Tag: mexico

For California farmers, agave plant offers hope in parched times

This article was written by Nathan Vanderklippe and was published in the Globe & Mail on January 1, 2026.

Stuart Woolf, president and CEO of Woolf Farming Company, is seen in a field where he grows agave for distilling, in Huron, Calif., in November.

As typical crop yields shrink in the face of drought, growing and distilling agave may be a sustainable solution because of its ability to transform dry earth into the fat, sugar-laden piña hearts

Humans have made the agave plant an object of prickly obsession for thousands of years.

For ancient Mesoamericans, it was a civilization-building source of fibre and food. For early European explorers, it was an object of curiosity, transported home and given new places to grow in monastery gardens.

For scientists, it continues to be a source of biological fascination, equipped with three different methods for reproduction and an unusual type of photosynthesis. And for drinkers, it is the plant base for tequila, which has overtaken whisky sales in the U.S. and is now challenging vodka for boozy dominance.

Now, for a small group of California dreamers, farmers and distillers, agave – and its remarkable ability to transform dry earth into the fat, sugar-laden piña hearts at the plant’s core – is a source of hope in parched times. As water shortages force the state’s irrigation-dependent agricultural sector to contemplate the fallowing of up to a 10th of its fields, a hunt is on to find a crop that can flourish without floods of artificial hydration.

In California’s Central Valley, almonds require roughly 125 centimetres of water a year, and pistachios need 100. Agave needs six centimetres – or maybe, even less. It is “crazy water-tolerant and drought-tolerant,” said Stuart Woolf, who farms southwest of Fresno.

Mr. Woolf is the overseer of a generational family operation that, today, extends across 30,000 acres and supplies roughly one in five tomatoes used by ketchup-maker Heinz in the U.S. Its success depends heavily on irrigation supplies that are expected to diminish greatly in the future. Without some major changes, Mr. Woolf will no longer be able to grow crops on thousands of his acres, provoking existential questions.

“We’re on a glide path where we’re only going to be able to farm about 60 per cent of our land. So I have to find what do I do with the other 40 per cent?” he says.

One solution lies in installing solar panels in fields, which can generate revenue without requiring local water. Another option could be growing guayule, a desert shrub that can be used to make rubber. But building a facility to process rubber is unlikely to be a small investment. Besides, “rubber is probably more of a commodity than a nice bottle of tequila,” Mr. Woolf says.

He can’t use the name “tequila” for anything he later chooses to distill from his agave, however – that name is protected in Mexico. So, too, is “mezcal.”

But he can grow the plant, and his state recently designated “California Agave Spirits” as an official label. Mr. Woolf has now planted hundreds of acres, making him California’s largest grower. “For me, looking at a world where I don’t have enough water – this is a natural thing to lean into,” he said.

California has already built itself into a major force in global booze, expanding its wine industry from a small regional producer to the world’s fourth-largest, behind Italy, France and Spain. Its climate and geography brought new character to an established product.

Mr. Woolf hopes agave can tread a similar path.

“I’ve done a lot of research sitting in airport bars talking to people. And honestly, every time there’s this level of enthusiasm – like, this is the greatest idea. You’re growing a drought-tolerant crop. And why wouldn’t we have a spirit that’s different from Mexico?”

Traditionally, tequila is made from Blue Weber agave, while mezcal comes from Espadín agave. Both are plants with established lineages and distinct features: Blue Weber, true to its name, is identifiable by the cobalt hue of its leaves. Espadín distinguishes itself with blood-red tips. The distilled spirit it yields has a flavour, too, that is distinct from tequila.

Then, there is Yolo, the plant with an uncertain pedigree that has become the foundation for California’s nascent industry. Not even Craig Reynolds, the man who is arguably the state’s agave pioneer, can tell you where it came from.

“I got it from a guy in Riverside who said he got it in Mexico and it was Blue Weber. But it turned out not to be,” said Mr. Reynolds.

He dubbed it Yolo for the county where he began growing a test plot in 2014.

The rows of agave there form an unlikely experiment, presided over by an unlikely figure. Mr. Reynolds is an affable former political staffer to California state Democrats. These days, he navigates farm fields in his Toyota Tacoma, several bottles of spirits perched on the backseat for impromptu tasting sessions. He developed an interest in agave by accident, as part of a charity project nearly two decades ago that involved making tequila.

