Elderberries: Can We Improve this Ancient Crop Enough to Support Rapid Commercial Expansion?
Looking for Opportunity to Grow Human and Environmental Health
No one can deny 2020 has been a wild year. We’re a little over halfway in and between COVID-19, protests of racial injustice, record job losses and economic collapse, locusts in Africa, rampant food insecurity,and an election in the US, each week seems to bring new “unprecedented” challenges. It’s easy to get swept up in the scale in many of these challenges, but, as a consultant, my job is to help clients see the opportunity. This morning I got up at 4 AM to read my local school district’s reopening plan, but then took a moment to read a few elderberry Extension publications and found a crop and product with some exciting potential.
One of my current projects is focused on the Upper Mississippi River Basin region (WI, MN, IA, IL, MO), which has become increasingly dominated by corn and soy production over the last five decades. By 2017, more than 96% of harvested cropland was in corn or soy in Illinois. Other crops, like wheat, oats, orchard and berry crops, as well as pastureland for beef and dairy cattle have dramatically diminished, or in some cases essentially disappeared from the landscape over the last 5 decades. More recently, the USDA lowered enrollments into the Conservation Reserve Program by 13 million acres in the last decade, prompting many farmers to convert marginal lands back into crop production. This shift in land use (30 million more acres of corn and soy in 2017 compared to 1969), alongside increases in crop yield enabled the region to nearly triple corn production and almost quadruple soy production over the last 5 decades, far outstripping regional (+25%), national (+60%), or even global population growth (+100%) has had negative consequences for soil and water quality within the region and downstream in the gulf.
While corn and soy growers are working hard to improve their environmental impact with field-specific practices like no-till and cover crops, research increasingly indicates the need to diversify the landscape to achieve the types of reductions in nitrate leaching, sediment erosion, and nutrient runoff necessary to turn the tide on these mega-trends in soil and water quality. To support this, my colleagues and I have been asking, what else could farmers grow on those 30 million acres that have been converted to corn and soy production since 1969?
There is no one silver bullet crop, because there is nothing that we see as capable of generating a market large enough to absorb 30 million acres of production, but elderberry does look like a crop meant for this moment.
Why Elderberries?
Elderberries are shrubs that thrive in riparian buffer areas with prolific rooting that make them both excellent nutrient scavengers and prolific producers. Michelle Graziosi with UVM Extension profiled the environmental potential of elderberry as a highly functional conservation planting for riparian lands, effective for trapping sediment and absorbing nitrogen and phosphorous, but also as a productive crops with berries marketable at ~$5-8/lb wholesale in the region. There is also a solid foundation of research on elderberry cultivation at the University of Missouri’s Center for Agroforestry. Native to the region, elderberry breeding work at the University has supported release of varieties that do show higher yields than wild strains. Compared with the European species of elderberry (Sambucus nigra), which has been the focus of concerted improvement and now supports yields of 11-51 lbs per plant, American cultivars of Sambucus canadensis still do not consistently yield above 4-5 lbs per plant (Wilson et al. 2016). Research on new cultivars has documented yields of over 15 lbs per plant on certain cultivars in specific locations (e.g. Thomas et al. 2015), but this has not yet been achieved at scale. Typical yields are still in the 2,500-5,000 lbs per acre range (Wilson et al. 2016).
Market Demand Surges with Pandemics
Despite some challenges and limitations in production, strong market growth is encouraging growers and researchers to attempt to overcome these issues. Demand for elderberry products in the US first jumped during the 2010 H1N1 pandemic when sales increased more than 53%. This demand is encouraging many growers looking for a new, high revenue potential crop to explore elderberry. Growth has continued at double digit rates since them, and COVID-related health concerns spurred an over 400% increase in sales by March of 2020. While there is no peer reviewed evidence that elderberry protects against or prevents COVID-19, there is ample evidence that the crop confers numerous other health benefits. This is good news for growers looking to add a reliable revenue source to their system that elderberry won’t just be a passing fad.
Room for Growth Remains
Still, there is much as much work as there is potential for elderberry to become a more significant crop on the landscape. More than 90% of US elderberry products are derived from European imports, so even without segment growth there is tremendous growth potential to replace some of the import market, if the agronomics can be optimized. So for, the largest US producer and marketer of elderberry is River Hills Harvest in Missouri, which sourced from 52 growers in 2015. They aim to expand production to utilize 10 million pounds of elderberries by 2025, an ambition that will require substantial acreage growth in their source region of MO, IA, OK, and MN, but one that is still unlikely to make much of a dent in corn and soy acreage. As of 2019, elderberry was the number one berry crop in Missouri by acreage and revenue, but there were still only 300 acres in MO and 40 in IA. More than 2,000 acres will be needed to meet the 2025 production target. This expansion to be underway through their supplying co-op, the Midwest Elderberry Co-Op, which now boasts more than 100 grower members, but is still completely sold out of products until the 2020 harvests starts coming in late next month. All of this leaves me cautiously optimistic for elderberry to play a strong supporting role in improving the health of our landscape, water, people, and farmer incomes.
