The post Far From Home, the Curry Leaf Tree Thrives appeared first on Civil Eats.
]]>When I was a child in the 1980s, my family traveled nearly every summer from our home in Los Angeles to the other side of the world. We spent monsoon-drenched weeks on my grandparents’ farm in southern India’s Kerala state.
On the last day of one of our trips, there was one final item to be packed. A housekeeper knelt under a towering 20-foot curry leaf tree and dug up one of the dozens of saplings at its base. She wrapped it in a wet towel and secured it in a plastic bag. My parents stowed it in a shoe in their suitcase, and we flew back home without encountering any inspections.
Once they transplanted the sapling into a pot, they kept it warm inside the house and watched over it carefully. But it never took to the mild, dry climate of Los Angeles, and it wilted a few weeks later. After two more saplings met the same fate, my parents gave up.
But another stowaway did make the journey successfully.
Instead of a sapling, Anand Prasad brought curry leaf seeds. He is now one of the largest commercial growers in the country, with an estimated 5,000 trees on his farm outside Los Angeles.
The idea was inspired by his grandfather, who left India with a pocketful of curry leaf seeds in the early 20th century and moved to Fiji as an indentured laborer. When his grandson Prasad emigrated from the South Pacific island to Los Angeles in 1980, he tucked several seeds into his pocket. With a lot of care, they sprouted in his new home.
“It was so hard, because those seeds were not adapted here,” Prasad said. “It’s like bringing a baby from hot weather to cold weather. But once they germinate, they start growing, and then the plants are adapted.”
He recalled covering the plant with a sheet in winter and bringing it into his house. He eventually planted it in the yard, and it grew tall. That single curry leaf tree was how his farm began.
Like other non-native plants, the curry leaf tree (Murraya koenigii), which grows in tropical parts of Asia and South Asia, has taken root, adapted, and thrived in the United States. Not to be confused with curry powder, the tree’s leaves are a staple ingredient in Indian, Sri Lankan, and other Asian cuisines. Dark green and intensely fragrant, they are roasted in hot oil to release their nutty and complex citrus flavor for curries, stews, and chutneys.
The exact date of the plant’s introduction to the U.S. is difficult to pinpoint. Now, along with the widespread availability of fresh leaves in Asian grocery stores and even on Amazon, the plant itself can be purchased for windowsill pots and kitchen gardens.
Anand Prasad stands next to harvested curry leaves ready for drying in his drying shed. (Photo credit: Mary-Rose Abraham)
Apart from home growers, the curry leaf tree is also a burgeoning crop for a few specialty farms and nurseries scattered across warmer regions such as California, Florida, Hawaii, and Texas. As the climate changes, more regions may be suited to grow tropical plants like the curry leaf tree.
“It’s a connection to the homeland for a lot of people, and I think it really helps enrich and diversify our cultivated flora,” said David Lorence, senior research botanist at the National Tropical Botanical Garden in Kaua’i, Hawaii, which features two curry leaf trees. Lorence also has a large tree in his own yard—a necessity for his wife, of Indian origin from the island of Mauritius, and a reminder of his years there as a Peace Corps volunteer.
“It’s a connection to the homeland for a lot of people, and I think it really helps enrich and diversify our cultivated flora.”
Complicating matters, however, is the fact that the curry leaf tree is a host for the Asian citrus psyllid (ACP), an insect about the size of a flea. When insidious bacteria hitch a ride on the tiny insects, it can lead to Huanglongbing (HLB), or citrus greening disease, which affects certain members of Rutaceae, a plant family that includes oranges, lemons, and curry leaves. Citrus greening causes mottled leaves and misshapen, bitter fruit. It has no treatment or cure.
Because the pest poses significant danger to the $2.6 billion citrus industry, growers of all sizes must safeguard their trees, contending with frequent inspections, quarantine zones, and limits on the sale of fresh leaves and plants.
“The regulations are put on small-scale growers in order to protect the large industries in the United States,” said Zee Lilani, who grows 2,500 curry leaf plants at her Kula Nursery in Oakland, California.
