On October 16, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said her government intends to tackle the collapse in blue agave prices and build a plan to support the farmers who grow the plant. According to Mezcalistas, agave fell from 32 pesos a kilo in 2018 to as little as one peso by 2024, and farmer leader Remberto Galván Cabrera estimates that 42,000 families depend on the crop for income. Sheinbaum blamed over-planting during the pandemic-era tequila boom. Agriculture minister Columba López is in talks with producers, but no budget, direct support or timeline has been confirmed.
Building MezcalSearch has made me pay close attention to where the agave in a bottle comes from. The boom years taught the industry an expensive lesson. When tequila sales were climbing, everyone planted. A crop that takes years to mature cannot be switched off when demand cools, and the farmers absorb the loss first. A drop of that size is not a correction. It erases the economics of growing agave at all.
Cheap agave can look like good news for brands, but I see it as a risk. Farmers who cannot cover their costs abandon fields or cut corners, and the supply that quality tequila depends on gets weaker for the next cycle. Sheinbaum also pointed to intermediaries and to conditions set by the Tequila Regulatory Council, which tells me any real fix will involve how agave is bought, not only how much of it is planted.
For drinkers, this is a reason to ask more about the bottle. At MezcalSearch we want people to discover brands by more than a label and a price, and knowing who grows the agave and whether they are paid fairly belongs in that picture. I will be watching whether the plan arrives with funding and a timeline, because a promise alone will not keep farmers in their fields.