Episode 63: Growing Agaves
“The agave plant is a very smart plant. It opens the stomates at night and then it closes them during the day, so it doesn’t lose the moisture that it has. It is conservation at its best.”
“It is a really nascent industry here in California. There are a lot of questions right now about what are our needs and how should we organize and what research is most useful for us and even what voices should be represented. ”
A conversation with California agave growers Ofelia Lichtenheld (East San Diego County) and Jordie Ricigliano (Central Coast) about opportunities and challenges for agave production. Released December 6, 2024.
guests on the show
Ofelia Lichtenheld
Ofelia Lichtenheld, a Cal Poly Pomona-educated agronomist, dedicated most of her professional career to working with next-generation plant technology in a biotech company in Southern California. Alongside her corporate endeavors, she served as a professor at the School of Agriculture at the Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara and the Monterrey Institute of Technology (ITESM), Campus Guadalajara.
In 2010, Ofelia embarked on agave farming with a 5-acre plot in Tucson, AZ. After selling this farm, she continued agave cultivation upon moving to Phoenix, AZ.
Following her retirement, she sold her Phoenix agave farm and acquired 210 acres in East San Diego County, California. There, she diversified her crops with olives, wine grapes, and stone fruit trees. However, faced with California's severe mega-droughts, Ofelia transitioned to increase her agave plantation. Currently, she grows multiple agave varieties on her San Diego County farm.
Jordie Ricigliano
Jordie is a trained wine educator (dipWSET) and applies her deep knowledge of terroir and tasting profiles to her passion for agave spirits. Together with her partner Luis Velazquez, she founded Los Hijuelos, a farming management and consulting company focused on cultivating agaves along California's Central Coast. It is her hope to make agave distillates and products as varied and expressive as the landscapes they grow on.
TRANSCRIPT
Sam Sandoval
Bienvenidos. Today, we are excited to have the opportunity to talk with two agave women growers in California, Jordie Ricigliano, agave grower of Los Hijuelos, the offspring, and Ofelia Lichtenheld from The Agave Farm, born in Mexico, raised in California. Both of them are members of the California Agave Alliance and the Agave Women Growers Group. I invited them for many different reasons. One, there is a lot of conversation about agave, production of agave in the United States and in California. We know that there is some growth from Texas all the way to California, in the south part of the United States. So Mallika, Faith, tell me what are you looking forward to in this episode?
Faith Kearns
I think it's super interesting talking with people who are in the midst of developing a market for a product, an agricultural product, in California. I feel like a lot of the commodity groups are already pretty well established, right? The Almond Board, etc. And so it's really interesting to see what it takes, from the very beginning, for a group to evolve into being able to bring products to market. And you know, a lot of the questions that arise around who gets to do that, and how they get to do it, and both the rules of doing it, and the subtle, informal rules of what it really takes to make a new market for a new product in California.
Mallika Nocco
Absolutely, Faith. I'm super interested in this too, and I work with a lot of commodity groups on their agricultural water management side, but most of the commodity groups that I have worked with are very well established. So it's actually very exciting to talk to growers who are in the midst of organizing and making these decisions around the identity of a crop or a commodity group and what the products are going to be, what the markets are going to be, all of that.
The other complete nerd reason, actually, I have a nerd reason that I'm excited for this, which is just as a crop, agave is really interesting. It's not like a lot of the crops that are grown in the United States. I was thinking about how it uses a type of photosynthesis called CAM photosynthesis, which is when the stomata, which are the pores on the leaves, instead of being open during the day, are open at night and they close during the day. And this is actually an adaptation for saving water and also to the heat, to aridity. So as a plant, it's just a very fascinating plant.
I think I looked it up, and I was like what are the CAM crops out there that use this type of photosynthesis, and pineapple is another crop that we know that uses that type of photosynthesis and agave. So, yeah, the nerd part of me loves, loves to think about just what it means to cultivate a crop that's so different, and I think we'll hear some of the differences about it just as a plant that are very fascinating.
