At the first Pawpaw Festival in Ferguson, customers lined up to get a taste of an elusive fruit.
Despite the relatively low profile of the fruit, some customers already knew what to expect. Will Colbert was wearing a shirt with a brightly colored pawpaw pattern. In one arm was a newly purchased live pawpaw tree.
“I had them maybe two years ago and fell in love with them,” Colbert said. “I mean, to have such a cool, tropical fruit in Missouri is kind of wild.”
Pawpaws are oblong and look a bit like an avocado, except with smooth, dusty green skins. When they’re ready to eat, brown spots emerge signaling their sweetness.
For many at the festival, eating a pawpaw was a first.
Tamra Berger cut into the fruit with a knife and picked out some of the soft pulp.
“It kind of tastes like pudding,” Berger said. “I’m into it.”
Festivals like this one are popping up around the country as demand for pawpaws is growing. With more farmers interested in the fruit and efforts to develop new marketable varieties, the pawpaw could become even more popular.
What’s held the pawpaw back
The pawpaw is the largest fruit native to North America. It was domesticated by Native Americans and has a wide original range, spanning from Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma to Washington, D.C.
Despite its expansive territory, you’re unlikely to find it at a restaurant or in a grocery store. That’s mainly because pawpaws don’t keep for long.
“The chief limitation is the almost ephemeral nature of the fruit,” said Adam D’Angelo, the founder and director of research at Project Pawpaw, a crowdfunded breeding and research program.
Festivals like the one in Ferguson have become a prime way to turn the challenge of that short shelf life into an advantage, said Chris Chmiel, the founder and director of the Ohio Pawpaw Festival.
“Instead of that being a limitation, you kind of turn it into an asset by having an event,” he said.
Chmiel founded what was likely the first pawpaw festival in the U.S. in 1999. The annual festival in Albany, Ohio, now draws about 10,000 visitors and hosts a pawpaw eating contest, a beer garden and vendors selling goods and art.
In the years since that first festival, similar pawpaw celebrations have popped up around the country.
“Over the last 26 years, things have dramatically changed,” Chmiel said.
The “unprecedented surge in demand” for pawpaws, according to D’Angelo, has been driven by a few things, including social media, the push to diversify diets and a desire for more environmentally friendly food.
Because the pawpaw is native to the U.S., it is generally low maintenance, which is both better for the environment and potentially less expensive for farmers.
“These pawpaws require far fewer inputs, fertilizer, pesticide, other management,” D’Angelo said. “You can plant these orchards with far less infrastructure. So I see them as a way to maintain small farm viability.”
But the pawpaw still isn’t ready for a mass market. At new research and breeding orchards in New Jersey and Wisconsin, Project Pawpaw plans to explore cultivars that might get the fruit ready for a bigger stage.
“There's so much variation that with a bit of properly directed plant breeding, traditional plant breeding, we could make massive improvements and really just end up with a fantastic crop that's easy to grow, fun to eat and profitable for the small farmer,” D’Angelo said.
Growing pawpaws
At EarthDance Organic Farm School in Ferguson, pawpaw trees are covered in bunches of green fruit in late August. These trees aren’t what you would find wild in the woods — they’re cultivars, bred to produce larger fruit with smaller seeds.
This farm first harvested pawpaws in 2018, which was also the first time EarthDance’s Director of Agriculture and Education Jena Hood tried the fruit.
“It was so tasty,” Hood said. “People describe it as a cross between a mango and a banana. And I think that that is just spot on.”
Sometimes harvesting the fruit is as easy as collecting pawpaws fallen to the ground from the tree. It’s also possible to shake a tree to loosen the fruit, something Assistant Farm Manager Will Delacey likes to do.
“My favorite part is when you shake it and you just hear, ‘doo doo doo,’” said Delacey, mimicking the thump of the fruit hitting the ground.
EarthDance has a pay-what-you-can stand that sells the pawpaws at the farm. It also runs a booth at the Ferguson Farmers Market and sell pulp to local brewers making pawpaw beer. Plus, its pawpaws were for sale at the first festival.
Hood says there is a growing curiosity and demand for the fruit. In 2018, the harvest was small, maybe 50 pounds. This year, the farm expects to produce close to 800 pounds of pawpaws, and that won’t keep up with demand.
“People call wanting to know, do we have pawpaws?” Hood said. “We always sell out. We're taking them to the market. We're selling out every weekend.”
Between the strong demand and hardiness of the trees, the pawpaw is now an important crop for EarthDance.
In coming years, enthusiasts hope other farmers – and customers – will discover this native fruit, too.
This story was produced in partnership with Harvest Public Media, a collaboration of public media newsrooms in the Midwest. It reports on food systems, agriculture and rural issues.
