ABOVE: Harvesters Sebastian Bibioni (RIGHT) and Leo Baigorro (LEFT) sift pongamia seeds at Terviva's orchard in Haleiwa.
This legume has superpowers: It's drought tolerant, pest resistant, nitrogen fixing, carbon sequestering, soil remediating, high-yielding and rich in protein. It can provide food and fuel, and combat climate change, all with a single pod. And Terviva wants to plant millions of them to feed billions.
Pongamia pinnata, also known as Indian beech and karanja, is found throughout East Asia and the Pacific. Traditionally harvested for its ayurvedic benefits and for lamp oil, it thrives anywhere that doesn't freeze. Terviva first eyed pongamia for biofuel production, planting 8,500 trees above Haleiwa on Oahu's North Shore. The processing from bean to oil, says Terviva CEO Naveen Sikka, is close to 80 percent less carbon-intensive than producing petroleum. Today, Terviva has orchards on Maui, works with farmers in Florida and Australia, and wild harvesters in India.
R&D manager Ian Schiller inspects the hardy East Asian legume, which holds promise as both a biofuel and a nutrient-rich food source. Terviva aims to plant millions of pongamia trees around the world in an effort to combat both climate change and hunger.
Two years ago Terviva figured out how to de-bitter the bean's pungent flavor, a game changer that positions pongamia as both fuel and food. They introduced Ponova—a light, golden oil rich in Omega-9s with a high smoke point, nutty taste and buttery mouthfeel—as an alternative to palm oil and soy. According to Terviva, one acre of pongamia produces the same amount of oil as four acres of soy. The remaining bean cake can be crushed into a protein-packed flour.
Pressed from Haleiwa-grown beans, Ponova made its "first-ever pongamia-as-food" debut, as Sikka calls it, last year in the Kona bar, a snack made by plant-based protein company Aloha, with mac nuts from Hamakua Macadamia Nut Co. and Kona coffee from Greenwell Farms. Ten percent of Kona bar's sales are donated to KUPU, a Hawaii conservation nonprofit. "Sustainability will soon become table stakes for the food industry, so the sooner leading companies start thinking about the traceability of their ingredients, the better," says Aloha CEO Brad Charron.
One of the most eye-opening statistics Sikka shares is that there are over a billion people who make their livelihoods from agriculture. While only 1 percent of the US population is farming, in Mexico and India it's 30 percent, and in Africa it's more than 50 percent. The ability to produce food, feed and fuel from pongamia allows these farmers entry into all those markets, and that's part of Terviva's endgame. "We're not a food company. We're not a fuel company. We're a tree company," Sikka says. "We're trying to make the tree as broadly usable as possible to create this really sustainable future for our planet."