And then the other thing I was thinking about is we usually do a wine and water episode on Water Talk every season, and now we're doing an agave spirit episode, and we're not talking about it, you know, completely or solely as a spirit. I think we will explore other uses for the plant, but I'm always interested in it as a spirit that I know Sam very much, is an aficionado as well.
Sam Sandoval
Today I even brought my agave guayabera, my agave t-shirt. I'm really wearing the colors of the team.
There are a lot of subtleties that the small farmers, that diverse farmers are facing, regardless of commodity groups, that we might not be aware of, so I think that's good to bring this to the attention of the audience. And the other one is that if you are an agave spirit and tequila, Mezcal aficionado, well, you just got into the right podcast. So without further ado, let's talk with them. So bienvenidas de nuevo, I think I would like to ask you both, can you share with us your path towards becoming a farm owner or a service provider consultant?
Jordie Ricigliano
My path towards farming has really been a circuitous one. I have always loved plants and agriculture. I grew up on a dairy farm in a very small town in Washington state, so most of my childhood was spent in the orchards or on horseback, but the focus for most of my adult life was understanding plants and agriculture through an intellectual and an academic lens. So in college, I majored in environmental studies and sociology with the hope of becoming an environmental journalist.
When I moved to California about 12 years ago, I started working in the wine industry here in between many an unpaid journalism internship, and found that I really loved what was happening here on the Central Coast in wine. It was a really exciting time socially and environmentally in the wine industry and there was a lot of momentum behind the industry at the time in terms of a lot of environmental certifications that were coming about. There was a proliferation of small wine growers and small wine makers that were experimenting with new varieties and very new and very old techniques in wine making.
And very important for me, Santa Barbara is actually one of the places that has the highest per capita rate of female vitners in the world, somewhere around 10 to 12%, so I got a chance to see that firsthand and to really see the abundance of how micro climates could translate into very specific, very unique expressions of of wine. But you know, as my passion for wine unfolded, so too did my curiosity for other spirits that really speak to place, which led me to Mezcal and specifically to Oaxaca.
So in 2016 I took my first trip down to Oaxaca and met some people and some agaves that just opened my eyes to the world of agave and mezcales, and it really is a whole world in its own right. So shortly after that trip, my partner and I just happened upon a blooming tequila plant in our neighborhood, and we harvested some of the bubeles, which are the little, small plants that you will see at the very top of a blooming stock of an agave plant. And we took them back to our home, and we just rooted them in our windows, in our window sill, and before we knew it, we had hundreds, and then soon 1000s of agaves growing in our small apartment in downtown Santa Barbara.
So we decided we either needed to find land or partner with somebody who had land. And so that's how the journey began. We now work with three different properties and partners here on the Central Coast, growing agaves in three very different micro climates. So kind of fun that what started as our shortcoming, our lack of land, to be able to grow here in Santa Barbara, has actually kind of become our biggest strength, because we really get to understand that sense of terroir, of what grows well, we’re in three totally different microclimates and three entirely different soil subsets. So very excited to be working with the agaves, but definitely it's been a circuitous path to get here.
Sam Sandoval
What about you, Ofelia?
Ofelia Lichtenheld
Well, I was born a farmer. Actually, I have been a farmer all my life. I'm coming from very humble beginnings, from Mexico. My mother had 12 kids. So she raised 12 kids, growing our own food. We all participated in growing our own food. I learned to farm by doing it, and then it was just natural for me that I will study agriculture, because it is in my heart, and I became an agronomist, and I wanted to grow food for other people, and my goals were to educate other people to grow their own food. So when I graduated from college, I didn't really work in the fields. I worked in a biotech company, and I was growing algae. And then when I retire, yes, I became a farmer. It is in my heart. So that's how I became a farmer. And I hope, till my last breath, when I'm a hundred and five years old, I'm still gonna be farming.
Sam Sandoval
And I'm sure you will, Ofelia, I'm really sure you will. And so let me just jump right into the topic. When you decided to grow agave in California, what motivated you? Let's start with you, Ofelia.