Learning to Grow in a New Land
While his lone curry leaf tree grew tall in his garden, Prasad, who is the stepfather of TV host Padma Lakshmi, worked as a general contractor for two decades. But he missed his parents’ farm in Fiji where they grew curry leaf trees.
So, in 2000, he purchased an old lemon farm 20 miles east of downtown L.A. Once he removed the dying trees, junk cars, and beer bottles strewn over the few acres, he enriched the topsoil with wood chips and planted curry leaf trees. The dark, rich mulch keeps the weeds back and water in the soil, requiring no extra fertilizer.
During my visit to the farm, Prasad walked among the estimated 5,000 plants, including large, bushy trees and countless little saplings sprouting among them. He grabbed a twig, slid off its lustrous, fragrant leaves and popped them into his mouth.
“Curry leaves have a lot of benefits,” Prasad said. “Why should I go and buy a pill if I can take care of [my health] by eating these fresh leaves?”
Prasad sells the fresh leaves wholesale at Asian grocery stores throughout Southern California and New York. And since 2020, he also dries the leaves and grinds them for Burlap & Barrel, a single-origin spice purveyor based in New York.
“Drying is difficult,” said Ethan Frisch, founder of Burlap & Barrel. “If it’s too hot, the leaves can get discolored and turn dark and also lose aromatic oils. [Prasad’s] is far and away the best dried curry leaf I’ve ever tasted, including samples we got from amazing suppliers in Sri Lanka and India.”
Those who want their own curry leaf plant can turn to friends or find one at a local store or online. Frisch purchased his now eight-inch plant from Kula Nursery.
“If you want to brag to your friends, you show them a picture of how well your tree is doing and how big it’s gotten, and that’ll get all the heads turning,” said Lilani, who began her nursery four years ago. “It’s the topic of conversation.”
Zee Lilani of Kula Nursery holds up a curry leaf tree sapling. (Photo credit: Melati Citrawireja)
Lilani grows curry leaf plants from seed and tends them in their delicate early years so buyers have a better chance of keeping them alive.
She and her family have a long history with the plant. Her grandparents are originally from India’s Gujarat state, where curry leaves are used in a few dishes, including dal. During the upheaval of Partition, when the British granted India independence and it was divided into two nations, her grandparents migrated to the newly created Pakistan. In 1991, when Lilani was a year old, she and her family moved to Los Angeles, where her grandmother grew a potted curry leaf plant in a sunny kitchen window.
Despite this early experience and, later, a master’s degree in international agriculture, Lilani finds growing curry leaf plants challenging. Last November, when hard-armor bugs infested the plants’ stems, she manually removed them from each plant with rubbing alcohol. Overwatering was another issue. She experimented with different types of soils, trying to mimic nutrient-poor soils found in tropical areas.
“Growing vegetables I can do with my eyes closed,” she said, “but the curry leaf tree has kept me on my toes for so many years.”
A Deadly Disease
Since 2005, citrus greening has been detected in the southern United States, in most citrus-growing states except Arizona. The disease has devastated millions of acres of citrus crops and greatly reduced citrus production.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has set up quarantine areas from Florida to California to restrict the transport of citrus fruit or plants, as well as fresh curry leaves or plants.
Since 2020, Lilani has seeded and grown 2,500 curry leaf plants, but because her greenhouse is located in a quarantine zone, her customers can only buy on-site. Prasad, meanwhile, has a special USDA certification to ship outside his quarantine zone.
Besides sales restrictions, government scrutiny is another challenge for growers. Curry leaf and citrus operations are subject to inspections, according to the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS). In an emailed statement, the agency said curry leaf farms and nurseries, as well as citrus groves, are surveyed for pests and diseases at least twice per year by federal, state, or cooperating agencies.
Miguel Guerra gestures at a large curry leaf tree at Small Town Farm in Texas. (Photo credit: Cristen Andrews)
APHIS also clarified that curry leaf trees are a “preferred host”—but only for Asian citrus psyllids, not the HLB bacterium that actually causes citrus greening disease. However, because detecting microscopic bacteria requires time-consuming sampling and laboratory testing, inspectors focus on finding the carrier insects.
