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Ozarks Notebook: Growing the Elderberry Industry through Research and Outreach [1]
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Date: 2024-10-03
The elderberry’s small size stands in contrast to its potential effects on the Ozarks – and beyond.
In 2021, the United States Department of Agriculture granted a more than $5 million Specialty Crop Research Initiative (SCRI) grant to Ozarks-based researchers to better study and understand the dark-hued berry, which has purported health and cosmetic benefits.
“Overall, the project is going extremely well,” said Andrew “Andy” Thomas, the lead researcher on the project who helped secure its grant funding. “There’s probably actually 50 people by now, including graduate students, who are on the project.
“There’s been antibiotic, antiviral with AIDS, and also antioxidant work. There’s some really good progress.”
That work is based in the Ozarks, where elderberries are native and have often grown on their own, despite the region’s thin and rocky soil, but not traditionally in a cultivated way.
That’s one aspect the research is hoping to help. Could a better understanding of how to cultivate the crop open new possibilities – health as well as economic – for the Ozarks and beyond?
“We want the Ozarks to become the Napa Valley of elderberries, and I think we can,” said David Buehler, owner of Elder Farms, a Missouri elderberry farm. “That’s really the direction we’re moving towards.
“The center of all the research in the whole United States is here.”
Emerging Understanding of Elderberries
Elderberries have long grown in the Ozarks, where they have historically been touted as a home remedy for cold and flu symptoms. However, they were more often seen in ditches and places where they decided to pop up on their own – not intentionally planted in farmers’ fields.
Andy, an associate research professor in the Division of Plant Science and Technology with the University of Missouri, was well aware of those berries. He has spent a career in study of native plants – others include pawpaws and persimmons – which led him to a conference in the late ‘90s. There, he and fellow researcher Patrick Byers sampled wine made from elderberries.
Andy Thomas shows elderberry specimens in a refrigerator at the Southwest Research, Extension and Education Center near Mount Vernon, Missouri. (Photo by Kaitlyn McConnell)
“The owner was there and we asked him, ‘Where are you getting your fruit?’ ‘Well, I just pick it out of a ditch, and I walk down the railroad track and pick fruit,’” recalled Andy of the conversation with the grower.“ But the quality was there.
“I already had the interest, and thought, ‘Maybe we’re onto something here.’”
Those questions began to be answered by a few smaller grants over the years as information around elderberries began to take root. They really began to grow with a grant from the National Institute of Health around 2010.
“It turns out that brain health is a really, really important result of elderberry – antioxidants and all that stuff is great,” said Andy. It’s a reality they explored through the grant.
Then came 2020 – and a global pandemic with people searching for preventative and therapeutic support.
“Covid – it just shot the market through the roof,” he said. “A lot of people became aware of elderberry and the anti-viral aspect of it. It just exploded the demand and interest.”
Seeing Research Firsthand
The fields are green and the breeze hints at the threat of rain when I met Andy at the Southwest Research, Extension and Education Center (SW-REEC) in late August. The center is affiliated with the University of Missouri, and is focused on agricultural concerns of the 22 Missouri counties in the southwest corner of the state. It’s also where Andy’s research on elderberries is based.
“I don’t have a lot of acreage, but I’ve got about six or seven different projects going on right here,” said Andy. “Propagation – the breeding – we call ‘genotype by environment’ study, we have a weed study, we have the pollination project. That’s all going on right out my window here.”
Andy Thomas is leading the Moving American Elderberry into Mainstream Production and Processing project, which was awarded a $5,345,255 grant in 2021. (Photo by Kaitlyn McConnell)
Elderberry harvest has basically wrapped up by the time I visit. Berries and their byproducts – like juice, elder flowers and pomace, which is what’s left when you press the berries – fill freezers and refrigerators.
One of those chest freezers sits in the bed of a pickup truck. Some berries are headed for other labs, while others are juiced on-site.
We drive through the fields and see the work that’s underway.
“This is the one we call ‘genotype by environment,’” Andy said as he paused our tour. “This planting you see is replicated at four other sites: Oklahoma, central Missouri, Illinois and Wisconsin. They’re the exact same varieties, and we have varieties from Florida to Minnesota that are planted in here.”
“They’re all American Elderberry,” he pointed out. “Yet there is tremendous genetic diversity within the species. This allows us to grow them side by side, everything is randomized, and (there is) tons and tons of data.”
