For decades, farmers and their families have made New Orleans a destination location, taking in the sights and sounds of the French Quarter, its five-star restaurants and favorites like the Café Du Monde and its chicory coffee.

Chicory, often sold under brand names like Community Coffee and Café Du Monde, has become a staple for residents and visitors to New Orleans and south Louisiana because of its distinctive flavor.

But what if chicory, which grows wild in fields and along the roadsides in many parts of the country, could become a new crop, something that could provide financially stressed farmers with an additional source of income at a time when the outlook for most of the crops they grow is bleak.

That possibility is driving Tommy Jumper, a former Jimmy Sanders Co., executive and one of the founders of the Northeast Arkansas Peanut Farmers Cooperative, to help put together a corporation called Root Cause Bio that would process and market inulin, a prebiotic obtained from chicory roots.

After working to establish the peanut shelling plant and buying points in Jonesboro and Marianna, Ark., and Kennett, Mo., Jumper retired to his cattle ranch near Paragould, Ark., to raise purebred Angus cows and enjoy a slower pace.

Jimmy Sanders

Jumper credits his years with Jimmy Sanders, the founder of the Cleveland, Miss.-based, nationally known farm supply retailer, for “allowing him to grow and develop skills and relationships to build businesses,” as he explained to members of the Memphis Ag Club at their monthly meeting in October.

Related:How to generate more cash flow to support your farm operation

“So I get calls a lot,” he said. “I’m really not interested in coming off my cattle ranch. I’m having a good time, working hard but in a completely different way. But one day I get a call from an acquaintance I had met in Boston when I was trying to line up funding for the peanut cooperative.

“He asks me what I know about chicory. I said not much. My buddies south of I-20 love to roast it and blend it with their coffee. Turkeys love it. Whitetail deer eat it. We used to put it in our food plots. It grows anywhere you drive in Iowa. That’s about all I know.”

The acquaintance asked if Jumper had heard of inulin. “I had never heard of it,” he said. “He told me ‘Inulin is an interesting compound. It’s a fructooligosaccharide (or FOS). You refine it from a chicory root like you refine sugar out of a sugar beet.’”

Jumper also learned that at least 70% of the chicory used in the production of inulin is grown and refined in northern Europe and shipped to the U.S. for inclusion in the growing number of “gut health” products sold here.

Related:Microgreens finding niche in Florida

Sales forecasts

The latest forecasts say sales of prebiotic compounds will rise from $7.3 billion in 2023 to $15.1 billion by 2030 and the use of inulin in functional good ingredients will grow from $112.7 billion in 2023 to $200.29 billion in 2032.

“Inulin is a sweetener – it’s not as sweet as sucrose, but it’s a sweetener nonetheless,” said Jumper. “Food companies love it because it’s a fiber, and it creates tremendous texture and mouth feel. We like to eat it, but the biggest value is that it is without question one of the most researched and most effective plant-based prebiotics in the world.”

Doing his “due diligence,” Jumper asked a friend, a gastroenterologist  about prebiotics and the field of gut health. “He said ‘Tom, I’ve spent my entire career in not the most glamorous part of the medical field. It is really validating to finally be taken seriously.’”

The doctor told Jumper there are currently 33,000 peer-reviewed white papers on gut health in medical journals. “This is the most researched thing in medicine, and they’re proving that 90% of your immune response system resides in your colon.”

Not long after, Jumper went in for his annual checkup. “I knew I was predisposed to be diabetic,” he said. “My blood sugar was barely elevated out of the safe range, and my doctor told me he didn’t want me to be alarmed, but he wanted me to go home and subscribe to AG1, these little healthy green drinks.

“He said ‘It’s got a great vitamin pack, and, you don’t have to understand this, but it’s got a great prebiotic in it called inulin.’ I’m sitting there thinking I just signed a memorandum of intent with AG1 last week, but I wanted him to explain it to me. He said ‘Immediately, it’s going to help us manage your blood sugar for five, six, seven or eight years without having to do anything else.”

Building potential

Deciding to come out of retirement, Jumper is now working with Root Cause Bio to plan and build a processing plant that would help fill the gap between the amount of chicory grown in northern Europe and the growing demand for inulin.

Farmers in northern Europe have such a short season and other restrictions they can only keep a processing plant supplied for two or three months a year, making producing the product economically challenging.

“The United States is a big country,” he said, “And I can envision starting the season in south Texas and working our way up through the Delta and into the Midwest, producing enough chicory root to keep a plant running for 10 or 11 months of the year. The economics would work much better.”

Jumper said he has no doubt U.S. farmers can produce enough chicory to meet the anticipated demand. “Our farmers can grow anything, and with enough quantity and quality,” he said. “The main thing is that this project has to be customer-facing so that farmers can market the crop and be rewarded for their efforts.”

He estimates it will take two years to plan and build a processing plant and establish the infrastructure needed to move the crop from south Texas and other growing points to a centrally located facility.

Meanwhile, Root Cause Bio is setting up trials to help farmers learn how to plant, grow and harvest chicory. Some research is already being conducted in the sugar beet growing areas of the upper Midwest.

“They have the equipment to harvest a root crop like sugar beets, so it makes sense for them to try growing and harvesting chicory,” he said. “As we continue to develop, some farmers may want to invest in the plant; others may want to contract acres of production. We want to take things one at a time and build a sound processing and marketing entity.

“I’ve talked to a couple of companies that I met during my peanut business, and they say they would like to develop a healthy, prebiotic snack,” he said. “But they can’t expand that product line because of the limited availability of inulin.”