“The best way to prevent the introduction of HLB is to prevent the introduction of ACP,” said Abby Stilwell, national policy manager at APHIS.
To stave off the disease, inspectors from the California Department of Food and Agriculture, which works in partnership with the USDA, monitored Lilani’s greenhouse in March 2021 and watched as she sprayed her saplings with two different insecticides. She repeats the spraying every three months and logs her compliance with the Alameda County Department of Agriculture.
“It’s not ideal,” said Lilani. “But it’s mandatory for me to do.”
Prasad, too, faces government checks. USDA inspectors require that he spray the trees with insecticide every month. And he said one to three inspectors visit him for about an hour every Tuesday—his shipment day—on the lookout for the dreaded ACP, which Prasad said he has never seen.
But a scare in March 2012 had devastating consequences. When a lemon-pomelo graft tested positive for citrus greening disease less than five miles from Prasad’s farm, inspectors ordered that he chop down his trees. Prasad bulldozed them all, leaving his land littered with stumps. Slowly, the curry leaf trees germinated and began growing again.
Prasad pointed out that home growers of curry leaf trees could harbor ACP—as in the case of the lemon-pomelo graft—but they are not subject to regular agency inspections.
“[They] are harassing me because I’m a farmer,” said Prasad. “By stopping [me], you’re going to control all the bugs?”
A Growing Reach
It’s no longer just immigrant and diaspora communities that are interested in growing curry leaf plants. About an hour south of Austin, Texas, Cristen Andrews and Miguel Guerra co-own Small Town Farm, a one-acre homestead, wildlife habitat, and plant nursery.
After spending extended time in India, they fell in love with Indian cooking and the curry leaf tree, their favorite plant. A former co-worker gave them a sapling in a one-gallon pot. Their “curry baby” thrived in the humidity, went indoors during winter, and survived their initial overwatering. Its descendants now grow on their farm, with smaller plants grown from seed in the greenhouse.
“When we’re at the farmers’ market, we always bring some leaves with us and make people smell them. Because I love the smell so much, I like to share it,” said Guerra. “Nine out of 10 times they’re very pleasantly surprised [by the scent].”
Their main farmers’ market is in San Marcos, a college town.
“We’ve had students who live in dorms and have never grown a plant before come and ask us for advice,” said Andrews. “[They’ll ask for] things they can grow that are edible, that they could grow in a container. We’ll introduce them to the curry tree. I like the idea that there’s a lot of college kids [for whom] curry tree is their first plant ever.”
“I like the idea that there’s a lot of college kids [for whom] curry tree is their first plant ever.”
Andrews also believes that people should consider growing more tropical plants like the curry leaf tree as temperatures in the U.S. increasingly fluctuate.
Last year, the USDA updated its Plant Hardiness Zone Map, based on 30-year averages of the lowest annual winter temperatures. When compared to the 2012 map, the 2023 map shows that about half the country has shifted to the next warmer zone.
“If climate zones are changing, then curry leaf trees can likely grow farther north, although there’s a limit to how far north because they’re cold-sensitive and freeze-sensitive,” said Lorence of the National Tropical Botanical Garden.
Small Town Farm moved from Zone 8b to Zone 9a, and Andrews and Guerra are considering diversifying their crops.
Cristen Andrews of Small Town Farm laying down among curry leaf trees and other plants in the greenhouse. (Photo credit: Miguel Guerra)
“I think a lot of gardeners get really stuck on ‘I have to grow tomato and basil,’ and they don’t really think about all the options that grow better and require way less care,” said Andrews. “Curry tree is just one example. Our hardiness zone just changed, so now we’re looking south to Mexico and also the Middle East and the Mediterranean for plants that really thrive in hotter climates.”