Even more data comes from the hands of Matthew Huchteman, a graduate student and multi-generation farmer working on a project related to weeds and elderberry bushes.
“When I’m done, producers will be able to apply this (knowledge) pretty easily,” he said.
Matthew Huchteman, a graduate student and multi-generation farmer, is working on a project related to weeds and elderberry bushes. (Photo by Kaitlyn McConnell)
The work is complex. While results are still emerging from the study, Andy said he hopes it will be extended with additional money and time. Additionally, in 2025, the International Symposium on Elderberry will be held in Columbia, Missouri, where the University of Missouri is based.
Ultimately, it’s all part of helping create the industry and help give growers’ the tools they need to succeed.
“At some point, the farmers took notice of what we were doing,” Andy said. “It’s one thing to be doing fun research on a native plant, but if farmers don’t ever pick it up, or they don’t care, then there’s not much future in it.
“When the farmers pick it up, that allows us to apply for even more grants, because the farmers are demanding better cultivars and weed management, and ‘What’s this insect?’ and ‘How do you harvest?’ and ‘What about the chemistry?’ …‘We think elderberry is healthy, but is this true, or is it hooey?’”
Transitioning to New Times
An example of that work is seen just a few miles away at Elder Farms, which has become invested in the growing elderberry industry in part from Andy’s work.
The genesis of Elder Farms was significant for David Buehler, the fourth-generation owner of his family’s Century Farm. It began in 1899 and long operated as a dairy operation – but about a decade ago, when faced with challenges in the industry, David decided a change was necessary.
There were a few years in between, but ultimately, he swapped dairy for elderberry.
“It felt like we were going backward instead of forward,” he told me a few years ago of their presence in the dairy industry. “We knew we had to do something different.”
In the years since, the farm has expanded to about 65 acres of elderberries. On a recent visit, I learned more about farm leaders’ continuing efforts to become mentors to others who get into the industry, helping them set up their own farms.
Elderberry bushes are shown at the SW-REEC. (Photo by Kaitlyn McConnell)
As David now put it: “I want you (a grower) to succeed because your success is all of our success. If we are going to grow this line, people have to be profitable.”
Part of that work comes with increasing awareness.
“We’re a group of farmers, a group of researchers; we also need some marketing and sales people to get this out to people,” David said. “Because as farmers grow more and more, we need to make sure they have adequate avenues.”
That marketing is important to connecting dots, said Rachel Barry, owner of Jean’s Healthway, a natural foods store in rural Ava, Missouri. She began working at the store in 2009 and purchased it in 2020, but has been involved in the Ozarks’ natural food community most of her life.
“I think the availability of it in Missouri has piqued more interest locally,” she said of elderberry popularity, which began growing several years ago. “And not as many people question the use of it.”
“Question the use of it,” she noted, ties back to the marketing, which made trying elderberry more popular. It’s something she’s seen other times: When people see items popping up in their consciousness, they’re more willing to try it.
“That’s happened with everything across the natural health board,” she said, and noted that it’s not necessarily a bad thing if it helps people try new products that can be good for them.
“It’s been there all along,” Rachel said of elderberry. “It’s not just in our ditches. Now people who are growing it market it.”
Closer to home, Elder Farms grows those berries that are used in various products that are manufactured on the farm to help find niche ways they could be used. That lineup currently includes elderberry wellness syrup, elderflower infused honey, salves and creams and even a skincare line.
The most recent addition is Nobleberry, an elderberry-infused soda released in August. According to its website, is “crisp, distinct, and just mouth-watering enough to leave you craving more.” It’s produced in connection with Elder Farms but by a separate company that began as a way to use elderberries in new ways.
David Buehler is the fourth generation to operate his family’s Century Farm in Lawrence County, Missouri. Long a dairy-based operation, the family shifted from dairy to elderberries. (Photo by Kaitlyn McConnell)
“As these farmers grow more and more, we need to make sure we have adequate avenues (to use elderberries),” David said. “We’d spend months and months – could we create an ingredient and sell this to big companies? All those big companies like Gaia are still buying cheap European imports. To them, that’s a better deal.
“For us, that’s why we created a drink – it’s like, ‘Let’s just screw the middleman and go directly from the field to a can.’”
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