Mezcal boom in U.S. boosts profits in Oaxaca while straining Mexico’s forests

In Mexico’s Oaxacan Central Valleys, the mezcal boom that has brought the smoky spirit to bars in the United States has also altered the countryside that supplies it. In rural communities, producers describe a shift from small-scale traditions toward a more industrialized model that, they say, is straining forests, soils, and water systems. The regulatory numbers and a study cited by researchers show how fast agave acreage has grown—alongside warnings about the environmental consequences of that expansion.

Thirty years ago in San Pedro Totolapam, women like Gladys Sánchez Garnica said her family’s mezcal distillery operated on a small, neighbor-to-neighbor scale. Garnica, speaking from a women-owned distillery, said producers were “taught when to harvest agave, how to care for the soil, and how much we could ask of the forest.” She described a time when the work ran through the night and neighbors arrived to taste the spirit that locals associated with smoke and community gatherings.

Today, Garnica said that small-scale tradition exists alongside a global boom that transformed mezcal into a major industry dominated by international brands. She pointed to how agave plantations have spread along roads to producing communities such as San Luis del Rio, where celebrity-linked labels like Dos Hombres—created by actors Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul from “Breaking Bad”—are made. While producers say the boom has created economic opportunities, they also say it has driven environmental costs by replacing forested areas.

COMERCAM, Mexico’s mezcal regulatory body, put the growth in production at about 1 million liters in 2010 rising to more than 11 million liters in 2024. The agency’s figures also show that nearly all production remains in Oaxaca, with less than 30% staying in Mexico and about 75% of exports going to the United States. In the two largest mezcal-producing regions of Oaxaca, researchers found that land conversion accelerated over decades, as forests and farmland made way for agave.

A study led by Rufino Sandoval-García, a professor at the Technological University of the Central Valley of Oaxaca, reported that more than 34,953 hectares of tropical dry and pine oak forests were lost in 27 years in the two areas studied, equating the area to roughly the size of the U.S. city of Detroit. The study also found that agave plantations expanded by over 400% over the past three decades, increasingly replacing forests and farmland with espadin—an agave variety used for much commercial mezcal. Sandoval-García said the environmental changes are taking time to undo, telling reporters, “It will take a long time for the ecosystem to recover the resilience it once had.”

Producers and the study’s authors also described downstream impacts tied to plantation expansion and production practices. They said agave cultivation contributes to soil erosion, reduces by 4 million tons per year the amount of carbon dioxide captured by forests, limits the land’s ability to recharge groundwater, and can create heat islands in heavily planted areas. They also described how mezcal production depends on water and generates waste, including bagazo—the pulpy residue after juice extraction—and vinazas, or wastewater, which they said is often dumped untreated into rivers.

In Santiago Matatlán, Félix Monterrosa, a third-generation producer who owns Oaxacan brand CUISH, said the industrial mezcal boom displaced the milpa system he learned from ancestors, in which corn, beans, and pumpkin grew alongside agave. Monterrosa said “Now everything is monoculture, and that is the real problem,” adding that in his community, decades of dumping mezcal waste into a river left it so polluted that residents nicknamed it the “Nilo,” short for “ni lo huelas.” He said he now plants wild agaves alongside corn and trees to restore biodiversity, though he said scaling that approach remains a challenge.

Water scarcity is also a growing concern for producers, particularly as drought conditions worsen. Oaxaca experienced its worst drought in more than a decade in 2024, according to Mexico’s National Water Commission. Armando Martínez Ruiz, a producer in Soledad Salinas who sells his mezcal to the Mexican brand Amaras, said he installed a system to cool and reuse water during distillation because “We never had enough water here, so I try not to waste it.”

Some producers also fault the way contracts work between major companies and smaller distilleries, saying sustainability commitments highlighted by large brands do not always translate into support on the ground. They said third-party contracts often limit companies to buying mezcal in bulk, with producers receiving little help for the costs of raw materials, workers’ wages, or maintaining distilleries. Del Maguey, one of the world’s top-selling mezcal brands, said it has sought to reduce its environmental footprint by planting trees and investing in waste reuse, including reusing more than 5,000 tons of bagazo and 2 million liters of vinaza over the past five years to build a raised platform at a distillery in San Luis del Rio, according to its head of sustainability, Gabriel Bonfanti.

For some communities, mezcal income is also described as an economic lifeline. Luis Cruz Velasco, a producer from San Luis del Rio who works with Mexican brands like Bruxo, said growth created jobs for nearly every family in his town of about 300 residents, and that mezcal income has helped siblings attend university. Velasco said the criticism he hears about reforestation ignores what families need for food and livelihoods, adding, “But we have to look for a livelihood and food.”

Environmental advocates and local officials say public policy has not kept pace with the expansion. In Oaxaca, converting forest into agave plantations requires federal approval from Mexico’s Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources, but they said the process can be slow and bureaucratic enough that some communities bypass it. Helena Iturribarria from Tierra de Agaves, a conservation project focused on reforesting parts of Oaxaca’s valleys and promoting sustainable agave production, said communities can choose to bypass permits. The Secretary of Environment said in a statement it had not received requests for forest clearing for agave cultivation in the past three years in Oaxaca, and also said it was investigating nine public complaints filed since 2021 over illegal land clearing for mezcal production.

Some producers are trying to address the environmental concerns through community-led efforts. In 2018, Garnica said she founded a collective of women called the “Guardians of Mezcal,” promoting mezcal produced by women using sustainable practices such as using only fallen trees for firewood and planting agave alongside other crops. With help from Tierra de Agaves, Guardians of Mezcal and local officials from Santa Maria Zoquitlan, the group helped secure “projected status” for 26,000 hectares of forest surrounding the town. Garnica said mezcal remains woven into everyday life—linked to funerals, weddings, and parties—and said many families depend on it.