In June, the first storm of the 2024 hurricane season, Alberto, hit the northeastern Mexican states of Tamaulipas and Nuevo León with much-needed rain. The states celebrated, as historically low reservoirs filled with water. Yet, the boon of the seasonal storm highlighted a larger issue—a severe drought has left over half of Mexico without sufficient water.
Over the past decade, the drought-induced stress on Mexico’s aquifers has drawn a chorus of criticism towards those who consume large quantities of water. Among the most prominent subjects of these vociferations have been the beer and soft drink industries.
“Issues with the drought have come up in the last 20 years to be acute,” says Kathy Robb, the water policy expert and environmental lawyer at RobbWaterPartners, a sustainability-focused research and consulting firm. Even the government of Mexico has struggled to send its treaty-obligated share of the Rio Grande’s water to the U.S. Plenty of water is still crossing the border, though—in the form of beer and tequila.
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“The water is delivered to the country and it is left to the individual country to determine its use,” Robb explains of the U.S.-Mexico agreement. “So how much water is exported in food and beverage is an issue of the Mexican economy.” Banco de México lists beer and tequila among Mexico’s top five most valuable agroindustrial goods, alongside berries, avocados, and tomatoes. But just how much water is fueling U.S. consumption of Mexican beer and spirits?
U.S. Consumption of Mexico’s Water Supply
Mexico, the world’s largest exporter of beer, produces over 13.5 billion liters annually. USA trade data indicates that the U.S. imported about 3.8 billion liters of beer from Mexico in 2023—meaning that one in three bottles produced in Mexico ends up in the U.S., with over 90 percent of all exported beer going to the U.S. and Canada.
Not only is beer about 90 percent water, but global averages suggest that brewing one liter of beer requires around four liters of water. Arid conditions in Mexico have pushed large breweries to improve levels of water efficiency. Heineken México states that they average 2.44 liters of water across all operations, even using as little as 1.8 liters at their Meoqui brewery in the desert state of Chihuahua. Based on Heineken’s best-in-class average, Mexican breweries are guzzling up at least 9 billion liters of water annually to supply Americans with beer.
Similarly, over half of all the tequila produced in Mexico is destined for the U.S. In 2023, around 316 million liters of tequila were imported, but the amount of water used in producing one liter is much higher than that of beer. The Consejo Regulador del Tequila (CRT) stated via email that “The average water consumption to produce one liter of tequila at 40% ABV is 14.9 [liters].” Accordingly, the tequila industry consumes around 4.7 billion liters of water annually through its exports to the U.S.
American demand for the spirit has created a lucrative market for blue agave, motivating farmers in Jalisco state to abandon traditional agriculture in favor of agave monoculture. “From the moment of the agave boom, the problem has been the quantity of water,” says José Juan Pablo Rojas Ramírez, Ph.D., a research professor specializing in water and agriculture policy at the University of Guadalajara. “We are in this state of water stress, which has driven the tequila industry to stop their development and seek continuous sustainable growth according to socio-environmental factors.” Counting rainwater that fell on blue agave fields in 2020, the CRT estimated the total water footprint of one liter of tequila at 2,099 liters of water.
Since 2016, the CRT has developed a sustainability strategy with the goal, stated via email, “to reduce water usage by 15 percent by the year 2030, compared to the baseline year 2014.” Most large producers already employ water recycling technologies, which capture, treat, and reuse residual waters in the tequila-making process. But the tequila industry’s water use in Jalisco is not always sustainable.
Booming Exports Aggravate Local Water Consumption
“It has come out that there are certain producers who are irrigating the agave fields with subterranean water,” says Dr. Rojas Ramírez. “One of the directives of Mexico is that subterranean water is directed towards human consumption, due to questions of quality.” (As subterranean water is cleaner than surface water, Mexican law prioritizes it for human consumption.)
The Alto Sur region of Jalisco, an important tequila hub, is experiencing a particularly severe drought. According to Rojas Ramírez, the urban centers disagree with rural tequila producers’ consumption of water. “The region is in a situation of aggravated water stress because their aquifers have been effectively brought down,” he says. “There are conflicts over water.”
In Mexico’s northern states, rainfall is far more scarce, and yet the brewing industry is predominantly situated in this arid region. Salvador Corrales, Ph.D., a research professor focused on cross-border commerce and economic development at El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, says that the northern concentration of breweries is historical, dating back to the foundation of commercial brewing in Mexico in the 1890s. “It has been many years that they operate here in Monterrey, in Zacatecas, in Hermosillo, in places where it almost never rains today. They’re nearly deserts,” explains Dr. Corrales. “When the drought began, the breweries were cast under a red spotlight.”