Though the hardiness zone in Northern California has not changed, Lilani said the climate is more variable: longer winters with unpredictable frosts and hotter summers. She is planting bitter gourd and bottle gourd, both hardy in extreme heat.
As for the curry leaf, she plans to reserve about 250 saplings and grow them for an extra five to 10 years. These older plants will reach as high as 15 feet—and provide those customers nervous about tending young plants with extra assurance that the trees will thrive.
“Plants are smart,” said Lilani. “They adapt to the climate they’re grow in.”
My parents were eventually able to get a tree to adapt to a California home. In 1995, a friend in Texas shipped them a one-foot curry leaf plant, which they eventually planted in their garden. Over the years, the plant grew into a hardy tree with an abundance of fragrant leaves and several saplings at its base.
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]]>The post Tractor Rollovers Kill Dozens on Farms Each Year—and a Prevention Program Is at Risk appeared first on Civil Eats.
]]>On a sunny afternoon in September 2021, Michael Langford was moving compost with his compact John Deere. The front bucket was half full as he drove the tractor forward on a gentle slope of his 10-acre produce and poultry farm in Greensboro, Georgia.
Suddenly, the 53-year-old felt a tire slip under him. “I felt the tractor tilting over,” Langford recalls. “I wanted to get away from it as fast as possible. Thankfully, I didn’t have my seatbelt on. It just threw me across the yard, about 40 feet.”
In the end, the tractor landed on its left side; a roll bar above the seat prevented it from turning upside down.
Initially, Langford had only scrapes and bruises on his shoulders and neck, but a few weeks later, he couldn’t raise his arms above his chest. He underwent two surgeries to address torn rotator cuffs in his shoulders.
The tractor, the most ubiquitous tool on America’s farms, is also the most dangerous. Tractor accidents can result in severe injuries and are also the leading cause of death for farmers, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).
Rollovers alone account for most fatalities. Exact numbers are difficult to tally, but based on the most recent information from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 417 people died in tractor rollovers between 2011 and 2018—an average of 52 every year. And given the fact that many farms have 10 or fewer employees and are therefore not required to report fatalities, the number is very likely higher.
A safety device called the rollover protective structure (ROPS) has been known for decades to prevent these deaths. The structure includes a roll bar above the seat, supported by two or four posts, or a crush-proof cab. When used with seatbelts, ROPS are 99 percent effective in preventing injury and death.
“Rollovers can happen anywhere. Slopes and hilly terrain are definitely high risk. Mowing ditches is pretty risky. But it can totally happen on flat ground.”
In 1985, tractor manufacturers adopted a voluntary standard to include ROPS and seatbelts on all new tractors over 20 horsepower. Older tractors can be upgraded by installing ROPS—and farmers can defray the cost, which varies from less than $200 to nearly $6,000, depending on the make and model of tractor—through a national rebate program that began in 2007.
The National ROPS Rebate Program helps farmers with approximately 70 percent of the cost of purchasing and installing the safety equipment. The Northeast Center for Occupational Health and Safety (NEC) administers the program, and states cover the cost of the actual rebates, though the amount of support states provide varies widely and waiting lists are common.
Despite the proven success of the safety measure, however, the NEC is facing a funding shortfall and may have to shut down the program in 2024—because even if states continue to supply money for rebates, if the NEC doesn’t have money to administer the program, it cannot continue to run. To keep it going, administrators need $125,000 a year.
Given the threats to the rebate program’s existence, researchers and trade groups are hoping to shift its funding—both its administrative costs and the rebates themselves—to the federal farm bill, which would offer the program more long-term stability and move thousands of farmers off years-long waiting lists to upgrade their tractors. So far, however, Congress has not introduced any legislation that would create the rebate program.
Older Tractors, Experienced Farmers
Tractor overturns have been reported since the 1920s. The vehicles have a high center of gravity that can shift when they are hauling heavy loads or lifting large items such as bales of hay, according to Dr. Brandi Janssen, director of Iowa’s Center for Agricultural Safety and Health at the University of Iowa.
