Industry & Environment
The agave plant has spent millions of years learning to make do with very little water. Its architecture is built for scarcity: thick, waxy cuticles that slow evaporation; a root system that spreads wide and shallow to capture rainfall before it disappears into dry soil; and a photosynthesis strategy called CAM (crassulacean acid metabolism) that allows the plant to open its stomata at night, when temperatures drop and moisture loss slows. In the wild, a mature agave in the Central Valleys of Oaxaca or the volcanic highlands of Jalisco can endure extended drought and still arrive at maturity, battered but intact.
The plant itself, in other words, has solved its water problem. The industry built around it has not.
Water is threaded through every stage of agave spirits production, from the fields where agaves grow to the bottles that leave the distillery. And as Mexico reckons with growing water scarcity, a booming export market, expanded production footprints, and the compounding pressures of climate change, the question of who gets water, how much they use, and what they return to the environment is no longer a secondary concern. It is becoming central to the long-term viability of the industry.
How Water Moves Through Production
To understand the water stakes, it helps to trace water through the production process from beginning to end.
In the field, the picture is relatively favorable. Agaves are among the most water-efficient crops in the world. Traditional highland blue agave cultivation in Jalisco’s Los Altos region has long relied on seasonal rainfall rather than irrigation, and wild-harvested agave species used in traditional mezcal and other regional spirits require no irrigation at all. Where irrigation enters the picture most significantly is in lowland tequila production, where cultivated fields are increasingly watered to accelerate growth or stabilize yields during dry years. Some cultivated espadin production in Oaxaca’s drier valleys also depends on supplemental irrigation. These practices reflect economic logic, but they put new pressure on local water supplies.
The heavier water demands come at the distillery. Cooking agave, whether in traditional stone-lined hornos, aboveground brick ovens, or industrial autoclaves, requires substantial quantities of steam or hot water. Fermentation requires water to hydrate the mash to the right consistency. Distillation requires cooling water to bring vapor back to liquid in the condensers. And most producers must dilute their distillate with water to reach the bottling proof specified by their category’s NOM. Beyond production itself, distilleries consume water for cleaning and sanitation, which in any food and beverage operation is a substantial, ongoing demand.
But it is what leaves the distillery, not what enters it, that has attracted the most attention from regulators and environmental advocates. Vinaza, the acidic, nutrient-rich liquid that remains after distillation, is produced in large volumes relative to finished spirit. It has high biological oxygen demand, meaning that when it enters waterways, microorganisms consuming it rapidly deplete dissolved oxygen, suffocating aquatic life. Improperly managed vinaza has been a documented contributor to pollution in Jalisco’s river systems for decades. The Santiago River, which drains much of the tequila-producing corridor before emptying into the Pacific, has ranked among the most contaminated rivers in Mexico, with industrial effluent from multiple sources, distillery waste among them, contributing to conditions that have at times rendered the river nearly lifeless in stretches.
Mexico’s Water Rights Framework
Water in Mexico is a federal resource, governed by the Ley de Aguas Nacionales and administered by CONAGUA, the Comision Nacional del Agua. Producers who draw from rivers, streams, or underground aquifers must hold a concession title granted by CONAGUA specifying how much water they are authorized to extract and from what source. In theory, this framework ensures that water use is tracked and limited. In practice, enforcement is inconsistent, data on actual extraction volumes is incomplete, and the concession system has historically granted rights in excess of what aquifers and surface systems can sustainably provide.
Mexico has 653 aquifers mapped by CONAGUA. A significant number of those underlying major agave-producing regions have been classified as over-exploited, meaning extraction rates exceed natural recharge rates. Groundwater levels are declining. For distilleries and farms dependent on wells, this is not a distant risk. It is an existing trend with a trajectory that worries hydrologists and producers who have been paying attention.
The tequila-producing region of Jalisco sits atop aquifer systems that support not only the spirits industry but also municipal water supplies for Guadalajara, one of Mexico’s largest cities, and agricultural operations across the state. Competition for access to those resources is intensifying. As urban populations grow, as agriculture expands, and as the tequila industry continues its upward production curve, the fraction available to any one user is subject to renegotiation, both politically and practically, as water tables drop.
Region by Region
The dynamics are not uniform across Mexico’s agave-producing geography.
In Jalisco, the concentration of large industrial producers means high aggregate water demand, significant effluent volumes, and infrastructure to manage them, though management quality varies substantially. Larger CRT-certified producers face scrutiny from regulators and, increasingly, from international buyers with sustainability procurement requirements. Some have made genuine investments in closed-loop water systems, vinaza biodigestion, and effluent treatment. Others have not.