The experience planted a thought that maybe agave was an appropriate crop for the California environment. When a friend offered a plot of land, he decided to try.

He built his own pit to cook piñas – the first step to release their sugars before distillation – the traditional way. He imported basic tools and vocabulary from Mexico, such as the round-headed coa hoe used to chop down plants.

Any road trip through California makes it obvious that agave can grow in the state, where the Mexican community has planted it as a decorative element for years. What Mr. Reynolds didn’t know – and what he and others continue to learn – is how to nurture fields of it.

Full answers have not yet been established to basic questions: What time of year is best to plant? How much water is required? What will happen to plants in low-lying areas susceptible to frost? How long will they take to mature? How much will they yield?

Those uncertainties inform what is likely to be the most important question of all: Is there money to be made in California agave?

Early signs, however, look good. In Mexico, it typically takes seven years to grow a 30-kilogram agave piña. In California, Mr. Woolf harvested an 84-kilogram piña in four years that had 60 per cent more sugar content than what is common in Mexico. That suggests it might be possible to distill four times the bottles per acre in California.

“The technical challenge is how to accelerate growth to become a more profitable enterprise,” said Josué Medellín-Azuara, a University of California, Merced, professor who studies water management and sustainable agro-ecosystems.

Labour costs in California are far higher than those in Mexico and mechanical agave harvesters are not yet commercially available, although work has begun to develop that technology.

“But to me, it looks very promising. I personally would invest in it if I could,” said Prof. Medellín-Azuara.

Interest has already begun to spread outside U.S. borders. Mr. Reynolds said the director of agriculture operations from Jose Cuervo has paid a visit from Guadalajara, Mexico, to see his plants.

Mr. Woolf, meanwhile, has been chatting with Revival Stillworks in Sidney, B.C., which designs distilleries across North America. Revival co-founder Brandon Fry has spent the past year researching tequila, the size and type of equipment required, and how much it might all cost to set up.

Revival is now working on two larger California distilleries, “and then a number of people have contacted us about smaller distilleries,” Mr. Fry said.

“We do believe that it’s going to be fairly popular.”

Those who are optimistic suggest California farmers could plant tens of thousands, or perhaps 100,000, acres of agave. This would be a hugely ambitious expansion, although modest compared with the state’s 710,000 acres of grapes and 1.5 million acres of almonds. (More than 300,000 acres of agave are grown in Mexico for tequila.)

Less clear is what use Californians could find for agave. Current levels of interest suggest a surge in output that could exceed distillation capacity, while relatively limited production capacity would mean “the spirits themselves are going to be very expensive for the foreseeable future,” said Clayton Szczech, a sociologist and author of A Field Guide to Tequila.

That’s not to mention the difficulty of making something people want to drink. “Fermenting agave is very different than fermenting other sugar sources,” Mr. Szczech said, adding that those in California are in a different environment, “where people haven’t been doing this for hundreds of years.”

Other products may also emerge. Agave, like corn, could be used to make biofuels. Its inulin may have value as an additive with the potential to sweeten food and improve mouth-feel.

“If it can be grown, California agribusiness will find a way to make it profitable,” Mr. Szczech said.

Whether the transformation of agave into fuel or booze actually cuts water use remains to be seen.

But there is a historical resonance to a drought-stricken state turning to agave, a plant that has helped humans “live in these rugged environments for 10,000 years,” Mr. Szczech said.

In many ways, though, agave is bringing California into unknown territory. Yolo agave yields a spirit that tastes different from both tequila and mezcal. The plant may, in fact, be a hybrid between Blue Weber and Espadín.

Which creates another question that doesn’t yet have a good answer: “What is a California agave spirit? How is it different? And what does it have to offer to the wider world of spirits?” asks Henry Tarmy, a founder of Ventura Spirits, a California craft distillery.

Ventura has begun to explore some of what that could mean. A penca spirit that is made from agave leaves yields a clear distillation with an intense floral character. A liqueur fashioned from agave aguamiel, the sweetened liquid extracted from cooked piñas, is a coffee-coloured concoction, sweet with notes of caramel and cacao. It’s the farthest thing from a margarita or the tequila-lime-salt combination that most people associate with agave.

