Guest Entry: Why We Like Stevia

The following is a guest entry by Michael Lewis:

Some of you may not know what stevia is, but for those who are worried about artificial sweetners, you’ve probably heard of it. Stevia is a plant native to South America that tastes really sweet. It was originally found in Paraguay and parts of Brazil and has been used by the Guarani for 1500 years (according to Wikipedia) to sweeten teas and to have as a sweet treat. Apparently the FDA initially banned the plant in its raw form, but after some lobbying by some of the soda companies, the FDA approved as “safe” a highly processed, extracted, and purified form which also happens to be calorie free. Products like Truvia and Pure Via are based on this extract. Despite the fact that the whole leave version of the plant has yet to be approved by the FDA, I was curious as to how it tastes, so I followed Felipe’s lead and just ate one of the leaves. Not surprising it’s pretty sweet.

Xeiprojuve doesn’t export the stevia. They have a relatively small operation, and wouldn’t be able to meet the demand of a foreign exporter by themselves, so instead they harvest the leaves and sell them locally for use in teas. Apparently they sell fairly well in Huehuetenango. But the association still just sells the raw plant. They’re looking into the possibility of buying a packaging machine that would allow them to package the plants in a powder form for easier consumption, but it’s a pretty large start-up cost that could take years to recapture.

The pros of the stevia operation are that it commands a higher market price than tomatoes. It’s a sturdier plant which means we can actually grow it organically (unfortunately the tomato operation can’t call itself organic quite yet), and it is perennial, so you can harvest leaves from the same plant year after year, rather than plant a new batch every season.

The con list is unreliable domestic demand, and the inability to cash in on the large international demand because of issues with the scale of the operation. There is always demand for tomatoes, but the same can’t be said for stevia. But the stevia operation is definitely one Felipe wants to expand.

Personally I enjoy working in the stevia operation more than the tomato operation. For one thing I don’t get nearly as dirty. For my first day in the stevia fields I spent the first half of my day weeding one of the greenhouses (with a machete), and then spraying the plants down in the afternoon with a organic mineral bath that is supposed to keep them strong and green. It smelled a lot like the PAAS Easter egg dye from back in the day, so I’m guessing it had a lot of vinegar, but I’m not really sure what was inside.

During my second day working with the stevia plants I got to help plant a new crop in a different greenhouse. The process was pretty interesting. For this new set of plants we wanted a plastic guard to prevent weeds from growing. So we cleared the ground, piled the dirt up into elevated rows, covered it with lime (the white powder variety), laid down a drip line, and then covered the rows and drip line with the plastic covering.

We then went and started a fire, which was pretty unexpected for me. We took some aluminum cans, cut off one end, stung it up with wire, and added hot coals to the can. We then went and poked holes in the plastic covering with a board with nails at a predetermined distance to serve as a guide, and then we used the cans to burn holes in the plastic covering. (I’m pretty sure in the States we’d have just cut holes with scissors or something, but this was a pretty cool method.)

And then we went ahead and planted the plants which had been growing in a nursery greenhouse.

After all the planting was done, we took the leftover ashes from our fire and some lime and mixed it with water, and then we applied one cup of this mixture to every new plant to prevent fungus from growing. The ratio was probably ½ cup of ashes and ½ cup of lime to 5 gallons of water.