AGRICULTURE
TCBusiness.com 15
is now reaching maturity.
Evans is expanding the concept on former
citrus grove land at State Road 70 and
Header Canal Road. Pongamia saplings
on that site are now one year old, and the
company plans to plant 500 acres in the
future.
Astwood, TerViva’s food science expert,
said there has been a lot of interest in
food-grade products made from pongamia.
It’s a non-GMO product that contains
high levels of healthy omega-3 fatty acids
and it’s low in saturated fats.
Potential customers include Mandalay
International, a food conglomerate which
includes Nabisco, Cadbury, Ritz, Velveeta
and Oreo brands in its portfolio, Astwood
said.
Ron Edwards of Evans Properties likes
what he sees so far from pongamia.
“We were one of the first ones to plant
pongamia as an alternative crop to citrus,”
Edwards recalled. “With greening, we were
very concerned it could become an existential
threat and we quit planting new
trees until a cure was found. We began
looking at alternatives and built a 300-
acre research farm to investigate biofuels,
energy crops, castor oil — things that had
relatively high outputs per acre.”
Edwards said they met with TerViva in 2011 to 2012
when they were looking for test lots. They planted
from seed at Bluefield and started the Header Canal
project.
“The longer we grew them the more convinced we
were that this could work.”
Edwards reeled off pongamia’s advantages: no
need for spraying, little fertilization required, natural
defense against animals and insects. So far, pongamia
has proved to be a true plug-in crop, Edwards said,
with only minor modifications of old citrus planting
beds needed to aid mechanical harvesting.
“We’re now ramping up propagation production (to
determine which are the best cultivars), tripling and
quadrupling our (nursery) capacity.
“For growers to plant at a commercial scale, they
have to be confident it is problem-free and also to the
end users of food products. I think it’ll be more profitable
than citrus. It’s carbon-neutral and you won’t have
to tear down the Amazon (rain forest) to plant soy
beans. It will have a lot less environmental impact.”
So, finally, we may have a viable commercial alternative
to citrus in Florida.
Pongamia seems to be a crop with plenty of pluses
and few negatives. Now approaching its second
decade of planting on the Treasure Coast, growers like
Edwards report very little downside to the product.
If it is a commercial success, pongamia grown here
could form the basis for salad dressings, sauces and
food products, frying oils and even meat alternatives.
And that would be sweet indeed. v
TERVIVA
Pongamia trees produce as much as 10x the beans per acre as soybeans.
/TCBusiness.com