The historical breweries in Nuevo León, Chihuahua, Sonora, and Baja California, however, have passed from Mexican ownership into the hands of just three international conglomerates in the last two decades, contributing to local concerns of international exploitation of Mexican water resources. Heineken bought Monterrey-based Cervecería Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma in 2010 and AB InBev acquired Modelo in 2012. In 2013, as a result of the AB InBev purchase, Constellation Brands secured the exclusive rights to brew Modelo products for export to the U.S.
The brewers have all attempted to expand in northern Mexico during these decades of drought, targeting the U.S. market. In 2010, Grupo Modelo built one of the largest breweries in the world in Nava, Coahuila, just 30 miles from the U.S. border. Constellation Brands began operating the site in 2013, and has since expanded the brewery’s capacity. “In the north of Coahuila near Nava, there is a small region that has important subsoil water resources,” says Corrales. “It is known as the region of the Cinco Manantiales, or Five Springs. So they are taking advantage and installing breweries there to export beer to the U.S.” (Constellation Brands did not respond to a request for comment).
Heineken also built a $500 million brewery in Meoqui, Chihuahua in 2018, near the Francisco I. Madero dam. Constellation Brands attempted to build another brewery on the U.S. border in Mexicali, but was later forced to abandon the project in 2022 due to local protests centered on concerns of water scarcity. “Mexico has become the beer barrel of the U.S.,” says Iván Martínez Zazueta, a Mexicali blogger who advocated against the Constellation project. He points out that while beer production in the U.S. has contracted (by 14 percent from 2013 to 2023), during the same period Mexico more than doubled its beer exports (increasing by over 175 percent). In July 2023, Modelo Especial became the best selling beer in the U.S.
These large breweries promise consistent returns for their investors, but offer less economic upturn for the local communities when compared to other water-intensive sectors like the automotive industry. “We need to be importers of beer,” says Corrales. “There is a massive disequilibrium in the trade balance in respect to beer, which means that there is a net loss of water.” Martínez Zazueta has an alternative: “Just as American beer brands that are consumed in Mexico are produced in Mexico, I believe that the Mexican beer brands that are consumed in the U.S. should be produced in the U.S. There are no technical restrictions.”
In other words, does Corona really have to say “Hecho en Mexico?”
Water Pollution and Other Problems
Concerns over industrial water stewardship are not only related to industry inputs. José Toral, a member of University of Guadalajara’s watchdog organization Observatory on Socio-Environmental Conflicts and Defense of Activists notes water concerns of a different nature—the tequila industry pollutes large bodies of water.
In Juanacatlán, residents have protested Materia Prima Spirits’s alleged pollution of groundwater and the overexploitation of the aquifers of Toluquilla, Cajititlán, and the Altos de Jalisco. (The distillery later denied causing environmental damage and reaffirmed their support for the industry and the community of Juanacatlán.) Toral also calls out the 2021 case of Tratadora de Aguas Residuales de Los Altos, a company dedicated to disposing the discharges of tequila makers. “The business that supposedly treats the waters only accumulates them in oxidation lagoons that constantly spill over and have caused the death of thousands of fish in the Las Villas River and the San Onofre dam, as well as illnesses and economic losses for fishermen and farmers in the region,” he says. In 2014, a nearly identical spill of tequila residues polluted Lake Cajititlán.
“Many people can see tequila as culpable,” Rojas Ramírez says, “but in my fieldwork, I have spoken with farmers who organize tequila irrigation districts and there was no discontent about the issues of the production chain of tequila. More so, there is a concern over the development that they are seeing with their star product, tequila.” Namely, that mass planting of blue agave has created an economic bubble that is now bursting; tequila has not been planned sustainably.
While there is no requirement that Corona must be made in Mexico, tequila’s denomination of origin ensures that Jalisco will continue to produce it, regardless of drought.
Mexico’s beer and tequila industries have enjoyed decades of aggressive growth, thanks in large part to American demand. Between the two industries, nearly 15 billion liters of Mexico’s water enter the supply chain to satisfy the U.S. market’s thirst. As water supplies dry up due to drought, the two industries will have to consider a key question: How can beverage makers keep their business sustainable without water?
Dispatch
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N.C. Stevens writes about the role beverages play in communities and cultures around the world. He has published on a range of drinks including herbal tea, coffee, beer, and the more obscure spirits of the world. His work has appeared on Atlas Obscura, Wine Enthusiast, and his self-curated website, DrinkingFolk.com.
