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To: Bluedot Living
From: White Buffalo Land Trust
Subject: Elderberry Bolsters Watershed Resilience
White Buffalo Land Trust (WBLT) is a Santa Barbara County–based nonprofit focused on restoring our ecosystem through agriculture. In 2023, we broke ground on The Elderberry Project, a multiyear project funded through the USDA’s Partnerships in Climate-Smart Commodities program. Focused on the native western blue elderberry, this initiative aims to build watershed resilience and support Central California’s agricultural community while bringing a climate-appropriate crop to the marketplace.
Why Elderberry?
We decided to work with the native western blue elderberry for economic and ecological reasons. Because of their immune support properties, elderberries are experiencing a surge in market demand, with U.S. sales more than doubling annually from 2017 to 2019. This native perennial found along waterways worldwide also offers a unique solution for restoring our watersheds. The elderberry actively contributes to climate resilience by sequestering carbon, enhancing soil health, improving water quality, mitigating floods, and preserving wildlife habitats.
The native western blue elderberry not only mirrors the health benefits of the European black elderberry — the most common elderberry currently available commercially — but also addresses climate challenges, presenting a climate-appropriate crop that could create a substantial market for small to mid-sized farmers in our region and beyond.
Working in Community
We are working with farmer and rancher partners and the Community Environmental Council to design and implement elderberry production systems tailored to their land bases. Incentive payments cover the establishment and maintenance costs of the crop, along with the implementation of climate-smart agricultural practices such as cover cropping.
The Santa Ynez Chumash Environmental Office partnered with us as a producer to grow the elderberry on tribal land, propagate elderberry stock at the tribal nursery for other producers to use, and develop workforce opportunities for the tribal community that provides access to these plants for medicinal and ceremonial uses.
To provide visibility into the economics of this crop, we have partnered with Propagate, a regenerative agriculture company which is developing agroforestry economic models for climate-smart practices and building region-specific agronomic and economic crop models to help scale this initiative across California and beyond.
Once the berries are harvested, Jungle Beverage Company and Just One Organics will employ a unique gentle drying process to maintain the crop’s nutritional value at a regional processing facility in Santa Maria. Over the next five years, our partners at Beyond the Farm will be working to connect brands with this new supply chain, bridging the gap from production to the marketplace, and Cage Free Productions will support the effort with storytelling to educate producers, brands, and customers about the western blue elderberry.
Visit The Elderberry Project for more information. Questions about the project and inquiries about getting involved can be directed to [email protected].
