By Jana Rose Schleis
In a small packing shed in the southern Boone County town of Hartsburg, the staff of River Hills Harvest fills orders for Missouri elderberry products.
From this little facility in the wooded Missouri River hills, the team is shipping elderberry juice, gummies, jam, tea and more across the country.
“We have weeks where we send stuff to all 50 states,” said Terry Durham, owner of River Hills Harvest, who used his grandmother’s recipe to create the elderberry jam.
Durham has been growing the tiny deep purple berries and turning them into consumable products for almost 30 years — and he was one of the first.
A vegetable farmer originally, Durham said he was motivated to start growing a perennial crop like elderberries because it was good for his farmland and less labor intensive. Plus he saw how successful European elderberry products were.
“We knew we had a big market if we could figure it out,” he said.
Thus began a decades-long partnership between farmers such as Durham and researchers at the University of Missouri, who set out to learn how to grow, harvest, process and market this relatively rare crop.
“We began to create a plan of how to really make this work. What steps do we have to do to create an industry?” Durham said.
The American elderberry is native to Missouri and grows well in the lower Midwest.
Perennials like elderberries benefit the soil by keeping living roots in the ground year-round, which retains water and reduces erosion. Those are qualities farmers are looking for as agriculture experiences the impacts of climate change.
But markets for these crops can be hard to find and may require development and customer education, as was the case with the elderberry.
Andrew Thomas studies horticulture, agroforestry and specialty crops at MU. He said his work with the elderberry consumes him and he depends on the partnerships with growers to guide the research.
“The farmers are the ones that pick this up and take it up a notch,” he said.
For decades, elderberry researchers and farmers have shared data between the lab and the field. Researchers initially began testing different cultivars, or breeding different varieties of the berry.
From there, they developed best practices for growing and harvesting elderberries and studied their health benefits. In 2010, MU received a National Institute for Health grant to examine the medicinal aspects of elderberry, finding that it is positive for brain health. Thomas’ research has also demonstrated that antioxidants in elderberries can boost the immune system.
Researchers and growers also worked together to figure out how to process the fruit into the products sold at River Hills Harvest and other Missouri elderberry orchards today.
“It just keeps growing and growing and growing, not astronomically, but every year there's more growers, there's more new products,” Thomas said.
Robust information about how to grow, harvest, process and market elderberries allows farmers to diversify their farms, a tenet of regenerative agriculture — a movement that aims to revive the natural farmland ecosystem and by extension rural communities.
Thomas said even with 28 years of research, the elderberry is still considered an emerging crop. For other good-for-the-soil perennials to take off, he said, similar research efforts are required not only to grow the plant, but to create products from it.
“Paw Paws and aronia … black walnuts, even pecan,” Thomas said. “They all need new research to develop the crop.”
Value-added product
When a farmer takes raw produce, such as an elderberry, and processes it into something like juice, it’s called a value-added product, which can be sold at a higher price.
“A value-added producer can really command a whole range of market prices, but the market is not just sitting there. They need to go out and find that market,” said Mallory Rahe, agribusiness professor at MU.
She helps farmers develop business plans, account for labor costs, create products and find markets through MU Extension.
“The producer has to really understand — what do consumers want? What are they willing to pay for it? And am I adequately equipped to bring that product to market at a price that people can afford and want to buy it?” she said.
In Missouri, farmers are adding value through jams, barbeque sauces, fermented foods and meat and timber products.
In addition to a higher price, Rahe said the benefits of value-added products are the ability to diversify offerings and extend the produce’s lifespan by preserving it in some way, benefitting a farm’s economic sustainability.
“Think about you as a consumer walking up to a farmer's market stand, you'll pay more for a bowl of salad with other ingredients than you will for a bag of just mixed greens, than you would for a head of lettuce,” she said.
Rahe said there is a lot of customer education required when marketing a unique and somewhat unknown product such as elderberries.
“A lot of consumers have maybe not even heard of it and definitely not tried it,” she said. “That first introduction to that product is really critical.”
With an emerging crop like elderberries, growers also have to teach consumers how to add it to their diet, often by offering tastings, having conversations and providing written materials.
“Elderberry is a very versatile crop,” Rahe said. “There's a lot of ways to use it, which is both sort of an opportunity and a challenge for producers.”
Community of growers
The tiny elderberry grows in clusters on the very top of a 6-by-12-foot tall stalk. During harvest, growers snap the cluster off by hand.
From there, many Missouri-grown elderberries will go through a “de-stemming” machine — a product invented by local growers 15 years ago that includes a metal tray that shakes the tiny berries loose from the stems.
“When we started doing the elderberry, there wasn't any equipment to process the berries or a way to grow them commercially — the American elderberry,” said Durham with River Hills Harvest. “So we've had to go through a lot of steps.”
For years, Durham has been connecting elderberry growers and recruiting more.
Earnie Bohner started Persimmon Hill Farm in southwest Missouri in 1982. Along with his family, he’s been growing blueberries, blackberries, shitake mushrooms and, as of over a decade ago, elderberries.
Bohner turns most of those berries into products — jams, syrups, jellies and more. He met Durham at an agriculture conference.
“During one of the breaks we started talking about elderberries and potential for the elderberries, the market and that kind of thing,” he said.
Bohner got some elderberry plants shortly thereafter and began selling juice, syrup and jelly from his farm. He’s passionate about value-added products and likes that they allow him to sell his produce all year long, but he said it comes with a learning curve.
“You have a whole new discipline,” Bohner said. “If you decide you're going to do jam, then you have to know how that sets up and you need to know how to get all the materials and packing supplies, etc.”
Since the beginning, Durham has been working to start “pods” of elderberry growers across the state, so farmers have folks in their areas to learn from and troubleshoot with when growing the novel fruit. Durham said it allows growers to share equipment and combine marketing efforts.
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