Sustainable production of maguey Agave salmiana to improve the mezcal groindustry competitiveness Chapter uri icon

abstract

  • Mexican mezcal production, as an successful model of agroindustrial competitiveness, is presented, as a case study, with the goal of explaining the evolution of organizational and institutional strategies, agricultural management practices, networks and productive diversification to emphasize the need to have improved understanding of the determinants of competitiveness at the value chain, production of raw material, processing and markets Mezcal is the regional spirit obtained by distillation and rectification of broths that are directly prepared by fermentation of carbohydrates contained in juices extracted from the mature hearts (called heads or piñas) of maguey (Agave salmiana). In general, mezcal process consists of five stages: management of crop, cooking of agave hearts, milling the cooked hearts, juice or must fermentation, and distillation/rectification. Cooking is necessary to hydrolyze fructans to releasing fructose and glucose, along with other mono- and disaccharides probably present in juice, which afterward undergo fermentation to produce alcohol. Seven states in Mexico can produce Mezcal with Denomination of Origin (DO): Oaxaca, Durango, Guerrero, San Luis Potosi, Zacatecas, Guanajuato, and Tamaulipas Numerous academic and socioeconomic investigations concluded that the artisanship of mezcal is in decline and disappearance, living on the fame that had during its best stage of production of agave, as raw material, and socio-economic production of spirit, besides, a situation associated with the promotion of institutional policies to promote development and productive industrialization and marginalize the peasant craft production systems of agave. Currently, these conditions have changed, for the establishment of new technological innovations, socioeconomic and market relations between mezcal and agave producers. The results of this study showed that the mezcal competiveness might suggest improve the management practices in farms, full utilization of raw material and by products with technological innovations and market strategies and thus help maintain the sustainable use of this natural resource by the mezcal agroindustry. © 2017 Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.

publication date

  • 2017-01-01