Ofelia Lichtenheld
First, these two reasons. I grew up with agaves. It's in my heritage, and I love the plant, but when the mega drought came to California, it was scary for me, because I believe very much in conservation, and I was growing other things like low water plants like olives and grapes, and I couldn't find a job at the beginning, but when the drought came to California, I thought, I have to bring agave because of the conservation. And then we didn't have much water. So agave is the ideal plant to grow under these conditions, and that's my reason.
Sam Sandoval
What about you, Jordie?
Jordie Ricigliano
My interest in agave really came more from the spirit side of things. I was really interested in this idea of terroir. It's something that I've explored a lot in the wine industry. But when I started to travel throughout Mexico, I really understood that there was a similar appreciation of place and landscape as it related to agave, specifically, and the spirits and products that can come from them. So coming back to my home turf on the central coast here in California, we have a number of agaves that grow here quite wonderfully, and some of them are native, and some of them are introduced.
At the same time, there has been kind of a shift as Ofelia was mentioning, just a shift in our conservation practices and our farming practices on the Central Coast, as we've dealt with drought for many, many years, and we've been lucky these last two years. But you know, before that, we were going on almost 10 years of drought here on the Central Coast.I was working with a ranch, actually, out in Goleta, California, doing some permaculture practices and trying to see if there was a more drought tolerant way of watering citrus trees. And from that relationship, they actually became our first test plot for growing agaves outside of their home as a fire break for their house.
They had the Holiday Fire come through their area a couple of years prior, and they had a very large, quite old avocado plantation right outside of their home. And they decided to get rid of the dead and dying tree stumps and to put agaves in there instead as a natural fire break. It was a great win-win opportunity for us to be able to plant agaves and start to explore different varieties in the area and for them to get a natural fire barrier outside of their house. So you definitely see a lot of the benefits of agaves coming through, both with farming and with ranch properties as well.
We also work with a vintner out in Santa Inez who's looking to bring some diversity into their crop rotation. That's not just Vitis vinifera, which, in of itself, is relatively drought tolerant, but the comparison is somewhere around 15 to 30 inches of rain per year that is needed for for Vitis vinifera, for wine grapes, in comparison for to like two to seven inches that's required for agaves. So they're just looking to diversify their plantings on their farm right now.
Then, our third property out in Carpinteria, California, started out as a really diverse agricultural ranch, and they're growing avocados and persimmons and really looking to integrate more drought tolerant species, endangered species, and some more creative uses of other types of edible plants into their landscape and into their ranch from the very beginning. So that's been an interesting trial that's very diverse from the outset. So a lot of different models and types of farming that we're able to practice here on the Central Coast.
Ofelia Lichtenheld
Yeah. Also agave plant is a very smart plant. It is one of the things I like about it. It opens so much at night to absorb all the humidity and then it closes during the days so it doesn't lose the moisture that it has. It’s conservation at its best.
Faith Kearns
You have been talking a little bit about the benefits of growing agave as drought tolerant, and it's the first time I've also heard of it as a potential fire break. And I'm wondering also, what are some of the challenges that you're facing with introducing a new agave agricultural system in California, and maybe, I don't know if that's happening elsewhere in the southwestern US or the rest of the US, but what are some of the challenges you're seeing?
Jordie Ricigliano
I would say that there are always challenges in farming, and agaves are certainly no different. I would argue that the number one pest for us right now are gophers. And I think that's true for a lot of growers in California, which is something they don't actually deal with a lot down in Mexico and Central and southern America, but we do absolutely deal with that here. It's an especially acute problem in the dry season and during drought times, because they are naturally drawn to agaves as a potential food and water source. So the very same reason why Ofelia was mentioning what makes them such a powerful plant to have in desert landscapes also makes them extremely attractive to those that might depend on that water and food source. So, yeah, we have a lot of issues with gophers that will actually chew through chicken wire and up through the roots and kind of core, out the whole heart of the agave. But there's some issues with ground squirrels, rabbits, and deer are a problem with younger agaves. There's certainly mealybug and ants and agave snout weevils that are other common pests for agaves.
