Hartsburg, MO. • First it was the ruby red, Middle Eastern pomegranate. Then came Brazilian açaí, followed by the Himalayan goji berry.
In the past few years, a procession of "it" fruits has marched into American groceries, each bursting with antioxidants and vitamins, their respective industries say, and each as exotic and tempting to health-conscious consumers as the last.
Now, some Missouri farmers hope, the next member in this healthy fruit parade will be a deep purple, BB-sized orb that hails from more familiar terrain.
"We want to turn the elderberry into Missouri's superfruit," said Terry Durham, standing near some elderberry bushes last week. "We can create an industry right here."
An indigenous fruit that grows wild throughout much of North America, parts of Europe and North Africa, the elderberry has been deployed in folk remedies for centuries. But it was just in the past couple of years that Durham and his fellow elderberry fans saw its commercial prospects brighten.
"We didn't realize the health benefits until now," Durham said.
Four years ago, Durham planted a few acres on land he leased from friend-turned-business-partner Roger Lenhardt. Today he grows elderberries on 22 acres, making his farm the largest in the country. Within two years, Durham hopes production will more than double to 50 acres.
"There'll be fruit as far as the eye can see," he said. "This is just the beginning."
Homegrown effort
Most of the elderberries consumed in the U.S. are imported from Europe, Durham said, and are usually turned into wine or juice. There are small commercial growers in the Northeast, the Pacific Northwest and Canada, but most growers and researchers say they believe Missouri is well ahead of them, both in knowledge and volume.
"The University of Missouri has been doing research for about 12 or 13 years, and that's really put us in the forefront," said Joe Wilson, who started growing elderberries on his farm in Nevada, Mo., two years ago. "We're leading in production, too, but it's so small right now. It's like saying I have three pennies and you have two."
Durham, the driving force in Missouri's fledgling elderberry industry, is determined that will change.
He recently launched a cooperative, called River Hills Elderberry Producers, which is collecting wild and cultivated berries from growers around the state, processing them into juices and jam, and selling the products under the River Hills Harvest label. The group built a purple-roofed barn that will house a processing facility, which will be the first elderberry-dedicated facility in the country, Durham believes.
"We knew that the value in the juice was the way to go," Durham said, "and we wanted to own our own processing."
Durham and his colleagues also have started to preach the elderberry gospel.
This summer, he and university researchers conducted their fifth elderberry workshop to teach people how to grow and commercialize elderberries. The conference drew growers from 13 states and Canada.
"The first year we had eight people, then we had 32, then we had 64," Durham said. "This year we had 100."
After the conference, Durham and friends hosted the first Elderberry Festival on the farm. They built a stage under an old sycamore tree, a dance floor in the grass, and invited conference attendees and friends to camp to listen to bluegrass and celebrate the festival's namesake fruit.
"The flowers were blooming and the lightning bugs were out, all over the field," Lenhardt said. "It looked like a Hollywood marquee."
Testing for benefits
Researchers at the University of Missouri and Missouri State University began studying elderberry production in 1997, launching the Elderberry Improvement Project with a government grant. They took more than 60 exemplary elderberry bushes from around the country and tested them for yield and health, then narrowed the field down to two promising varieties.
"We tested them for many years, and the testing is pretty involved," said Patrick Byers, a regional horticultural specialist with the University of Missouri Extension, and a lead elderberry researcher. "Two looked very good, and we're in the process of making those available in the Midwest."
The next step, Byers said, is to expand on research that demonstrates the berries' health benefits. So far, research has shown that the fruit has high levels of antioxidants, can boost immunity, can lower cholesterol and has some anti-viral properties. (The leaves and stems of the shrub are toxic; only the berries are edible, researchers say.)
But before producers tout the elderberry's "nutraceutical" promise, researchers want to know more.
"For centuries we've known elderberries possess healthy qualities. The question is: What exactly is going on?" Byers said. "...What is it about elderberries that is healthy?"
The makers of the popular pomegranate juice, POM Wonderful, were recently charged by the Federal Trade Commission with making health claims that the government said the company's research didn't adequately support. So, growers and producers of elderberries say they want to be especially cautious.
The more immediate challenge is taming a wild fruit — finding systems that will make the plants more consistent and reliable. Research and experience has given growers some management techniques, but difficulties remain with even ripening and pests.
"It's still a puzzle to get a good crop year after year," said Denis Charlebois, a researcher with the North American Elderberry Alliance. "People manage to do a good product, but growing it consistently is difficult."
Growers have the ability to mechanically plant 1,000 plants an hour. But there is no way to mechanically harvest the berries, so everything has to be picked by hand. (It takes 2,000 berries to make a pound, and 20 pounds to make a gallon of juice. River Harvest's juice retails for $12 per 11-ounce bottle.)
But a mechanical harvester is under development, and the berries yield quite a bit of juice. "It's a small berry but they can be quite productive," Byers said. "Some have yielded 8,000 pounds per acre."
For the state's estimated 25 elderberry farmers, however, the appeal of growing the fruit goes beyond yield.
Durham and Wilson interplant other native species in their elderberry fields in an effort to create a native permaculture — a sustainable, diverse agriculture of native plants.
"It's a unique opportunity in agriculture because we rarely grow native fruit," Durham says. "It's meant to grow in this environment."
He and Lenhardt walk along a row of bushes, each wearing Elderberry Festival T-shirts. They say the elderberry's time has come. "We can sell a lot of this stuff," Lenhardt says. Durham then adds: "We just need more people to grow it."
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