A roundup headline from Mexico Business News grouped three agribusiness stories under one banner this week: record corn imports, rising fertilizer costs and tequila's export diversification push. The three are not one story so much as three symptoms of the same underlying pressure on Mexican farmland economics, and each has separate, verifiable reporting behind it.
On corn, the outlet reported that Mexico is projected to reach record corn import levels in the 2026 and 2027 marketing years as domestic production declines and demand from the livestock sector rises. On tequila, the Tequila Regulatory Council said the industry is expanding exports despite a slight production dip and is actively working to diversify away from the US market. On fertilizer, industry data show urea and phosphate costs climbing sharply this year, prompting new private investment in domestic production.
The corn and input cost math
Mexican corn production is projected at 24.3 million tonnes for the 2026/2027 season, down 2 percent year over year, according to Mexico Business News. In Jalisco, Michoacan and Guanajuato, which together account for 35 percent of Mexico's spring summer corn production, most growers plan to reduce planted area or switch from corn to sorghum because of lower production costs. Rising input costs are compounding the shift. Mexico's National Market Information System data cited by ukragroconsult.com showed urea prices increased by 42 percent year on year in May 2026, while diammonium phosphate prices rose by 9 percent.
That fertilizer inflation is tied to global supply shocks. Escalating geopolitical tensions, shipping disruptions and production outages in major fertilizer-producing countries have driven global fertilizer prices to their highest levels since 2022, according to Mexico Business News, increasing pressure on food inflation and farm profitability broadly. On the response side, private developers Fermachem and Gas y Petroquímica de Occidente are advancing more than 3.2 billion dollars in combined investment for two fertilizer manufacturing complexes in Durango and Sinaloa, part of a push to cut Mexico's roughly 70 percent dependence on imported agricultural chemicals. Pemex and Mexico's energy ministry separately announced a 93 billion peso petrochemical reactivation program that includes a 25 billion peso ammonia and urea plant in Poza Rica, Veracruz, targeting annual output of 708,000 tonnes of granulated urea.
What this means for agave growers
The corn and sorghum switch matters to tequila because it plays out on some of the same land base and among some of the same growers who plant agave in the Jalisco highlands and lowlands. Aurelio López, president of the CRT, told Mexico Business News that the industry's main challenge this year is diversifying export markets to reduce dependence on US demand, and that the sector is also addressing agave oversupply, abandoned fields and pest risks. That oversupply, a legacy of over-planting during the last agave price spike, has already pushed farm gate prices down and made corn or sorghum look relatively more attractive to growers weighing what to plant next. Rising fertilizer costs raise the breakeven for all three crops, which is part of why the shift toward lower-input sorghum is showing up in the data rather than a swing back toward agave.
On the export side, López said the tequila production chain currently includes 229 authorized producers and 3,402 registered tequila brands, and that first half 2026 results showed rising agave consumption and growing exports even as overall production ran slightly below last year's level. He pointed to Europe as an area with room to grow and said the industry will work to strengthen ties with Brazil to build on Colombia's position as its primary Latin American market. Separately, at Foodex Japan 2026, the CRT reported that Japan ranked eighth among tequila's top importing countries in 2025 with roughly 4 million liters, followed by China at 2.8 million liters and South Korea at 433,000 liters, modest volumes next to the US but the ones the industry is explicitly courting.
What changes for buyers and readers
None of this changes the purity or scoring of any bottle in our database today. Fortaleza, El Tesoro, Siete Leguas, Tapatío and the other traditional Jalisco houses we track and have rated Verified Pure operate on long-term contracted agave, and macro oversupply data does not tell you what is in a specific NOM's mosto. What it does affect is grower economics upstream of the brands, and that is worth watching. A tequila industry telling reporters it has an agave oversupply problem while corn economics pull growers toward other crops is a story about future agave pricing and potential quality shortcuts under margin pressure, not about anything already bottled.
What we are watching
CRT's full first half 2026 export and production figures when the council publishes complete numbers, not just the qualitative summary given at the National Tequila Day event. Whether Jalisco's planned 25 percent increase in its 2026-2027 internationalization budget, reported by Mexico Business News and Freshplaza, translates into measurable volume gains in Asia and Latin America rather than just trade fair attendance. Whether the Fermachem and GPO fertilizer projects in Durango and Sinaloa reach construction on the timelines announced, given that Mexico's dependence on imported agricultural chemicals has proven sticky in past self sufficiency pushes. And whether USDA's next Grain and Feed Annual revises its 24.3 million tonne domestic corn production forecast downward again, which would tell us more about whether growers are actually abandoning agave land or simply shifting acreage that was never in agave to begin with.