The skills of the jimador are traditionally passed from father to son but, although demand for tequila is booming, the younger generation are deserting the land

Standing tall amid the latticework of burnt orange and blue that embroiders the north-western highlands of Jalisco, Mexico, Armando Acevez takes a sleeve in his hand and wipes it across his sweaty brow. His hands are rough; blistered portraits of a life which for almost two decades has been spent working on this unforgiving terrain.

Acevez is a jimador, or cultivator of the blue Weber agave plants whose nectar is the lifeblood of the lucrative tequila industry.

The craft of the agave harvest, still done entirely by hand, has remained virtually unchanged since around 1600 when tequila was first invented by the Spanish conquistadors. It is also one that has traditionally remained in families, with each generation teaching the next, ensuring that the mechanisation of the tequila harvest has been kept at bay.

Yet traditions of the jimador, a figure still cloaked in romantic mystique in literature and even Mexican telenovelas, are slowly disappearing. While the demand for high-quality tequila is rising year on year, with the industry worth over $1bn and seven out of 10 litres produced now exported worldwide, the younger male generations who would once have taken on the mantle of their fathers to become jimadores are turning away from the agricultural way of life in droves.

“Almost every man in my family has been a jimador, going back generations, it is a tradition,” says Acevez. “As long as I can harvest I will keep being a jimador. But most of the jimadores now are old people because none of the young people want to work on the harvest. You find a few young jimadores but there are less and less. I do think we need to start worrying about the future of the traditions because I see the people who start in the harvest are much older than they used to be. I have a son who is 11 and I would not want him to be a jimador.”

Out in the craggy ground of the agave fields, Acevez works alongside a team of about a dozen jimadores, including his brother and his nephew, hacking skilfully at the cores of the succulent – known as piñas because they look like large pineapples – to remove the bitter leaves. Once harvested, these hearts are taken to the nearby Patrón distillery, where they will be cooked, crushed and fermented to become premium tequila.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The coa – the tool used to harvest the agave – is largely unchanged in 400 years. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian

Miguel Fonseca, Patrón’s agave chief, said the company need about three and a half million agave plants each year to meet increasing demand. All of the plants need to be harvested by hand by the jimadores to the exact specifications required by their artisan method.

“The jimadores know and they recognise which agaves are ripe to harvest and fit our exact specifications,” said Fonseca. “They have harvested the agave in the same way for over 400 years and most of the jimadores will learn from their fathers. But now we have far fewer young people taking on this work because lots of the young people prefer to migrate to the cities or the US.”

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Fonseca predicted increasing demand could force a departure from the harvesting methods that have remained preserved for centuries. “I think maybe in the next 30 or 40 years we will have to, out of necessity, to create a machine to harvest the agave because over time there will not be so many jimadores.”

The dearth of a new generation of jimadores is symptomatic of a widespread decline in agricultural work in Mexico, with figures showing that the farm workforce fell by two million between 1995 and 2010, while pay for agricultural jobs has remained relatively static.

This became particularly stark during the agave crisis that hit Mexico in the early 2000s, when not enough succulents had been planted seven years previously to meet demand. The crop’s price per kilo rose by almost 1,000% but wages for the jimadores remained the same.

Concern for the future of traditional agave farmers was echoed by others out in the Jalisco fields. Mariano Meza, 40, said he had been doing the job for over a decade and had noticed the next generation were more reluctant to learn the trade.

“There are not many young people harvesting any more,” he said. “The problem is that the young people don’t like doing this job for a long time, so we don’t see them in the fields.”

Meza added: “My son is 17 and he is now studying in the US, so he will not become a jimador and I think it is the same for lots of other young people of his generation: if they can, they are now choosing to go away to study and work rather than stay here to work on the harvest.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jimadores collect the piñas from agave plants in the north-western state of Jalisco. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian

Chantal Martineau, author of How the Gringos Stole Tequila, said the shift was having an impact on the craft of the industry. Whereas in the past the jimadores had owned their own family agave farms, now it is largely the domain of big agro-businesses.

“There is this mystique around the jimadores; for centuries it has been seen as a very romantic job but the job is changing, becoming lost,” she said. “It used to be this very storied role, passed down from father to son. Now, the various tequila producers who I spoke to complained that the jima [the harvest] is not done as well as a few years ago because these jimadores are not being trained by their father, or uncle, and it is becoming more of a day labourer job.”

The causes, said Martineau, were attributable to the lack of protection for traditional farming methods within Mexican law – as enjoyed abroad by other protected products such as champagne or cognac – as well as the decision by an increasing number of young Mexicans to eschew a life working on the land.

“A lot of young people are not taking up the family business, more and more they are turning to jobs outside of agriculture,” she added. “And that is really a story that can be seen in Mexico across the board.”

Back in the fields, even the youngest jimador, 24-year-old Juan Acevez, said that despite having been taught the craft by his father and uncle he had no intention of passing it on to his own son.

“My son is one year and a half but I do not want him to become a jimador when he gets older, I prefer that he studies,” said Acevez. “I did not get a chance to study or go to school so I want that for my son, not for him to be working out in the fields.”