In Oaxaca, mezcal production is more fragmented, with hundreds of small palenques scattered across the Central Valleys, the Sierra Sur, and other sub-regions. Water scarcity in Oaxaca is a multi-sector crisis, driven by land use change, deforestation, and rainfall variability, with mezcal production representing one draw among many competing for limited groundwater. For many small producers, the practical question is not environmental compliance but daily logistics: some palenques haul water significant distances during dry months to keep production running.
In Sonora, bacanora producers working with Agave pacifica operate in one of the most arid environments where agave spirits are legally produced. The water constraints there are extreme, which has historically kept production volumes modest and, perversely, kept the industry’s aggregate water footprint small. Similar dynamics apply to sotol production in the high desert of Chihuahua, Coahuila, and Durango, where Dasylirion wheeleri grows in landscapes where water scarcity is simply assumed and production scales have remained limited.
The Climate Variable
Layered over existing pressures is climate change, which is reshaping rainfall patterns across Mexico in ways that are already affecting agave cultivation and will continue to do so.
Agave’s long maturation cycle, anywhere from six to thirty or more years depending on species and conditions, means the plants in fields today were established under conditions that no longer fully apply. Changes in the timing and volume of seasonal rainfall affect not only yield and piña size but also the timing of harvest decisions, the availability of water for production, and the risk of drought stress events that can weaken or kill mature plants before harvest.
In some highland areas, producers report that the rainy season has become less predictable, with longer dry stretches within what was historically a reliable rainfall window. In others, more intense episodic rain events are causing erosion on slopes where agave fields and wild populations have traditionally been stable. These are not projections. They are conditions producers are navigating right now.
What Producers Are Doing
Some producers have taken meaningful steps. Closed-loop condenser water systems that recirculate rather than discharge cooling water have become more common, particularly among larger operations where the capital investment is easier to justify. Vinaza composting programs, in which distillation waste is composted or applied as organic fertilizer rather than discharged, address both the pollution problem and the cost of synthetic fertilizer. Biodigestion systems that convert vinaza into biogas for energy recovery represent a more sophisticated approach that a smaller number of larger producers have implemented.
Rainwater capture and storage infrastructure, while not a solution at industrial scale, is meaningful for smaller producers in areas with seasonal rainfall. And some producers have voluntarily engaged with third-party certification programs that include water stewardship components, going beyond what the tequila and mezcal NOMs currently require.
Those NOMs, it should be said, are notably silent on water efficiency and treatment. NOM-006-SCFI, governing tequila, and NOM-070-SCFI, governing mezcal, establish standards for production methods, geographic origin, raw materials, and labeling. They do not set mandatory water use benchmarks, effluent quality standards specific to distillery discharge, or requirements for water accounting. Environmental law applies, but the sector-specific standards that shape so much of how these industries operate have not addressed water as a central concern.
What Buyers and Consumers Should Know
For buyers and consumers who want to understand the water dimensions of what they are purchasing, the information landscape is thin. Water footprint data for individual producers is rarely published, and the category certifications that signal something meaningful about production practices do not consistently include water criteria.
A few signals are worth noting. Small-scale traditional producers using wild or semi-wild agave and relying on rainfall rather than irrigation generally represent a lighter water footprint on the agricultural side, though this tells you nothing about how they manage process water and effluent at the distillery. Producers who have voluntarily disclosed information about water management, whether through sustainability reports, third-party audits, or responses to buyer questionnaires, at least signal awareness of the issue and are worth engaging with directly.
The larger industrial producers, despite their aggregate scale, often have the resources to implement meaningful effluent treatment and water recycling, and some have done so. The assumption that small automatically means more sustainable does not hold universally when it comes to water.
A Longer Reckoning
The agave industry’s water story is not a crisis that appeared overnight, and it will not resolve quickly. Mexico’s water governance challenges, the infrastructure gap in effluent treatment, the pace of aquifer depletion, and the long lead times in agave cultivation make this a problem that will compound over years and decades, not months.
What is changing is awareness. International buyers are asking questions they did not ask five years ago. Regulators are under pressure, from communities, from NGOs, and from the weight of hydrological evidence, to take water extraction and pollution more seriously. And some producers, understanding that water scarcity is ultimately a business continuity issue, are beginning to treat it that way.
The agave plant figured out water millions of years ago. The industry still has some catching up to do.