WHYY, the Philadelphia public media station, published a Delishtory episode on November 2, 2026 tracing how mezcal moved from a regional Mexican spirit into a global category now straining wild agave stocks and the bats that pollinate them.

The episode is part of Delishtory, a digital food-history series hosted by Philadelphia magazine food editor Kae Lani Palmisano and distributed by WHYY on PBS platforms. According to WHYY's own description, the segment set out to cover mezcal's long history in Mexico alongside what it called the unintended ecological consequences of the spirit's growing popularity.

How big has the mezcal trade actually gotten

The scale of the shift shows up in Mexican regulatory data. Market research firm Future Market Insights reported that Mexico's Consejo Mexicano Regulador de la Calidad del Mezcal, the body known as COMERCAM, recorded 11,362,436 liters of certified mezcal production in 2024, of which 8,201,043 liters were packaged for export. The same report cited US distilled spirits trade data showing American importers brought in 93 million dollars worth of mezcal from Mexico that year. Separately, research firm Technavio found mezcal had become Mexico's third-largest alcoholic export by 2023, with roughly two-thirds of the country's mezcal exports heading to the United States alone.

Industry tracker Mezcalistas, drawing on figures from the certifying body Comercam, reported that the sector directly employs about 55,000 people and indirectly supports another 210,000, with 428 branded mezcals sold into export markets and roughly 125,000 families involved in making the spirit as of 2025.

What the demand is doing to wild agave

The volume behind those figures has a documented environmental cost. Mongabay reported that mezcal production rose 700 percent over the decade before 2023, a surge that, according to ecologist Alfonso Valiente of the National Autonomous University of Mexico's Institute of Ecology, is driving over-harvesting of wild agave and shrinking the plant's genetic diversity. The Washington Post documented the same pattern on the ground in Oaxaca, reporting that wild Tepeztate agave has grown scarcer as demand has risen, forcing harvesters to travel farther into the mountains to find mature plants.

National Geographic reported that the practice of harvesting agave before it flowers, done to concentrate sugars in the plant's core, is cutting off a critical food source for the lesser long-nosed bat, the species' primary pollinator. Bloomberg's reporting on the subject quoted Valiente's research finding that agave flowers feed bats for nearly seven months of the year, and that mezcal alone draws on at least 53 distinct agave species, far more than tequila's single permitted variety.

What producers and researchers are doing about it

Conservation groups and some producers have begun experimenting with practices meant to slow the damage. National Geographic reported that Bat Conservation International, through a network of partner organizations, helped develop a certification program called Bacanora for Bats aimed at encouraging sustainable harvesting of agave used in that related spirit. Environmental outlet Dialogue Earth documented producer-led projects in which at least 30 percent of flowering agaves are deliberately left unharvested so bats can feed and the plants can reseed naturally, rather than being cut as soon as their sugar content peaks.

What this means

Mezcal's sustainability debate is not isolated to one category. Tequila draws on a single cultivated agave species regulated under its own denomination of origin, but the broader question of how certification and disclosure work for agave spirits runs through both. Among tequilas in Tequila Watch's own database carrying Verified Organic status, meaning a certifier's public register was checked against the bottling, Leucadia Blanco holds a TW Score of 90 of 95. What remains unverified in the mezcal story itself is how many of the 428 export brands Comercam counts are sourcing wild versus cultivated agave, a distinction none of the cited reporting has broken out by brand.