Soil and Water

When Casa Agave’s Chief Executive Officer Sophia A. Trapp moved to San Miguel de Allende to take over operations at Cañada de la Virgen eight years ago, the landscape architect and environmental activist had no idea she was opening a door to discovering the full environmental and commercial potential of the agave plant.

Located about 20 minutes west of San Miguel de Allende, Cañada de la Virgen is one of Guanajuato’s most significant nature reserves, with an archaeological site that dates back to pre-Columbian times when the Otomi people built pyramids there for rituals and star-gazing. Today it is the second most visited tourist site in the region, drawing tens of thousands of visitors each year, but when the Trapp family purchased the property 23 years ago, both the ruins and the land were sorely overgrazed and neglected after functioning as a large cattle ranch for many years.

Before the introduction of the agave, the family worked to transform the desertified landscape back into a healthy and flourishing natural ecosystem. The goal was two-fold: to honor the historic significance of the archeological site and to create an environment more conducive to raising healthy cattle. They reduced the number of animals by almost half to stop overgrazing and certified the ranch as organic (a forward-thinking move back in 2009). Trapp’s mother also registered the property as a federal nature reserve with the Mexican government, and donated the archaeological site to the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), who opened it to the public in 2011.

First, by incorporating agaves into Brad Lancaster’s berm system for rainwater harvesting Casa Agave has established a symbiotic relationship between plants and water that revitalizes soil health. The contoured berms act like natural sponges, gathering and redistributing rainwater down into the soil over time. By reducing evaporation and redirecting precious water deep into the bedrock, the system has reanimated dead and dying plants and stimulated useful microbes that help replenish the health of the soil. “By holding the water on the hillside and changing the water content and microorganisms you can transform the poorest soil into something alive,” Trapp explains.

The renewed soil has subsequently kickstarted a remarkable rejuvenation of the surrounding landscape. Since Trapp began digging berms and planting agaves five years ago, the arid farmland has come back to life exponentially. Without any mechanical irrigation, the rainy season has essentially extended from five months to 10, and the number of species of grasses that grow on the hillsides beneath the berms have exploded threefold, with oak saplings growing quickly in areas where they did not thrive before. The berms also stop erosion, so a strong foundation is set for more new growth of other native plants like mesquite, oak, ocotillo, nopal, and tepame.

Agaves are the ideal crop to spur this ecosystem rehabilitation; they require only about a liter of water a year and have a 98 percent survival rate without any human intervention—a critical fact in light of how typical reforestation efforts focus on the introduction of trees, which demand a lot more water and maintenance, and only have an average of 15 percent survival rate. This information is a boon for Mexican farming—in fact, some of the neighboring ranches are already implementing similar systems on their overgrazed land. And because agaves also grow in semiarid regions around the world, the implications for other countries can be profound. The Agavesse system is flexible—it can be adapted for other farming needs like industrial agave fields, vineyards, and corn fields, depending on the design in play. It is also the first step towards creating new streams of valuable revenue for farmers and their communities.