Mongabay magazine writer, Sue Branford reports: 

“In Mexico, a university-educated, small-scale peasant farmer came up with an untried innovative solution that not only restores degraded land to productivity, but also greatly enhances soil carbon storage, provides a valuable new crop, and even offers a hopeful diet for diabetics. The process utilizes two plants commonly found on semiarid lands that grow well under drought conditions: agave and mesquite. The two are intercropped and then the agave is fermented and mixed with the mesquite to produce an excellent, inexpensive, and very marketable fodder for grazing animals.”

Branford quotes OCA’s Ronnie Cummins, a co-director of the Mexico-based Billion Agave Project: 

“We think agroforestry is at the cutting edge for agriculture regeneration. About 40% of the world’s terrain is arid or semiarid and different varieties of agave and nitrogen-fixing native trees are already growing in half of these areas. The possibilities are immense.”

Read More: Mexico Devises Revolutionary Method to Reverse Semiarid Land Degradation

Watch: Agave Power with OCA’s International Director, Ronnie Cummins