Introducing aronia berries, Iowa’s superfood

Bob Pertzborn drives around town in a van advertising Pertzborn Insurance. Which makes sense, because that’s his business. During the late summer, though, inside the van are the real fruits of his labor: more freshly harvested aronia berries than he could have imagined when he planted 1,000 aronia bushes in 2011. And frankly, more than he knows what to do with at the moment.

There could be quite a few growers in the same boat. A member of the board of the Midwest Aronia Association, Pertzborn said there are probably nearly 100,000 aronia plants growing within 20 miles of his plot near Ankeny.

It’s not that Pertzborn, 54, and his wife, Kathy, 56, haven’t made some plans or sold any berries. It’s just that there’s so many all of a sudden.

“The bushes are supposed to double their production each year until they top out about 25 to 30 pounds per plant,” Bob said. “Last year, I got about 1,000 pounds.” He shook his head as he gazed at row after row of bushes so laden with fruit that the branches are lying on the ground. “I’m going to get about 5,000 pounds.”

That’s a lot of aronia berries to pick — by hand — for what is mostly a two-person operation, especially when those two persons both have full-time jobs off the “farm.” Kathy works as a dietitian at Blank Children’s Hospital.

Wheels were turning

It’s all Kathy’s fault. She discovered aronia berries by accident on a county extension bus trip to the loess hills in western Iowa. The bus made a stop at Sawmill Hollow Family Farm in Missouri Valley for a look at the first aronia berry farm in the U.S. Vaughn and Cindy Pittz and their son Andrew of Sawmill Hollow planted their first 207 aronia bushes in 1995.

Kathy bought some of the farm’s food products and loved them. So, she dragged Bob along on her next trip to restock.

“We ended up visiting with (Vaughn) for an hour and I could just see the smoke coming out of Bob’s brain. I mean, I just wanted to buy another jar of salad dressing,” Kathy said, laughing.

She knew her entrepreneurial husband’s wheels were turning.

Shortly thereafter, Bob ordered 2,000 aronia bushes to plant on a 3-acre plot near his childhood home, which his father still owns. The fields were once planted in corn and soybeans but had lain fallow for at least 10 years.

A hardy, native crop

So why aronia berries? Ask that question of the Pertzborns and they’ll both wax eloquent about everything aronia. The entrepreneurial opportunities, the fact that aronias once grew like weeds here, the berries’ nutritional wow factors, the boon to small farmers.

In any case, listening to them list the attributes of the once-lowly choke­berry, as it is also called, it’s easy to wonder why everybody isn’t in the aronia business.

Hardiness: “This crop is native to North America,” Bob said. “Native Americans used it in all kinds of ways for medicinal purposes. It even has a natural SPF. But it was run off by farmers who wanted the land for corn and beans.”

Aronias are drought-, pest- and disease-resistant, too, and they adapt well to a wide range of soil types and conditions.

Sustainability: Because the plants are native and hardy, there is little reason to use chemicals, so most aronias grown in the U.S. are organic. The plants are also long-lived perennials so the same ones can be harvested for decades.

“That’s also an attractive economic equation,” Bob added.