And then something that we've actually had to deal with this year, that we've never dealt with before, is that agaves don't like to have wet feet. They can actually be prone to rot in very damp areas or in soil compositions with very low drainage. Because we had such a wet winter and spring, we were actually dealing with some issues of potential root rot. That's been an interesting challenge here on the Central Coast, and something that we didn't necessarily expect, but that's certainly how farming goes too.
Ofelia Lichtenheld
Yeah, for me, very similar issues with wildlife. I grew my agaves in a basket because gophers love the agaves. They capitate the plant, and I don't understand that behavior, but it happens. And also I put a gopher basket on top of the plant because squirrels love them. It's such a delicious plant and it has so many sugars. So wildlife is number one for us, but for the farmers in California, one of the challenges in order to grow more agave is they need more education. They don't know much. It's a new crop, and they need more education. They know nothing. We need to kind of hand hold the other farmers, I mean, the farmers in California can do more conservation to help the environment by growing this resilient plant. So that's one of my challenges.
I have a nursery, and I sell some plants to other farmers and I spend most of my time educating them. One of the requirements is that they come to my farm, first, see what I'm doing, see how I have my hedge rows, my pollinator habitats, my conservation, everything. And once they come, it is like they feel very good about it there. They love the plant. They always wanted to grow it but they don't have the information.
I was talking to somebody also, we need more research. We have no research in here, and I have been getting some of some people here. One of them wants to do some research on airplane biofuels. We're trying to learn more from each other, so that's one of the challenges we have in California is to get more jobs planned.
Jordie Ricigliano
Yeah, I would piggyback on that, and just say that there’s a lack of precedence here in California, of what grows best where too, I get a lot of calls from folks who are hoping to plant the two most common agaves that you would see in a tequila or mezcal down from Mexico, because that's what they've heard of. They know that it has a lot of sugars, but those can be really finicky in frost prone areas, especially because they have kind of a low threshold of the amount of cold that they can handle.
So there's just a lack of research, enough knowledge, and of precedence of what grows well where and what might be most interesting or adaptable or suitable to specific areas. I think it's a really nascent industry here in California.
There are also challenges in the legal and social aspects of farming agave as a new industry. There's a lot of questions right now about what are our needs and how should we organize, and what research is most useful for us, and even what voices should be represented? And these are all questions that we are grappling with absolutely.
Mallika Nocco
I have a question about that too, but I had a quick question for those folks who are listening across the country about the plant, and one thing we haven't talked about is harvesting. I was just thinking, you mentioned how low the water use was on an annual basis, compared to wine grapes, for example. I feel like I've heard somewhere that agave doesn't get harvested every year, that it gets harvested every several years. Dan you tell us a little bit just about both, like the investment into a single plant and how harvesting works, and then what different products that you can use the plant for, because I think most of us are familiar with tequila and mezcal, but are there any other products as a farmer that you're trying to find markets for?
Ofelia Lichtenheld
I will take the first part, and then I'll let Jordie go. Normally in Mexico, you harvest 15% of the plant cuts every year. You can ferment it and you can feed it to chickens, the goats, whatever animal you have, it helps with the gut health of the animals to prevent diseases. If you have some mesquite, you can mix the mesquite leaves with it. In fact, Jordie was jumping in one bucket when we demonstrated how to make silage for the other women. Many farmers, they don't know that they can do many things with the piñas, because of how long the plants take for maturation. But the piñas not only can do silage, and many farmers just discard them as trash. No, you have so many other things. The soil mixes, like for pots or any kind of mixing, you can use the agave piñas instead of using cocoa. For instance, they're using it for insulation in a housing or building. They even are adding to dog food. These are just the piñas that have a lot of use. Is a very excellent product that you can make, not only with the piñas, but get a very good quality, high and nutrient inulin.
