How Agave Agroforestry Can Restore Drylands and Strengthen Climate Resilience
From The Observatory
Source: Earth Food Life Project
The agave-powered agroforestry and livestock management system is an example of how native desert plants, cultivated as part of an agroforestry system, can regenerate drylands and provide inexpensive animal feed, taking pressure off overgrazed rangelands.
This adapted excerpt is from The Regenerative Agriculture Solution by Ronnie Cummins and André Leu (Chelsea Green, 2024) and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) by permission of the authors. It was adapted and produced for the web by Earth • Food • Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
“How Agave Agroforestry Can Restore Drylands and Strengthen Climate Resilience” by Ronnie Cummins and André Leu is licensed by the Observatory under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).
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Introduction
Sixty to seventy percent of Mexico’s terrain is classified as arid or semiarid desert, typically with no rain for eight to nine months a year. La pipa, the water truck, brings enough water to supply farms for a day or two at most. Meanwhile, 86 percent of Mexican farmers lack a well and are unlikely to have one. In arid and semiarid drylands, deep irrigation wells are very expensive, water rights are hard to obtain, and many, if not most, underground aquifers are overexploited. This makes it very difficult to provide livestock with forage during the dry season.
Purchasing hay and alfalfa is expensive, especially given the low-to-nonexistent market for livestock products produced by subsistence farmers. Many traditional dryland farmers are still planting corn at the beginning of the rainy season—in June or July—but the lack of a dependable irrigation system, droughts, and unpredictable rainfall mean that the country doesn’t even get mature mazorcas or corncobs most years. The harvest, usually limited to corn stalks or rastrojo, can be fed to animals during the dry season, but it requires considerable work and expense for what is ultimately a low-quality feed supplement.
Typically, only large landowners or agro-export farms have irrigation wells, while smaller farms must rely mostly on rainfall. In addition to the high costs of buying water rights and drilling down 650 feet or more to hit water, most aquifers in the regional La Independencia watershed are depleted and/or contaminated with heavy metals.
In the mid-2010s, the 75-acre Vía Orgánica Agroecology Center and research farm prided itself on maintaining its greenhouses and gardens, pastures, and wooded nature refuge area without a well. However, after expanding the market gardens and milpa (corn, beans, and squash) and starting to reforest the land, the organization began spending several thousand dollars a week during the dry season on water truck deliveries just to stay afloat. Geographers and climate scientists have described the prolonged drying of the southwestern United States and northern Mexico as a climate-driven “megadrought,” with some studies concluding the region is experiencing its driest conditions in at least 1,200 years.
The costs of organic grain (for the poultry and pigs) and alfalfa and hay (for the other animals) during the long dry season are unsustainable. It has led many farmers in our area to largely abandon their corn fields or milpas. Their main agricultural pursuit is to put their routinely malnourished animals out to fend for themselves on the sparse vegetation of their shared (eroded and badly overgrazed) communal rangelands (ejidos).
More than half of Mexico’s 450-million-acre land base is composed of communally owned ejidos, a transformation that occurred after the Mexican Revolution of 1910–1920, when most of the large colonial plantations or estates were broken up and distributed among the nation’s small farmer communities. Most of Mexico’s 28,000 ejidos, however, are situated on semiarid and arid lands—deforested, eroded, and overgrazed, usually with no year-round water sources or irrigation. Overgrazing on the brittle lands has created a vicious cycle of degradation—fewer plants, less forage, high runoff and low water retention, soil erosion, and fewer vital minerals —amplified by climate change.
Solution to the Animal Feed Problem
A chance meeting between Ronnie Cummins and Dr. Juan Frias, a retired university professor and a noted expert on agaves and mesquite trees, however, led to a conversation about how the agave plant could be the solution to all the problems being faced by farmers in Mexico and could be used to regenerate agricultural soils, reduce erosion, and improve water capture.
“Ronnie,” Frias asked, “have you ever heard of pruning and finely chopping up the pencas of these maguey (agaves)? With a machine, you can shred them up finely, and then after fermenting the pencas anaerobically in closed containers, you can use the fermented agave silage as animal feed.” Rather surprised to hear this, Cummins replied that he had not.
Frias told Cummins about a goat and lamb ranch in San Luis de la Paz, called Hacienda Zamarripa, where the Flores González brothers have been planting and intercropping agaves and mesquite trees for over a decade, reforesting the parched agostadero (rangeland) and producing tons of fermented agave silage, which they feed to their animals as a primary forage. Their animals “survive and thrive solely on a diet of fermented agave and their mothers’ milk, while 80 percent of the adult animals’ diets are supplied by the fermented leaves of the agave.”
Frias further explained that the production costs of this fermented agave are about 1 peso (5 cents) per kilo (2.2 pounds), making it the cheapest animal silage in Mexico, if not the world. The use of agave forage as a major part of the animals’ diets, Frias explained, can eliminate overgrazing (the animals can graze for several hours a day instead of all day) and thereby help restore the rangelands during the dry season.