“Rollovers can happen anywhere,” Janssen said. “Slopes and hilly terrain are definitely high risk. Mowing ditches is pretty risky. But it can totally happen on flat ground.” Older tractors, with their narrow “tricycle-front” wheels, are more prone to tipping over, she continued.
Farmers hang on to older tractors because they know how to repair them and they work well with their other equipment, according to Dr. Julie Sorensen, director of the NEC. “Having worked with farmers for over 20 years, “they do have an attachment to their equipment,” she said.
Missouri has the highest number of fatal tractor incidents nationwide. It was on Janssen’s family farm in the state’s Ozark Mountains where her uncle rolled his tractor—which had no ROPS—into a ravine in the 1980s. “The tractor got hung up above him and he dropped down into the ditch so he walked away from it,” said Janssen. “Those are the stories that we don’t capture in [the existing data].”
The vast majority of reported deaths happen to experienced farmers, according to the NEC.
That is evident in Washington state, where between 1998 and 2022, 24 tractor rollovers resulted in fatalities, and all the victims were men, with a median age of 54. In one instance, a 56-year-old man had worked on his father’s farm all his life.
In late July 2020, he was driving a 1971 International Harvester 1066 tractor—which did not have an ROPS or a seatbelt—with a trailer near the edge of a bumpy road before sunrise. As he turned the tractor, one of its front wheels caught in a rut and the massive machine rolled down a grassy embankment. The heavy metal arms of a 3-point hitch at the back of the tractor pinned the farmer on his back and killed him. He was found hours later by his wife and son.
Paul Karolczyk, a research investigator with Washington’s Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation (FACE) program, published a detailed report on the incident. He found that the victim had only used the older tractor because the newer, safety-equipped tractor he owned had recently developed engine problems.
“It hit me when I was reading his obituary,” Karolczyk said. “There were a lot of comments . . . that really communicated the repercussions of this traumatic incident. We’re talking about rural communities that have smaller populations, and those impacts are felt much more widely through communities, because it’s not just one employee out of thousands. It’s also somebody who might be a pillar in that community.”
Most of the rollovers in Washington occurred on crop farms, including the state’s signature apple orchards. On those operations workers often take the roll bars down to work under the trees.
“Then they have to travel to another part of the farm, and in their mind, it takes too long to stop and put that ROPS back up,” said Todd Schoonover, director of the state’s FACE program. “But they’re going to go 30 miles an hour over some rough terrain. They’re going to navigate some tight, hairpin corners, and that’s when these rollovers often happen.”
Children at Risk
It’s not just farmers and farmworkers who are at risk. Rollover accidents can also impact children. Farms are a unique live-work space where young children often grow up riding in tractors with parents and grandparents, and older youth often help out their families and get hired by neighbors to operate tractors.
In 2011-2020, agriculture was the industry with the most deaths for working children ages 17 and younger, according to the National Children’s Center for Rural and Agricultural Health and Safety. The problem is even more pronounced because agricultural injuries and fatalities for non-working children are not recorded.
For child workers, the category that includes tractors, along with all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) and utility task vehicles (UTVs), was tied to the most deaths, according to Dr. Marsha Salzwedel, a project scientist at the center. Rollovers are more prevalent in older children driving tractors, she added. Parents will often teach children on older tractors without ROPS so they don’t damage expensive, new vehicles. But even practiced children face risks.
“We’ll hear stories about children who aren’t tall enough to reach the pedals or the steering wheel, so they have to slide forward on the seat and they don’t have the seatbelt on,” she said. “The other thing to consider is whether they have the cognitive abilities, the cognitive function, to operate that tractor. They don’t have the experience to know that you need to go crossways on a slope.”
That was the case with Ward Gerhardt in upstate New York. He learned to drive a tractor at age six on an old John Deere H that ran on kerosene. At 16, on a sunny fall afternoon, he started up a tractor for a trip down a hill. Hitched to the back was a 12-foot-high chopper wagon filled with oats from his brother’s field. Gerhardt turned up the radio over the noise of the tractor. He left his seatbelt unfastened as his foster brother sat wedged on a fender beside his seat.
