Authentico Voices:
Written By Lou Bank Executive Director, SACRED Agave, and Co-Host of Agave Road Trip
It’s an uncomfortable truth that so many of the luxuries in my life are a burden in someone else’s life. Something as simple and commonplace as having fresh fruit in Chicago in the dead of winter paves a carbon highway as it heads north. And the SUV I drive to the grocery store to pick up that fruit exacerbates the problem and contributes to the cycle of droughts and floods in the global south that are putting that same community at risk.
This isn’t my way of saying that we need to stop eating fruit out of season or stop driving SUVs. But it is my way of saying that we need to become more mindful of how our consumption patterns impact the lives of others and make try to make simple adjustments where we can – make choices that are better choices.
Authentico Tequila is, for me, one of those better choices. Back in 2017, I started a not-for-profit that seeks to clean up some of the mess I make through my consumption of Mezcal, tequila, and other agave spirits. I recognized that every drink I take back home put pressure on the families who have for centuries been shepherding the cultural heritage of mezcal in rural Mexico. It makes it more difficult for these families to access agave, access water, and access local labor. My purchase of Mezcal in the USA encourages corporations to invest in Mezcal – which translates, among other things, to buying the farms where families had been purchasing agave. It translates to wild lands, where these families would harvest a biodiversity of agaves, being converted into monoculture agave farms – again, in service of ensuring I can purchase Mezcal back home.
Mezcal for me is a luxury. For these families, it’s often part of their cultural heritage. If they can’t access agave, they can’t maintain their cultural heritage.
That not-for-profit I started – SACRED: Saving Agave for Culture, Recreation, Education, and Development – attempts to solve some of the problems I create. We ask these families what problems they have, what solutions they imagine to those problems, and what resources they need to implement those solutions. When I launched SACRED in 2017 and started asking those questions about problems, solutions, and resources, what I heard most often was: we can’t get agave, we need access to seedlings so we can start to grow our own agave on our own land.
I’m not a spiritual guy, so when I say the most fortuitously timed coincidence followed, I mean exactly that. I was at a loss for how to find agave seedlings – and then a friend who runs a Mexico-based NGO – SiKanda – reached out to say that one of the schools they serve had 10,000 agave seedlings that they needed to sell. As it happened, this middle school was focused on agriculture and was located in an under-resourced community. When they ran short of water, they had to change from teaching children how to grow things like tomatoes and onions to crops that don’t require a lot of water – like agave. This school, which needed money to resolve their water issues, had 10,000 prized Tobala seedlings, which we purchased at US$1 each – around twice the going price, to encourage them to continue germinating agave seeds. Then we started distributing those seedlings to the families who needed them.
That was back in 2017 and we’ve distributed at least 10,000 seedlings every year since. We’re able to do that because of donors like Authentico Tequila. When you’re drinking Authentico … yes, there’s an impact on the communities in rural Mexico. But there’s as much a positive impact as a negative – it’s a better choice. And with their decision to source from organic and sustainable farms, that positive impact is further amplified.
And, not for nothing, it also just plain tastes good. So I’m grateful to Authentico Tequila for helping me clean up some of the mess I make by drinking this delicious spirits, and I thank you for joining me in making a better choice.
Watch This Video About The S.A.C.R.E.D. Project Below:
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