Juan went on: “According to the U.S. agave expert, Dr. Park Nobel, agaves can draw down and sequester more atmospheric carbon than almost any other plant or tree on Earth. And, of course, agaves can do all this with no irrigation whatsoever.”
If billions of agaves and companion trees could be grown and interplanted across millions of acres of degraded rangelands, they could conceivably draw down a critical mass of excess carbon from the atmosphere (where too much CO2 contributes to climate change), transferring it into the plants and trees above ground, and into the soil below ground, where it belongs. By greening deserts and drylands, these systems can dramatically increase soil fertility, retain and store rainfall, restore landscapes and biodiversity, reforest semidesert areas, regenerate rural livelihoods, and eventually restabilize the climate.
A visit to Hacienda Zamarripa revealed that the Zamarripa agaves were the same native varieties used for pulque at Vía Orgánica. Juan explained that these varieties grow throughout much of Mexico. Juan explained that an agroforestry system like Zamarripa’s—containing 2,000 agaves and 400 nitrogen-fixing trees for every 2.5 acres—could produce massive amounts of silage while maintaining a sustainable balance of nitrogen and nutrients in the soil.
Agave and the Beginnings of an Agricultural Revolution
Over the years, in San Miguel and Mexico City, Vía Orgánica became a leader in the anti-GMO and pro-organic movement in Mexico. The organization’s staff, comprising Mexican citizens and international volunteers, grew to 70 people. The organization operated an organic restaurant, grocery store, website, newsletter, and farm school, gaining recognition and support from farmers and consumers alike. However, until the organization discovered ‘agave power,’ our efforts to spark an organic agricultural revolution were limited, despite their well-intention.
André Leu later visited San Miguel de Allende from Australia to evaluate the reported benefits, yields, and improvements firsthand. By then, Ronnie Cummins had already begun trialing the agave agroforestry system by planting many acres with agaves and mesquite trees. Cummins and Juan Frias showed Leu the planted fields during the dry season, when the livestock were penned up for the evening and being fed silage. The animals readily consumed it and appeared to be in excellent condition, suggesting that the fermentation process had transformed formerly inedible plants into nutritious feed.
Most ecosystems experience periods of low pasture growth during cool, dry seasons due to overgrazing, leading to environmental degradation. Fermented forage, such as silage, can be used as feed during these periods to take animals off pastures and native ecosystems, allowing them time to recover. Recovery time is essential to successful regenerative grazing systems. During these periods, livestock often lose body condition due to a lack of feed. Agave and mesquite silage benefited both the environment and the livestock. This system filled a significant gap in the evolving area of agroforestry and silvopastoral systems.
Agave agroforestry can readily be scaled up on hundreds of millions of acres of underutilized or nonproductive landscapes, transforming currently degraded, deforested, overgrazed, and poverty-ridden lands. These are the lands that will never be able to sustain adequate food production, livestock, animal husbandry, or incomes for the billions of people who live there, unless farmers and ranchers are motivated (and paid) to restore their lands and deploy this game-changing agroforestry system.
Very significantly, it can be scaled up to all continents using their endemic legume trees. There are thousands of species of legume trees. Every continent—Africa, Australia, Eurasia, North America, and South America—has several hundred species adapted to its arid, semiarid, and higher-rainfall regions.
Deep-rooted legume trees, such as mesquite, acacia, sesbania, inga, leucaena, and faidherbia, offer an effective way to drought-proof drylands and dry seasons, as their roots extend deeper into the soil than those of grasses, allowing them to access water. Agaves require no irrigation. They efficiently store seasonal rainfall and atmospheric moisture in their thick leaves, stems, or hearts. This enables the plant to grow and produce significant biomass even under prolonged droughts. Since various agave species are naturalized across all continents, scaling up this agroforestry system with native legume trees and agaves will not pose an environmental weed problem. Cover crops and perennial pastures can be planted to increase fodder production and improve soil fertility.
The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification states that 500 million pastoralists herd their animals across highly diverse, grass-dominated rangelands that cover more than half the Earth’s land surface.
Most of these rangelands are unsuitable for annual crops as tillage erodes and damages the soil. In many cases, the amount and timing of rainfall are inadequate to grow row crops such as grains, fruits, and vegetables without irrigation. Many of these ecosystems have been badly degraded by overgrazing, resulting in eroded, human-created desert landscapes, and animals are kept in poor condition during drier periods due to a lack of feed.
By implementing these agroforestry practices, farmers and ranchers can begin to regenerate arid landscapes and improve the health and productivity of their livestock. The advantage of the agave agroforestry system is that, apart from watering the seedlings at initial planting, it requires no further irrigation. After several years, the agroforestry system can provide affordable food and income for families, improving their livelihoods.
It also delivers valuable ecosystem functions such as reducing soil erosion, recharging water tables, and drawing down and storing large amounts of atmospheric carbon dioxide in plant biomass and soils, both above and below the ground.
Agave and other agroforestry systems can end hunger, poverty, conflict, and environmental degradation by regenerating endemic native plant and animal biodiversity, providing food and income for residents. Scaling them up is also an effective strategy for mitigating and adapting to climate change.