“I don’t know what I was thinking, but instead of going down around the path that I should have, I broke over the crest of the hill,” Gerhardt recalled.
The six tons of grain he was towing suddenly piled forward in the wagon. The tractor’s tires lost traction, and it raced down the hill in a 25 mile-an-hour free fall. Gerhardt managed to steer straight until the tractor hit two rutted cowpaths a thousand feet down and then tore through a fence and crashed sideways.
“We got jostled around pretty good, but we got out of it without any injury,” Gerhardt said. “When it rolled, [my foster brother] was just lying there on his back and didn’t get hurt.”
That accident took place 50 years ago. An enclosed cab on the tractor kept the teenagers safe. Gerhardt, now 66, farms organic hay on his own 10-acre field in Mohawk, NY. He said the accident still affects how he drives a tractor.
“Fortunately, most of the land I’m working with is pretty flat,” he said. “Any hilly land, I’m pretty apprehensive about. I’m overly careful with how I’m driving on it and where I’m going.”
ROPS Rebates
With help from the National ROPS Rebate Program, Gerhardt is now planning to upgrade his own John Deere 3020 with a roll bar and a seatbelt. Since 2007, the program has retrofitted nearly 3,500 tractors, with rebates totaling more than $3 million. More than 2,000 farmers across the country are now waiting, because states must set aside funds for the rebates, and only New York and Minnesota have budgeted enough. A farmer in Maine has been on the waitlist for nearly 17 years, and in Iowa, the state with the highest rate of rollovers, 135 people are waiting for a rebate.
Jolean Johnson, 66, was waitlisted for five years before she upgraded the oldest of her four tractors. She uses the John Deere 2840 to rake hay and move wagons on her hilly 28-acre horse boarding farm outside State College, Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania farmer Jolean Johnson’s retrofitted tractor. (Photo courtesy of Jolean Johnson)
Soon after she purchased the farm in 1984, Johnson witnessed her father nearly flip his tractor backwards. She bought the John Deere in 1986 and has been looking to upgrade ever since.
“It has always been an issue for me, because of how close I came to losing my father,” said Johnson.
But with her tight budget, the cost was prohibitive. When she got approved for a rebate, she paid $1,300 for the ROPS and installation. The rebate reduced her outlay to about $430.
“We’ve come so far in identifying a solution, but all of that will fold in [less than] a year if we can’t find some way to support the program.”
But other farmers may never make it through the waitlist. The NEC has relied on research grants to administer the program, including a website to apply for the rebate, a toll-free hotline manned by a former dairy farmer, recommendations for local installers, and rebate processing. But because the program is past the research phase, it no longer qualifies for the grants it has relied on in the past. Sorensen, the director of the center, estimated they need at least $125,000 per year to keep the program running at its current level nationwide.
“We’ve come so far in identifying a solution,” she said, “but all of that will fold in [less than] a year if we can’t find some way to support the program.”
She said they could charge states for administrative costs but that seems unlikely as they already struggle to provide funding for the rebates themselves. A more permanent solution would be to fold the rebates into another program: the next $1.5 trillion farm bill. (The last bill expired in September but Congress recently granted a one-year extension in funding, until September 2024.)
“The funding mechanism that’s most ideally aligned with providing rebates and funding the program would be USDA,” Sorensen said. “To provide national funding for rebates would be something like $1 million a year. If you look at the farm bill, that’s peanuts.”
Trade groups that lobby legislators, including the American Farm Bureau Federation, also support federal funding for the rebate program. And the Association of Equipment Manufacturers lists the rebate program as one of its policy priorities for the farm bill.
So far, no one has introduced legislation that would support the program. With the one-year extension, however, Congressional agriculture committees have extra time to draft the next bill, and to include the rebate program.
“[Tractor rollovers are] the most frequent cause of death in the farm community, and we have a solution that we know works,” Sorensen said. “We could prevent further death or injury in the community. And the only thing that is stopping us is a marginal investment nationally in making this happen.”
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