Sam Sandoval
Inulin is a prebiotic, so basically it is really good for your gut, but it is sold at a high price in your favorite grocery store that will be highly priced. Jordie, what about the life cycle of the agave?
Jordie Ricigliano
Yeah, agaves are such interesting plants that way, they can take anywhere from six years to 35 years to come to maturity. It really depends on the type of agave species, its cultivar, and the location that it's grown in. And then when you go to harvest agave, you do have to take the entire plant. It's kind of the Christmas tree model, so to speak, where you have to take the whole plant, and then you plant subsequent generations, for subsequent years. And that's something that's very different from, for example, wine grapes or most orchard trees, where you're just harvesting the fruit from the original plant. In this case, you are harvesting the entire head and root system of the plant.
And then you really want to wait until it's fully mature because that's when it's at its highest level of sugar concentration per mass. So for lower, shorter maturing varieties like blue and espadin, it can be somewhere around five-six, but in their natural state, somewhere actually closer to seven or eight years. And then for some of the oldest varieties, like the Agave marmorata, they can take anywhere from 25 to 35 years in the wild to reach their full maturity before you're harvesting them.
So there's a lot of experimentation happening in California right now growing different varieties for different landscapes, but it's certainly an experiment, not for the faint of heart, because it does take a long time to get any results from those trial and error experiments.
Sam Sandoval
Just a couple of follow up comments. I mean, there are nine native agave species in California, and there are like 35 or 40 throughout the southern United States. And Ofelia is familiar with Southern California, but also, I think she used to have production in Arizona, so that is also happening there and in Texas.
Mallika Nocco
Thinking of the two of you and your leadership in this area. Can you tell us a little bit about the agave women growers group that Sam had mentioned at the beginning as part of the introduction. Just tell us a little bit more about what the group is and how it formed, and some of the benefits that you've had from it.
Jordie Ricigliano
Sure, the women's agave group really started quite organically in 2003 by Katie Herzog, who's a grower herself, and it started as an outreach effort to start a conversation with other agave industry folks. It just so happened that those who had similar questions and motivations and were looking for a similar platform to connect were also women, so it happened quite organically, and we started meeting over zoom, sharing stories and ideas and troubleshooting problems.
But that has evolved to having some really amazing guest speakers and bringing in voices, perspectives and ideas from all over, so we can really start to have some of the bigger conversations about pretty difficult topics, and important dialog about where the industry is going and how each of us may want to be involved in that. So today, there's around 30 of us, which is kind of amazing. I think people are pretty surprised when I say I'm involved in a women's agave growing group, and they often say there's not enough California agave growers to have just a women's group. It's just kind of amazing.
Ofelia Lichtenheld
It's a great group. We all contribute, cooperate and share failures and successes. Our group has very diverse backgrounds. Every one of us has something different to contribute. And we just had the first yearly in-person meeting, a retreat, and we had the opportunity to do various things. We demonstrated how to make salads. We shared how to strap seeds for germination. What substrate you use for better germination of agave seeds, we really had a lot of fun. Somebody bought a bunch of different mezcals so everybody could taste. The food was great, and it's just a joyful event, and we all respect each other and enjoy each other.
Sam Sandoval
So what are the things that keep you up at night?
Jordie Ricigliano
I think one of the biggest issues is that they have the authority to levy assessments on growers and processors annually. In practice, it will have a disproportionate impact on small agave farmers, especially those of us who already operate on tight margins, as we talked about. Agaves are a long term investment that don't come to maturation for, you know, six to 35 years.
So incurring annual fees on agave, for example, I have Agave marmorata, which is one of the longest lived agaves. I could be paying annual levies on that for the next 30 years before I ever even see a return on an investment. So there's a huge financial risk for us small growers and US growers who are interested in varieties that are not just younger maturing and high sugar varieties like blue and espidine, but those of us that are interested in really diversifying what we have to grow. I think that it will be an uneven burden placed on a lot of small businesses and entrepreneurs, which ultimately could lead to a greater monopolization of the market by those that are larger or more financially resilient.
