Associated Press Article (Extract)
Supposed Powers Make Palmetto Berries Desirable
By the Associated Press
April 7, 1997—Supposed restorative powers dating back to Indian lore are making the fruit of Florida's saw palmetto into a multimillion dollar export.
Sought for the ability to return sexual function to aging men, the olive-sized fruit of the common bush has become a darling of the diet-supplement industry.
With about 2,000 tons harvested from South Florida and exported to Europe each year, the humble berries have become what some estimate is a $50 million a year crop in the state.
No one knows the precise value because the industry has operated quietly, with immigrant workers earning cash for berries taken from parks, riverbeds and ranch lands with no questions asked and no taxes paid.
A bill moving through the Florida House would change that, giving the saw palmetto the status of an agricultural crop.
The fruit would come under the same regulatory protections as citrus, bringing an underground sideline into the realm of big business.
The House Law Enforcement and Public Safety Committee passed the bill (HB 907) on Friday. The Senate has passed its own version (SB 2044).
The saw palmetto's properties have long been noted, said Marlin Huffman, a Hendry County dealer who has been picking the berries for 40 years.
"Indians used the saw palmetto as a subsistence food in the fall," Huffman said. "During that time, the older Indian men found they didn't have to get up so much in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, and they also saw they were more able to achieve relations with females."
"Some people think that's where Ponce de Leon got the idea that the fountain of youth was in Florida," he said.
American men rediscovered the berries in 1994, when federal dietary supplement laws relaxed.
Steven Foster, author of Herbs for Your Health and nine other books on botanicals, said saw palmetto has become the sixth-best-selling herbal dietary supplement nationwide.
About half of all men over 50 have benign prostatic hyperplasia, that is, noncancerous swollen prostate glands. In Europe, several pharmaceutical companies sell saw palmetto-based nonprescription drugs for the condition.
The French drugmaker Pierre Fabre markets it under the name Permoxin and buys hundreds of tons of the material from Florida dealers each year.
The rush intensified in the summer of 1995, when a poor crop and rising demand sent prices soaring to 30 times the typical 10 cents a pound. Migrant workers, farmhands, high school students—everyone—fanned out in search of the berries.
"You had people climbing over fences, cutting locks, trespassing," said Everett Loukonen, a ranch manager for Barron Collier Partnership, which owns about 70,000 acres of land in South Florida.
Gregory Zaino, founder of the Saw Palmetto Berries Co-Op of Florida in Naples, hailed the move to make saw palmetto a bona fide cash crop. Zaino said a cooperative would standardize picking, cleaning and processing methods.
Last modified: May 22, 2003
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