There’s been work to pull together a papaya marketing board for several years now, says consultant William Watson, president of Orlando, Fla.-based The Fresh Approach. This is the third year, he says, that papaya growers, both domestic and global, see the potential research and marketing could have on growing papaya consumption in the U.S.
“We’ve seen a lot of success from a lot of commodity boards — avocados, mangoes, blueberries — and the Papaya Board Working Group wants to replicate that success with papayas, and they feel the best way to do that is create research and promotion board that includes domestic producers and importers, which represent the whole market and convince consumers to buy more of the product,” he says.
It’s also a great opportunity for domestic growers and importers to work together to boost consumer awareness and consumption, Watson says.
“I think there’s a lot of market potential, and so do our producers and importers, and we want to work together to tap into that,” he says.
Why Domestic Input is Nonnegotiable
Watson says that while the board will include domestic papaya growers as well as those outside of the U.S., the Papaya Board Working Group seeks to connect with Hawaiian papaya growers to bring this research and promotion board to fruition.
“We can’t do this without the papaya producers in Hawaii,” he says. “We want to come to them. We want to let them understand what we want to try to do and help build a papaya market for everybody.”
On May 27 at 12 p.m. Hawaii-Aleutian Standard Time, the Papaya Board Working Group will host an informational Zoom to discuss the motivation behind the creation of this board, discuss a framework for how a papaya board would assess growers, next steps and more. Watson says that whatever the growers and importers agree on, the assessment will be the same.
“We have a template that we want to put in front of them — let them help us tweak it and make any changes,” he says.
This is where Watson says it’s critical to have input from domestic papaya growers.
“We need them to help us understand where that [assessment] number works,” he says. “We have an idea where it can work with our importers. Our importers are going to fund the majority of the program significantly, but our domestic producers are key leaders and will be at the table to help guide that investment.”
The Roadmap to a USDA Referendum
Watson says once growers sign off on the proposal, it will be submitted to USDA to be published as a draft of a proposed rule in the Federal Register for comments. From there, if there is enough support, growers would vote on a referendum. He adds that it’s possible to have a referendum within the next 24 months.
The benefits of a true research and promotion board are endless, Watson says, all with the end goal of growing papaya consumption. Research can extend into proper handling to create a more consistent and uniform fruit at the grocery store, he notes.
“We could fund proper handling research for papayas, and we can take the findings that’ll be science-based, and we teach our friends through the distribution system how to properly handle the product,” he says. “If that happens, ... consumers are going to get a better product. Retailers are going to sell more. They’re going to buy for more from distributors, who will buy more from the producers.”
Watson says members of the Papaya Board Working Group also want to look into consumer trends and how papayas align with those. An example would be to communicate the health benefits of a diet rich in papayas.
“We believe there’s some nutritional powerhouse items in papayas that haven’t been identified yet, and we want to tell consumers about those,” he says. “We can’t do it unless we have science-based research.”
