy, or fruity? How would coastal-grown agaves taste compared to desert-grown? With how many microclimates there are in California combined with the incredible variety of agaves, the possibilities seemed endless.

Upon doing more research, I heard some mention that the Central Valley of California was a prime spot where farmers could grow agaves commercially. This made perfect sense, considering the impressive large-scale agriculture of California's Central Valley, combined with its warm climate. After taking a few trips to central and northern California, I finally had a chance to see the Central Valley, and boy, was I disappointed. Granted, I did visit during very dry times, I was struck by how dead and dusty things looked. There were some healthy farms I saw, but the dead ones really stood out. Entire orchards of what I assumed to be nut trees were nothing but dead sticks for acres. There were also many posted signs critical of the water regulations, and Governor Gavin Newsom in particular. Although this large-scale agriculture is impressive and very important to the economy, I could see the environmental consequences it was causing, and the water issues seemed to only be making the situation worse.

While I'm no expert in agriculture, I really wondered how things could get better in places like this. How would the lack of water continue to impact agricultural practices? Could monocropping and the overuse of chemicals really continue when soil health seemed to be this bad? I couldn't help but ponder if practices like this could create a dust bowl, similar to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. While it's certainly not to that level, I think there are some common themes of environmental mismanagement and unsustainable farming practices. In a region where water resources continue to dry up, the only thing I could think of was how humans and industry continuously innovate and what the next generation of farms would look like in regions like this. It's clear that farmers will have to adapt their practices to continue farming in these conditions, but how quickly will they change their ways?

With all these problems in my mind, I began to question how agaves could help or hurt this situation. Knowing how the tequila industry has impacted the environment in Mexico, part of me thought that large-scale Blue Weber agave farming could still pose environmental problems at scale. Soil degradation, lack of biodiversity, and chemical/pesticide use are only a few issues that large-scale Blue Weber agave farming has contributed to back in Mexico. Even though there is a lot for farmers and growers to still figure out in California, I'm hopeful that agave can be part of the solution instead of part of the problem. If new sustainable models can be developed, where biodiversity and soil health can thrive, perhaps agaves could play a key role in new agricultural systems that can limit water usage and help heal the environment. Regardless of what I think, only time will tell how agriculture will change. All I know is that I'll be following along, learning as much as I can, and listening to the ideas and opinions of others along the way.