Farmer's Market

Growing neem, banking green

Organic farmers now run a bustling export business to sell their tree extract, which is used in insecticides and soaps.

By JAY CRIDLIN
© St. Petersburg Times
published March 21, 2003

BRANDON -- When Jerry Britner travels to Mexico, he often calls his business partner, Vicki Parsons, to see how many kilos of powder they need from their farm in the Yucatan Peninsula.

This, understandably, makes U.S. Customs Service officials a little nervous.

"You can imagine what customs does when they see boxes and boxes and boxes of green powder," Parsons said.

But Britner and Parsons aren't doing anything wrong. They seem to be doing everything right.

Their product is neem, an organic extract from an Indian tree that can be used as a natural alternative to insecticides and medicinal soaps. And their Brandon business, Neem Tree Farms, has quietly become one of the world's leading retailers of the product.

"We just had an order from Croatia," said Parsons, tossing her hands in the air. "Croatia!"

Business is booming at their nursery in Brandon and their 300-acre neem tree farm in Mexico.

Neem oil is widely sold as a popular nontoxic insecticide, but for thousands of years, it has also been known as a "wonder drug" in India. Natives use it as an analgesic, in teas, even as a toothpaste.

It can also be used as a soap to treat skin conditions such as scabies. But you didn't hear that from Parsons and Britner.

"We are allowed to make a statement that people are calling us for scabies, or that neem has traditionally been used as an insect repellent," Parsons said. "But we're not allowed to say that it kills scabies or that it's a good insect repellent."

Food and Drug Administration guidelines prevent companies from labeling any product as potentially curative unless it's been FDA tested and approved. Often, this rule has a big impact on small businesses, especially organic substance dealers that some view with skepticism.

"Both of us realize that we could be easily mistaken for snake oil," Parsons said.

Their Web page was only approved by the FDA because it makes no specific promises to cure disease.

Even so, the Web page has been Neem Tree Farms' portal to the global marketplace. Search for "neem" on Google or Yahoo! and the site is among the first to come up.

There, customers can order everything from neem oil and soap to neem capsules.

Parsons has some neem plants in a nursery at her Brandon home, but most of the neem product comes from Britner's 300-acre farm in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. The bark and leaves of the trees are ground up to make everything from soap to capsules to teas, while neem oil comes from the plant's tiny fruit.

The majority of the company's products are made near the farm in Mexico, which employs 30 workers. Britner visits the farm several times a year and brings the neem back on a ferry.

Once the product reaches Florida, the company's four workers sort and ship it.

"The biggest investment into the finished product," Britner said, "is an investment of our time."

Britner and Parsons got into the neem business independently of one another but soon realized they needed each other's help to succeed.

Britner, who also works as a nurse anesthetist at the James A. Haley VA Hospital in Tampa, and his brother had raised oranges for years before getting into neem and aloe vera farming in Mexico.

The product was good, but Britner couldn't find a market for it.

Enter Parsons, a public relations consultant who gardened as a hobby. In 1992, she developed an allergy to insecticides and stumbled across neem as an effective, if expensive, alternative.

"At the time, it was $200 a gallon to buy a gallon of neem oil, so it wasn't feasible to spray my tomatoes with," she said.

She began growing a little neem on the side. But the world of neem is a small one, and when Britner caught wind of her project, he went to check it out.

The two began talking and realized that together, they could put together a profitable little business.

The business has been profitable, but not exactly little. In addition to Croatia, they've shipped neem to Alaska, England and Singapore.

"We're going to go ahead and buy all the soap -- basically a year's worth of inventory -- by April," Parsons said.

"And still we'll be making more," Britner said.

They have no plans to start selling neem out of Parsons' home, and are content to keep their grass roots marketing efforts global, rather than local.

"It's been a lot of work, but it's 90 percent of the time fun work," Parsons said.

Neem Tree Farms

601 Southwood Cove, Brandon, FL 33511

Product line: One hundred neem capsules sell for $12, while a bottle of shampoo is $7 and a bar of soap is $3. An entire neem tree sells for $26.50.

Visit www.neemtreefarms.com to place an order.