Leo Ortega started growing spiky blue agave plants on the arid hillsides around his Southern California home because his wife liked the way they looked.
A decade later, his property is now dotted with thousands of what he and others hope is a promising new crop for the state following years of punishing drought and a push to scale back on groundwater pumping.
The 49-year-old mechanical engineer is one of a growing number of Californians planting agave to be harvested and used to make spirits, much like the way tequila and mezcal are made in Mexico. The trend is fueled by the need to find hardy crops that don’t need much water and a booming appetite for premium alcoholic beverages since the COVID-19 pandemic.
There aren’t many sustenance crops that grow well in the desert, things aren’t meant to live there. We shouldn’t be there but it’s going to be hard to move the 50 million people or so we have in the American desert out of it
Then maybe, crazy idea, we should stop trying to grow crops in areas where it’s not adapted for it, instead of insisting that we import water in from other states to meet our needs while we grow non essential crops. We’re walking around with a hammer seeing every problem as a nail. Crops aren’t needed everywhere. Especially when they’re non food/textile producing ones that are literally used to just get drunk.
Just for clarity agave can be used as a sweetener, edible, it’s fibers can be used in textiles, can be made into soap, and has some medicinal uses. Once the market saturates with spirits it’s other uses will likely be marketed to fully utilize crop yields.