We continue our exploration of America’s only native caffeinated plant, and its potential to revitalize North American ecosystems.
BY MELINA DEVONEY
BARISTA MAGAZINE ONLINE
Featured photo courtesy of CatSpring Yaupon
Last week, we began our discussion of yaupon, North America’s only native caffeinated plant, and its emergence in the café world. Today, we’ll continue our exploration of the plant, its indigenous roots, and the people advocating for responsible yaupon stewardship as a way to restore damaged ecosystems in North America.
Revitalizing Native Landscapes and Cultures
In Part One of this article, Abianne Falla, founder of CatSpring Yaupon in Texas and citizen of the Chickasaw Nation, shed light on yaupon as a climate-resilient plant. She shared how, during a severe drought in Texas in 2011, yaupon was one of the few plants that survived.
Abianne also points to yaupon as having the potential to bring harmony back to Texas’ ecosystem. In once-undisturbed landscapes, yaupon was an understory tree among oaks, pine, and a diversity of grasses—whose robust root systems kept yaupon in check. “In our region, 95-99% of the native grasses were eradicated with overgrazing and monoculture farming. That’s why the pendulum has swung the other way and yaupon has taken over,” Abianne told Barista Magazine.
“It can grow 40 feet tall, like a thicket that deer can’t even get through,” adds Heather Lee, Chief Marketing Officer at CatSpring Yaupon.
CatSpring strictly “wild-harvests” overgrown yaupon. For over a decade, CatSpring has maintained symbiotic relationships with Texan ranchers by getting their land Organic or Regenerative Organic certified, then clearing out the overabundance of yaupon. They seed native grasses afterwards to restore biodiversity.
“We have no concerns over supply. It’s a 20 million acre opportunity for harvesting here in Texas. So we will never plant a yaupon tree,” Heather says.
Instead, CatSpring works with yaupon’s vitality. “Yaupon is a catalyst for restoration in your body as a consumer, for our land as a producer, for our community, and the industry,” Abianne says. “The more we drink, the more we produce, the more restoration we get to do.” (And the more domestic farms and ranches they get to support and local jobs they get to create.)
The blossoming yaupon industry models a future role of native plants. Liam Trotzuk, co-founder and CEO of Goldholly based in New York, expresses hope that yaupon will kick off a renewed appreciation for all native crops, such as the American Groundnut or American Pawpaw.
Liam and his co-founders launched Goldholly this year with the goal of popularizing yaupon in the Northeast. They source certified Organic yaupon from southern producers including CatSpring Yaupon. “Yaupon is just the tip of the iceberg with making our food systems more diverse and resilient,” Liam says.
Dismantling Corrupt Agricultural Systems
Regeneratively-grown food and beverages are trending for their power to transform landscapes destroyed by chemical-ridden, conventional monocrop agriculture. Regenerative agriculture goes beyond organic: a dedication to “doing no harm” to the earth. Regenerative methods attempt to “leave the land better than we found it” and restore the health and biodiversity of depleted soil, Bryon White, co-founder of Florida’s Yaupon Brothers, says.
Yaupon Brothers is certified Organic and Regenerative Organic and focuses on converting unsustainably-managed agricultural land into forested farms. “We’re adding value to the land because we’re planting a native tree that is food for pollinators and habitat for wildlife, and it’s not depleting the soil and it’s keeping erosion down,” Bryon told Barista Magazine.
Yaupon Brothers farmers grow propagated yaupon because it naturally grows sparser in the eastern corner of its range. They create agroforestry systems by surrounding yaupon with many symbiotic native plants and animals such as bees and Sunshine Mimosa, a cover crop that fixes nitrogen into the soil. They use water-efficient irrigation and organic soil amendments.
Furthermore, yaupon is uniquely poised to turn the American agricultural power structure on its head. Yaupon Brothers joined the movement combating consolidation within the American agricultural industry, in which commercial agribusinesses buy or push out small farmers. In particular, Black farmers have lost millions of acres of land across the South in the last century.
“Because we had to build our supply chain from scratch, we quickly realized that we didn’t have to exist within a broken food system,” Bryon says.
Yaupon Brothers built a direct trade model that makes entering the yaupon market more accessible for small farmers. In partnership with Potlikker Capital—a charitable loan fund that supports socially and economically disadvantaged agricultural producers and processors—Yaupon Brothers supports Black and Indigenous farmers in establishing yaupon farms.
Yaupon is reclaiming lost land as well as its Indigenous provenance. The North American Traditional Indigenous Food System (NATIFS) is a nonprofit that is “rekindling and empowering Indigenous food sovereignty.” Joining this larger movement, Yaupon Brothers partnered with NATIFS to ensure they keep the story of yaupon alive “in a way that’s as accurate and as additive as possible and not appropriating any elements of its cultural past,” Bryon says.
Spreading Yaupon’s Roots Nationwide
“There’s huge growth in the caffeinated space in general, and there’s a lot of space for yaupon,” Liam says. “We just need consumers to try out something new.”
The current challenge for yaupon producers is getting their product into the hands of new customers, especially in the North and West. After trying yaupon, “pretty much everyone’s converted,” Liam says.
Yaupon Brothers and CatSpring see similarly enthusiastic customer retention, and are optimistic that more Americans will connect with what yaupon stands for.
Bryon thinks yaupon has the potential to become America’s own “ubiquitous, culturally-entrenched beverage” that can heal the wounds within American agriculture.
“Consumers really love feeling like this is something that belongs to them. It’s part of their heritage—and that doesn’t matter what kind of American that they are,” Bryon says. “We’re all woven into the narrative of our history, and yaupon has always been there.”
Melina Devoney (she/her) is a barista and freelance writer in Los Angeles zeroed in on coffee and agriculture. She aims to amplify the voices of farmers and a diversity of perspectives within the coffee industry, and she’s happiest when running on wooded trails and dancing at concerts.
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