Californians bet farming agave for spirits holds key to weathering drought and groundwater limits
Californians bet farming agave for spirits holds key to weathering drought and groundwater limits
Some California entrepreneurs and farmers are betting agave could be a promising crop for the state.
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.
And drinking mezcal into oblivion is one of the best rational options left
22I mean, yeah? It's better to grow crops that will readily thrive in the native climate, even and especially if that climate is shifting away from whatever you used to grow there.
18This isn't environmentalism, it's just shitty capitalism. "We can't grow these crops for profit anymore, so what other crop can we grow for profit?". Do we need more alcohol or do we need sustinece crops? Growing something just to grow something isn't the solution. Unless we want a repeat of "every other crop is corn because it pays the best but now we have more corn than ever needed".
6There 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
7Then 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.
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So what do you do for a living, because I almost guarantee your job is having an impact on the environment as well. I would rather them grow native, drought resistant (meaning low water intake) crops to make a living than not.
3Maybe we should stop trying to grow crops for cash in a desert. That's capitalism trying to squeeze value from everything. There is no need for this. It's purely to make money.
And what do you do for a living? Because I'm sure the question is just as stupidly pointless when directed at you. Your point?
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Sure, when there's no more food available, you might as well turn to booze.
2AP News really trying to white wash this into an upside. Dude just owns the land and sits on it for nothing and no reason and realizes he can produce this crop.
But what it made me think based on the headline was that Agave was going to replace Almonds. No lol.
Even in that fantasy... Californian farmers will stop growing almond trees if we buy... Luxury booze?
Screw everything about this article.
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