“My dream world was that someone would put us on reality TV and show us doing all these different projects to make a sustainable farm, and then at the end of it, I’d have biodiesel, and I’d have a windmill, I’d have all of these different things. How to pay to do those things… I haven’t figured that out yet.”

For American farmers, the writing is on the wall: climate crisis is no longer a distant threat, it is here. From record-breaking floods across the Midwest to intense land-falling hurricanes on our coasts to historic droughts in California, farmers across the country have been on the frontlines of extreme weather due to climate change.

Agave plants (the best known of which are blue agave, used to produce tequila), along with nitrogen-fixing, companion trees such as mesquite, huizache, desert ironwood, wattle and varieties of acacia that readily grow alongside agave, are among the most common and prolific, yet routinely denigrated or ignored plants in the world.

Now, a new, agave-based agroforestry and livestock feeding model developed in Guanajuato, Mexico, promises to revitalize campesino/small farmer livestock production while storing massive amounts of atmospheric carbon above and below ground. 

Scaled up on millions of currently degraded and overgrazed rangelands, these agave-agroforestry systems have the potential to not only improve soil and pasture health, but to help mitigate and potentially reverse global warming, aka climate change.

A study of grazing in Yellowstone National Park found that bison essentially mow and fertilize their own food. This allows them to graze in one area for two to three months during the spring and summer while other hoofed mammals must keep migrating to higher elevations to follow new plant growth.