This pioneering crop offers a source of renewable energy, protein
July 8, 2024
An ancient tree from India is now thriving in groves where citrus trees once flourished in Florida, and could help provide the nation with renewable energy.
As large parts of the Sunshine State’s once-famous citrus industry have all but dried up over the past two decades due to two fatal diseases, greening and citrus canker, some farmers are turning to the pongamia tree, a climate-resilient tree with the potential to produce plant-based proteins and a sustainable biofuel.
For years, pongamia has been used for shade trees, producing legumes that are so bitter, wild hogs won’t even eat them.
A bag of harvested Pongamia legume pods slowly dries out March 21 at the Terviva nursery in Fort Pierce, Fla.
Unlike the orange and grapefruit trees that long occupied these rural Florida groves northwest of West Palm Beach, pongamia trees don’t need much attention.
They flourish in drought or rainy conditions, and don’t need fertilizer or pesticides. They also don’t require teams of workers to pick the beans; a machine shakes the little brown beans from the branches when they’re ready to harvest.
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Terviva, a San Francisco-based company founded in 2010 by Naveen Sikka, then uses its patented process to remove the biopesticides that cause the bitter taste, making the beans suitable for food production.
“Florida offers a rare opportunity for both Terviva and former citrus farmers. The historical decline of the citrus industry has left farmers without a crop that can grow profitably on hundreds of thousands of acres, and there needs to be a very scalable replacement, very soon,” Sikka told The Associated Press. “Pongamia is the perfect fit.”
A Terviva employee puts a pongamia tree in a larger pot March 21 at the company’s nursery in Fort Pierce, Fla.
What is the pongamia tree?
The pongamia is a wild tree native to India, Southeast Asia and Australia.
Bees and other pollinators feast on the pongamia’s flowers, supporting local biodiversity, said Ron Edwards, chairman of Terviva’s board of directors and a longtime Florida citrus grower.
The legumes produce oil that can be used as a biofuel, largely for aviation, which leaves a very low carbon footprint, he said. An acre of the trees can potentially provide the same amount of oil as four acres of soy beans, he added.
Ponova Oil is poured into a container May 9 at the Terviva headquarters in Alameda, Calif.
What’s left after the oil is removed from the pongamia bean is “a very high-grade protein that can be used as a substitute in baking and smoothies and all kinds of other plant-based protein products,” Edwards said. “There’s a lot of potential for the food industry and the oil and petroleum industry.”
It offers an alternative to soybean and yellow pea protein “if you don’t want your protein to come from meat,” he said.
The research is ongoing, he said, but legumes have been used to make really good graham crackers as well as Panova table oil, Aloha’s Kona protein bars, protein flour and other products.
In December, Terviva signed an agreement with Mitsubishi Corporation to provide biofuel feedstock that can be converted into biodiesel or renewable diesel. Sikka noted Terviva coordinates closely with Mitsubishi on tree plantings and product development and sales.
Turning a wild tree into a domestic one hasn’t been easy, Edwards said. “There are no books to read on it, either, because no one else has ever done it.”
Elisabeth Beagle, Terviva’s director of tree operations, places a newly grafted pongamia tree in a high-humidity greenhouse June 6 at the company’s nursery in Fort Pierce, Fla.
Why Florida?
“We know pongamia grows well in Florida, and the end markets for the oil and protein that come from the pongamia beans — biofuel, feed, and food ingredients — are enormous,” Sikka said. “So farmers can now reduce their costs and more closely align to the leading edge of sustainable farming practices.”
At a nursery near Fort Pierce, workers skilled in pongamia grafting techniques affix a portion of the mother tree to a pongamia rootstock, which ensures the genetics and desired characteristics of the mother tree are perpetuated in all of Terviva’s trees.
Citrus was Florida’s premier crop for years until disease caught up with it starting in the 1990s with citrus canker and later greening.
Citrus canker, a bacterial disease, is not harmful to humans but causes lesions on the fruit, stems and leaves, and it eventually makes the trees unproductive.
Citrus greening, also known as Huanglongbing, slowly kills trees and degrades the fruit, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Greening spread throughout Florida since 2005, devastating countless groves and reducing citrus production by 75%. The disease also spread to Louisiana, Texas and California.
Pongamia trees grow in a former citrus grove June 6 in St. Lucie County, Fla.
Hurricane Ian caused about $1.8 billion in damage to Florida’s agriculture in September 2023, hitting the citrus industry at the beginning of its growing season.
Disease and climate issues also affected most of the world’s top citrus-producing countries. For example, this year’s harvest in Brazil — the world’s largest exporter of orange juice — is forecast to be the worst in 36 years due to flooding and drought, according to a forecast by Fundecitrus, a citrus growers’ organization in Sao Paulo state.
But climate and disease have little effect on pongamia trees, Terviva officials said.
“It’s just tough, a jungle-tested tree” Edwards said. “It stands up to a lot of abuse with very little caretaking.”
Pongamia also grows well in Hawaii, where it now thrives on land previously used for sugarcane.