Deforestation
Anthropogenic greenhouse gases are just one type of climate forcing. Forests, vegetation cover, and soils profoundly affect local and global temperatures, water vapor transpiration, and atmospheric and terrestrial hydrology. Forests absorb heat and energy through photosynthesis, shade the ground, and cool the planet through transpiration.
Deforestation results in the land absorbing sunlight and heating up, making this a significant climate forcing. According to Our World in Data, 1.5 billion hectares (3.7 billion acres) of forest have been cleared over the last 300 years—since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. That’s equivalent to an area 1.5 times the size of the United States. Ten million hectares (25 million acres) of forest are destroyed every year. Ninety-five percent of this deforestation occurs in the tropics.
The European Investment Bank estimates that around 15 to 18 million hectares (up to 45 million acres) of forest are destroyed each year, with 2,400 trees cut down every minute.
This loss of forest cover is a significant contributor to increasing global temperatures. A high proportion of this deforestation is driven by consumers in the world’s richest countries: Cleared land is used to produce soy and maize to feed cruel, confined animal feeding operations (factory farms) in Western Europe and East Asia.
These feeding systems are incredibly inefficient. Industrial livestock systems require substantially more land, feed, and water than plant-based food production. There is no justification for clearing these forests to “feed the world” when they do not resolve food insecurity.
Industrial agriculture poses an existential threat to the planet through deforestation, biodiversity loss, toxic chemicals, soil loss, eutrophication, and greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, industrial agriculture is directly and indirectly responsible for nearly 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions.
So far, mainstream solutions have not made any difference to the emissions rate, which continues to increase. The International Energy Agency projects that achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 will require a dramatic increase in renewable energy capacity, including significant expansions in solar and wind power worldwide. At industrial scales, however, these transitions could also intensify ecosystem loss, mining pressures, land-use conflicts, and other forms of environmental damage.
Regenerative Farming
The good news is that multiple examples of regenerative agricultural systems are being scaled up globally to restore biodiversity, strengthen communities, improve climate resilience, and support our health. This is not a complex, impractical academic dream or a long-winded proposal by bureaucrats. It is happening with minimal support from government, academia, or industry. Regenerative agriculture is a grassroots revolution pioneered mainly by farmers and ranchers.
Most people are familiar with the (now overused) term “sustainable,” which characterizes practices that maintain resources and the environment without degrading them. In an already degraded system, however, it is necessary to do more than sustain the status quo: We need to set it on the path to healing—or regeneration. Regenerative systems, therefore, not only sustain existing systems but also improve them. For agriculture and environmental management, this means improving the welfare of soil, plants, and animals, as well as human health and community well-being. Significantly, it includes practices that increase resilience to climate change–induced weather impacts and reduce production costs while ensuring reasonable returns to farmers and land managers. This ability to improve climate change adaptation and economic viability is essential for the future of agriculture and ecosystem regeneration.
The opposite of regenerative is degenerative. This is an essential distinction for agricultural activities. Agricultural systems that use degenerative practices and inputs damage the environment, soil, health, genes, and communities and involve animal cruelty, are not regenerative, and never will be (no matter how much they’re greenwashed). The use of synthetic toxic pesticides, synthetic water-soluble fertilizers, and GMOs, the clearing of ecosystems, confined animal feeding operations; exploitative marketing and wage systems, and destructive tillage systems are examples of degenerative practices.
Regenerative agriculture, on the other hand, includes farming systems that use techniques such as longer rotations, cover crops, green manures, legumes, compost, and organic fertilizers. More specifically, regenerative agriculture maximizes plant photosynthesis to capture CO2 and sequester it as soil organic matter (SOM). It can be applied to all agricultural sectors, including cropping, grazing, and perennial horticulture. It is used as an umbrella term for a range of systems, including organic agriculture, agroforestry, agroecology, permaculture, adaptive multi-paddock grazing, silvopasture, analog forestry, syntropic farming, pasture cropping, and other agricultural systems that can increase SOM.
Regeneration International asserts that to heal our planet, all agricultural systems should be regenerative, organic, and based on the science of agroecology.
Although the different practices may differ—and often overlap—they share the use of highly biodiverse perennial plants and animals in farming systems, rather than seasonal monocultures, often scaled to create new permanent agroecosystems that regenerate landscapes and their communities.
For example, the agave agroforestry system is designed to regenerate degraded arid and semiarid regions. Numerous other agroforestry systems have been developed for all climates and soil types.
Agave agroforestry systems, along with other game-changing best practices in organic and regenerative farming and forestry, can be financed and scaled up in Mexico and across the world.
Agave Power
The agave-powered agroforestry and livestock management system demonstrates how long-overlooked native desert plants can regenerate drylands, provide inexpensive animal feed, reduce pressure on overgrazed rangelands, improve animal health, rehydrate soils, and alleviate rural poverty.
Moving beyond conventional monoculture and chemical-intensive farming practices, and combining traditional Indigenous knowledge of native desert plants with natural fermentation, Mexico-based farmers have learned to reforest and green their drylands, all without irrigation or expensive, toxic agricultural inputs.