But, there's also a lack of representation of other meaningful voices, and it really fails to provide any safeguards to ensure that small farmers have a meaningful voice in this new governing body. There's no checks and balances to make sure that the representation is diverse or coming from other backgrounds, or others in the agave community that are not focused on growing them for agave spirits. So as Ofelia mentioned, there are so many other uses of agaves for biofuels and livestock feed and biomedical research, there really should not be a one size fits all regulatory framework that could stifle, possible innovation and growth in these emerging sectors.
Ofelia Lichtenheld
I'm very concerned about monocultures in California. Is it going to happen again, what happened with wine in Napa Valley. At the beginning everybody wanted to grow one variety and be a monoculture. But my main concern right now is that most of my clients are Hispanics, they are not financially secure. Some of them are doing it because it's part of the heritage, but they hope to do what they know, what to do with the agaves, not only the spirit. And I'm concerned about them, because we are already working 13 hours a day as farmers. Why are we required to keep records of everything? Why do we have assessments? It's just very overwhelming and we should feel free to grow whatever we want to and do whatever we want with the plants. We live in a democracy. And why do we have to pay assessments when it's our plant, it’s is our land? I just have trouble understanding all those parts.
Faith Kearns
I had a follow up, and maybe these things are related. Jordie, when you all were talking about the women's agave group and talking about having to have hard conversations, are they different from these kinds of conversations about representation and appropriation? I'm just wondering where you guys end up in that women's group that's maybe different from this sort of larger decision making framework.
Jordie Ricigliano
Yeah, absolutely, those have been some of the most difficult questions that we've come up against, and have started to have conversations about. I think, specifically with the question of cultural appropriation, and how do we honor and acknowledge that a lot of these practices are really just the same practices that represent Indigenous life, ways that have already been happening and unfolding in Mexico and in the United States for generations upon generations.
I think the only real conclusion that we have come to is that we need more conversation, that we've really tried to reach out and bring in representatives and voices from different backgrounds and different aspects of the agave industry and from different cultures that have relationships with agaves. We've just tried to open the platform of having the discussion, which is, I think, exactly where we should be. I don't think anyone has any answers yet. I think we're all just in the question taking and question making stage, which is great, and honestly, that's a wonderful place. To be just to be able to open the conversation and say, let's have these discussions. You know, what do we need to be doing, and what voices do we need?
Mallika Nocco
We really appreciate your perspectives today, and we always like to ask our guests if there's just anything more that you want people to know about your work and your efforts, and how we can all support what you're doing.
Jordie Ricigliano
I think if anybody does want to reach out to me, they can check us out on Los Hijuelos or we're also on the socials as well at loshijuelos, if you're looking for us. I think it's just a really exciting time to be in the agave industry. It's a scary time, but also really exciting. I think the passage of AB2606 and the possibility of a commission has really brought a lot of voices out of the woodwork and in talking to one another, asking each other, you know, is this going to be good for us? Is it not? How do we have more conversations about it, and how do we reach out to others that are in a similar boat to us?
Really, what do we want the future of this industry to look like for for ourselves and for future generations that those of us that want to potentially grow agaves in the California landscape, and if nothing else, I think it has shown to us that there's something really special here about agaves, and that is really worth pursuing in the future. I think if there are any agave growers that are listening, I would just encourage them to get educated and get out and vote, and for those of you that are just agave curious, to reach out to any of us who are growing or involved in it, and see if there's an opportunity to get involved, because it's such an interesting, fascinating industry, and the plant has so much to offer us that it's just and it's a really exciting time.
Ofelia Lichtenheld
I'm here to share anything that I can have with anybody who has any questions. I just wanted to say that a seed has been planted in order to germinate soon. The co-op is coming soon, and we're going to be here to help farmers and to share. It's going to be a great thing, still in the early stages, and I would love you to be the first ones to know when we have everything organized and ready to take off.
Sam Sandoval
Muchas gracias, Jordie and Ofelia, thank you for joining.