Papayas are a Midwest native that is gaining traction | KCUR

At the first annual Papaya Festival in Ferguson, Missouri, customers lined up for a taste of the elusive fruit.

Despite the fruit’s relative inconspicuousness, some customers already knew what to expect. Will Colbert wore a shirt with a brightly colored papaya pattern. In one arm, he held a freshly purchased live papaya tree.

“I got it about two years ago and I fell in love with it,” Colbert said. “I mean, to have a tropical fruit that fresh in Missouri, it’s kind of wild.”

Papayas are oblong and somewhat resemble an avocado, except for their smooth, dusty green skin. When they are ready to eat, brown spots appear, signaling their sweetness.

For many festival-goers, eating a papaya was a first.

Tamra Berger cut the fruit with a knife and removed some of the soft pulp.

“It tastes a little like pudding,” Berger said. “I love it.”

Festivals like this are growing across the country as demand for papayas increases. With farmers’ growing interest in the fruit and efforts to develop new marketable varieties, papaya could become even more popular.

What held the papaya back?

Papaya is the largest fruit native to North America. It was domesticated by Native Americans and has a wide original rangestretching from Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma to Washington, DC

Despite its vast territory, it is unlikely that you will find it in a restaurant or grocery store. This is mainly because papayas do not keep very long.

“The main limitation is the almost ephemeral nature of the fruit,” said Adam D’Angelo, founder and research director of the Pawpaw Project, a crowdfunded research and breeding program.

Festivals like Ferguson’s have become a great way to turn the challenge of a short lifespan into an advantage, said Chris Chmiel, founder and director of the Ohio Pawpaw Festival.

“Instead of it being a limitation, you kind of make it an asset by having an event,” he said.

Chmiel founded what was probably the first papaya festival in the United States in 1999. The annual festival in Albany, Ohio, now attracts about 10,000 visitors and features a papaya-eating contest, a beer garden and vendors selling merchandise and art.

Since that first festival, similar papaya celebrations have sprung up across the country.

“Over the last 26 years, things have changed dramatically,” Chmiel said.

According to D’Angelo, the “unprecedented increase in demand” for papayas is due to several factors, including social media, the desire to diversify diets and the desire for more environmentally friendly eating.

Since papaya is native to the United States, it generally requires little maintenance, which is both better for the environment and potentially less costly for farmers.

“These papayas require much less inputs, fertilizers, pesticides and other management measures,” D’Angelo said. “You can plant these orchards with much less infrastructure. So I see them as a way to keep small farms viable.”

But papaya isn’t ready for the mass market yet. At new research and breeding orchards in New Jersey and Wisconsin, Project Pawpaw plans to explore cultivars that could prepare the fruit on a larger scale.

“There’s so much variation that with a little bit of well-directed plant breeding, traditional plant breeding, we could make massive improvements and have a fantastic crop that’s easy to grow, fun to eat and profitable for the small farmer,” D’Angelo said.

Growing papayas

At EarthDance Organic Farm School in Ferguson, Missouri, papaya trees are covered in clusters of green fruit in late August. These aren’t the trees you find growing wild in the woods: they’re cultivars, bred to produce larger fruits with smaller seeds.

This farm harvested papayas for the first time in 2018, which was also the first time Jena Hood, EarthDance’s director of agriculture and education, had tasted the fruit.

“It was really delicious,” Hood said. “People describe it as a cross between a mango and a banana. And I think that’s absolutely accurate.”

Sometimes harvesting the fruit is as simple as picking up fallen papayas from the tree. You can also shake a tree to loosen the fruit, which is something Assistant Farm Manager Will Delacey likes to do.

“My favorite part is when you shake it and you just hear ‘doo doo doo,’” Delacey said, imitating the thud of the fruit hitting the ground.

EarthDance has a paid booth that sells papayas right there on the farm. They also run a booth at the Ferguson Farmers Market and sell pulp to local brewers who make papaya beer. Additionally, their papayas were for sale at the festival.

Hood says curiosity and demand for the fruit are growing. In 2018, the harvest was small, about 22 kilos. This year, the farm expects to produce nearly 360 kilos of papayas, but that won’t be enough to meet demand.

“People call us and ask if we have papayas?” Hood said. “We’re still selling them. We take them to the market. We sell them every weekend.”

Between high demand and the hardiness of the trees, the papaya tree is now an important crop for EarthDance.

In the coming years, enthusiasts hope that other farmers – and customers – will also discover this native fruit.

This story was produced in partnership with Harvest Public Mediaa collaboration between public media newsrooms across the Midwest. It covers food systems, agriculture and rural issues.