“It steers headfirst into adventure,” says Hans Galindo, who works in the Ventura tasting room.

“Because we’re not making tequila, we don’t necessarily have to stay within the standards of tequila.”

Maybe, he says, it’s a taste of what California can do.

Trump’s potential tariffs could deal a blow to Mexico’s automobile factories

This article was written by Jack Ewing and was published in the Globe & Mail on November 13, 2024.

Employees work on the assembly line inside BMW’s factory near San Luis Potosi, Mexico, in October. The plant builds luxury sedans for the United States, Europe, China and dozens of other markets.

Until a few years ago there was not much in this patch of desert about 400 kilometres north of Mexico City but rattlesnakes, coyotes and cactuses. Today, it is gleaming evidence of the country’s growing importance as an auto producer.

In 2019, BMW completed a vast factory complex here, near the city of San Luis Potosi. As spotless and modern as any in Bavaria, the plant builds luxury sedans for the United States, Europe, China and dozens of other markets.

San Luis Potosi is one of several Mexican cities that have become little Detroits, producing Volkswagens, Audis, Mercedes, Fords, Nissans and Chevrolets. In the first nine months of this year, Mexican factories produced more than three million vehicles, of which two million were exported to the United States, according to the Mexican Automobile Industry Association.

But Mexico’s pivotal role in the global auto industry is now at risk. U.S. president-elect Donald Trump has threatened to impose punitive tariffs of 100 per cent or higher on cars from Mexico, which would violate a trade agreement his first administration negotiated with Canada and Mexico.

The consequences for the auto industry would be profound, affecting the price in the U.S. of popular models such as Ford Maverick pickups, Chevrolet Equinox SUVs and several variations of Ram trucks.

Mr. Trump has said the tariffs would encourage more automotive manufacturing in the U.S. And BMW executives say that the tariffs would hurt their business but that the plant in San Luis Potosi would still make financial sense for the company, because so many of the cars produced there are sold in other countries.

But the tariffs could severely disrupt suppliers, forcing them to move production between countries, which could lead to job losses and financial turmoil. The BMW factory in San Luis Potosi has 3,700 employees.

“If you torpedo the agreement, you’ re going to create more unemployed Mexicans, and what are they going to do?” said William Alan Reinsch, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who specializes in trade issues.

The city of San Luis Potosi, a sprawling jumble of cinder-block and brick buildings, doesn’t exactly scream “high-tech manufacturing hub.”

But BMW executives said that Mexico offered a deep pool of well-educated workers and suppliers. “You don’t only have skilled workers, but you have very motivated workers,” Ilka Horstmeier, a member of BMW’s management board whose responsibilities include labour relations, said during an interview in San Luis Potosi.

Labour representatives in the United States, who have pushed for higher tariffs, complain that Mexico’s lack of worker protections is one reason for its appeal. Traditionally, Mexican unions have answered to management and government officials rather than workers.

The first Trump administration pursued policies that many labour experts said had hurt workers and unions. But the administration’s officials did push for provisions in the United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, known as the USMCA, that required Mexico to make it easier for workers to form independent unions.

Mexican labour leaders have used the reform to organize autoworkers at companies such as General Motors Co. and Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., which has a large factory in San Luis Potosi.

“The law gives us tools to organize for better conditions,” Pablo Franco, a lawyer who represents La Liga Sindical Obrera Mexicana, an independent labour group, said in an interview.

But Mr. Franco also complained that the government had not done enough to ensure that workers were aware of their rights. Workers at most companies, including BMW, are not represented by independent unions.

The U.S., Mexico and Canada are scheduled to review the USMCA in 2026 and decide whether to extend the treaty.

BMW executives said the factory in San Luis Potosi made business sense no matter what officials from the three countries decide. They point out that much of the plant’s output goes to Brazil, other Latin American countries and China.

“Our decision on where we build plants is a long-term strategic decision made for at least 40 years,” Ms. Horstmeier said. But she added that the company much preferred open borders. “Whenever you put up trade barriers,” she said, “you harm yourself.”