Terviva’s John Young, left, and Ron Edwards walk in a grove of pongamia trees June 6 in St. Lucie County, Fla.
What are citrus farmers saying?
John Olson, who owns Circle O Ranch, west of Fort Pierce, replaced his grapefruit groves with 215 acres of pongamia trees.
“We went through all the ups and downs of citrus and eventually because of greening, abandoned citrus production,” Olson said. “For the most part the citrus industry has died in Florida.”
Edwards said farmers used various sprays to kill the insect that was spreading the disease. Eventually, the cost of taking care of citrus trees became too risky.
That’s when he decided to go a different route.
“What attracted me to pongamia was the fact that, one, it can repurpose fallow land that was citrus and is now lying dormant,” he said. “From an ecological point of view, it’s very attractive because it can replace some of the oils and vegetable proteins that are now being generated by things like palm oil, which is environmentally a much more damaging crop.”
How the US government is incentivizing greener manufacturing
How the US government is incentivizing greener manufacturing
How sustainable is an electric vehicle whose manufacturing process depends heavily on natural gas? How “green” can a LEED-certified building be when it is constructed with materials with major carbon footprints such as glass and concrete?
Even when creating sustainable products, industrial activities like construction and manufacturing contribute greatly to pollution. These activities account for nearly a third of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Addressing climate change is one of President Joe Biden’s top priorities, and his administration has taken aim at some of these unsustainable industrial practices in part of his executive order to achieve net-zero carbon emissions throughout the U.S. economy by 2050.
Machinery Partner researched the U.S. government’s commitments to reducing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions resulting from manufacturing industry processes over the past few years. Between the executive order and funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, there has been substantial activity to reduce U.S. industrial pollution. This has taken the form of direct investments into research and technologies to reduce pollution in manufacturing, as well as using the purchasing power of the federal government to prioritize products with lower carbon footprints.
In addition to protecting Earth from the devastating effects of climate change, these efforts also support the U.S. manufacturing industry. By focusing investments in American-made low-emission products, the federal government can prop up domestic companies and grow jobs in an industry that has been struggling for several decades.
Grants and direct investment
The Department of Energy allocated more than $6 billion in funding for clean manufacturing technology projects in March 2023. With this funding, the federal government will pay for up to half of the costs for the chosen early-stage, private-sector projects that would reduce emissions in industrial processes that utilize a lot of energy. The program, called the Industrial Demonstrations Program, will select projects and finalize awards by spring 2024.
In June 2023, a smaller DOE program provided $135 million for 40 projects to research, develop, and pilot-scale methods of reducing energy consumption and emissions in the industrial sector. The projects—taking place at national laboratories, universities, and companies across the U.S.—focus on reducing emissions in cement and concrete, food and beverages, chemicals, petroleum refining, and iron and steel.
The month after, the DOE also announced $100 million in grants for state and local governments and public utilities to procure and use products made with converted carbon emissions. These grants will cover up to half the cost of these materials for awardees, creating further demand for these low-emission products in the economy.
Buying green for federal projects
In addition to these direct funding opportunities, federal agencies have begun to demand lower-emissions materials for their infrastructure projects.
Biden’s 2021 executive order created the Buy Clean Initiative, which prioritizes using low-carbon, American-made construction materials in federal projects. Putting $630 billion in annual federal spending on the line—plus even more in state government spending—has pressured greener practices among U.S. manufacturing companies.
After years of developing and testing low-emissions material requirements, the General Services Administration released official standards in December 2023 for asphalt, concrete, glass, and steel. The month before, the agency also announced plans to invest $2 billion across more than 150 federal projects utilizing these lower-emission products. The GSA estimates that incorporating these lower-carbon materials will reduce the carbon emissions from these projects by tens of thousands of metric tons.
Throughout 2023, the GSA and other agencies announced several high-profile projects using low-carbon procurement standards, including the Department of Homeland Security’s new headquarters and the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House in New York City.
The GSA set the first “Buy Clean” standards for concrete and asphalt in March 2022; by December, it had awarded a concrete contract based on the new concrete standards.
GSA drafted more comprehensive requirements by May 2023, setting standards for carbon emissions for concrete/cement, asphalt, steel, and glass. Following the release, the agency ran a six-month pilot program applying the requirements to 11 federal projects, including new construction, land port of entry, modernization, and paving projects. The value of affected materials across these projects totaled around $300 million.
In fall 2022, the Department of Transportation released its Buy Clean policies, another major feat considering that transportation comprises another near-third of greenhouse gas emissions. By October, the department had distributed $7.1 million to state DOTs to identify ways to reduce emissions in highway construction, with a focus on sustainable pavements. Other agencies, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, have also readily incorporated low-carbon materials into their projects.
By encouraging green manufacturing and creating demand for low-emission materials, these federal programs are forging the way to greener U.S. industrial production.
Story editing by Shannon Luders-Manuel. Copy editing by Paris Close.
This story originally appeared on Machinery Partner and was produced and distributed in partnership with Stacker Studio.
How the US government is incentivizing greener manufacturing
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