Will first-time Florida permit be palmetto berry industry game-changer? (2025)

Times are changing for the saw palmetto berry harvest.

For at least 50 years, picking the berries of this largely uncultivated native plant has yielded income in a season when most agriculture in Southwest Florida is dormant.

Extract from saw palmetto berries is commonly used in Europe and the United States as a treatment forenlarged prostate.

It's been a bit like the Wild West out in the pine flatwoods and cattle country, with numerous unconfirmed reports of trespassing on private property and picking on public lands.

Previously, it was legal to pick and sell palmetto berries from your own property or from property where you'd been given permission to pick the fruits.

This year, the state agriculture department issued rules requiring a harvesting permit and written permission from owners to pick on property that’s not yours.

If palmetto berry harvesters, buyers, transporters or processors don’t have the required permits and permission letters, they can be charged with a misdemeanor.

About a month into the harvest, it’s too early to know how big a game-changer this is.

However, berry pickers and buyers recently interviewed say:

• Pounds of berries brought to market aredowncompared with this time last year.
• Prices areup, reaching $3 a pound or more from buyers in Immokalee.
• So are arrests and citations for pickers.

“A lot of people have been locked up for it, but the business is still going,” said Daniel Riosduring breaks between receiving berries Aug. 20 at a makeshift weigh station at a parking lot along Immokalee’s New Market Road.

Halfway into August, at least 16 people had been arrested in Collier County alone,on suspicion of harvesting palmetto berries without a permit. Most of the people were from Immokalee.

In Lee County, palmetto-related arrests have come in at a pace of roughly two per day.

Previous coverage: Harvest time in Immokalee for saw palmetto berry, prized as black bear food and herbal remedy

What do the new rules mean?

The new rules mean law enforcement doesn’t have to catch people in the act of picking or trespassing to issue an arrest or a notice to appear in court on charges of illegal harvesting.

Some people are arrested following trafficstops when deputies find bags of berries in the back of their cars or truckbeds.

Landowners also are using the rules to assert their private property rights.

For example, a Golden Gate Estates resident called the Collier County Sheriff's Office to report a grouptrespassing on her property. She confronted the people, who were picking berries, and asked them if they had a permit, according to an arrest report.

The people fled after being confronted. But, deputiescaught up withthe truck, saw bags of berries in the truck bed,and arrested the eight people, the arrest report said.

Since the new rule went into effect on July 17, the state agriculture department has received 1,425 permit applications, spokesman Aaron Keller said on Friday.

Asked about a rumored backlog in permit-processing, Keller said “all complete applications are reviewed within 14 days.”

The permit application doesn't look as arduous to completeas an IRSlong form. However, it does asksuch details as the Latin and common name of the plant to be harvested – and the location of the harvest property, including township, range, section, latitude and longitude.

Although saw palmetto grows throughout the U.S. Southeast, Florida and Georgia are the main states.

Palmetto berries thrive here

Immokalee is the hub for the region's palmetto berry harvest.

On a recent weekday, a sporadic stream of pickups, vans and cars stopped to off-load and weigh palmetto berries at produce businesses clustered near the State Farmers Market.

New Market Road and its offshoots are dotted with signs saying something like "Se compra bolitas," which roughly translates to "we buy palmetto berries." In Spanish, bolitas literally means "little balls."

Scott Niebel operatesthe Blue Skies repacking operation on New Market Road that takes crops harvested in the region and packs them for sale to wholesale produce buyers. Itspecializes in packing green bell peppers and hot peppersbut won't have work in either of these crops until November.

So Niebel and his dad, Jerry,are buying palmetto berries from local pickers, which they’llsell to a broker in Georgia.

Jerry Niebel thinks the new rules are hypocritical. They were touted as helping to promote the welfare of a commercially exploited native plant, he said.

But, “as soon as some developer wants to put in a development, they push the palmettos out of the way.

“It’s all politics, to me.”

The elder Niebel also believes the permit rules lack compassion for people of very modest means who are barely getting by until the farm crops come in.

There’s no charge to apply for a permit. But the forms come only in English, something many pickers aren’t fluent in, Jerry Niebel said.

He then shared the story of an older woman who broke down crying after selling some 300 pounds of berries. She told Niebel this money would help save her home.

On the other hand, the Niebelsalso regaled visiting journalistswith stories of nattily dressed people pulling up with trunk loads of berries in their Mercedes, fresh-picked off Naples golf courses.

Those scenarios are the exception. Picking saw palmetto berries on wild tracts of landis hot, dirty work. The palmetto’s saw-toothed fronds can draw blood. The twisted trunks and dense foliage are great cover for snakes, rodents and creepy-crawlies.

A treat for humans – and Florida black bears

Still, in summer at least two species can't get enough of the slow-growing, sprawling shrub.

Those are the humans who harvest and sell the berries – and Florida black bears.

Saw palmetto berries are a primary food source for the bears, who even in Florida bulk-up before winter.

Wildlife scientists wonder whether declining acreage in saw palmetto and increased real estate development are putting hungry bears closer to homes and businesses.

More: No Florida black bear hunt this year

More: Waffles used to lure wandering black bear into trap at Fort Myers apartment complex

Although they respect private property rights, these scientists wouldlike owners of big and small private lands to just say no to berry picking.

In some ways, it’s hard to believe people would go to so much bother for a bitter berry that would make a human mouth pucker in disgust.

But there’s gold in those gunnysacks.

The $3 per pound and more the berries were fetching along the streets ofImmokalee on Aug. 20 was roughly three times more than a year ago.

Ultimately, the berries are dried, ground-up and then sold to pharmaceutical and herbal supplement manufacturers.

They reputedly lessen the symptoms of prostate enlargement, which makes it difficult for some men to urinate.

"More than two million American men use saw palmetto for enlarged prostate, and it is commonly recommended as an alternative treatment by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration," according to the Mayo Clinic's consumer web pages.

Palmetto berry extracts also have been used for low sperm count, low sex drive, hair loss, bronchitis, diabetes, inflammation, migraine, and prostate cancer, "although there is limited evidence supporting its effectiveness for these conditions," the Mayo Clinic website added.

Large landowners in Southwest Florida increasingly have struck deals with palmetto berry harvestersin which the two parties typically split the profits.

However, on remote parcels, unauthorized strangers often beat harvesting crewsto prime spots and picked the saw palmettos clean. And, these early-bird berry poachers often picked before the berries were fully ripe, which can hurt their market value.

Ray March oversees land management for Naples-based Collier Enterprises, which owns some 50,000 acres in rural portions of Collier and Hendry counties.

March calls the new rules “a big improvement, although we’ll have to see how it works out.”

Some 20 years ago, the Florida Legislature named the saw palmetto an emerging agricultural crop.

However, the commercial potential for the berries has lagged well behind its initial promise, said agriculturaleconomist Fritz Roka.

He’s worked for almosttwo decades at theUniversity of Florida's Southwest Florida Research and Education Center in Immokalee, but as of today becamedirector ofthe newCenter for Agribusinessat Florida Gulf Coast University.

What's needed, Roka said, is a complete legal infrastructure, much like there is in the citrus industry, in which berry ownership can be tracked from landowner to harvester, to shipper, to intermediaries and finally to the herbal/dietary supplement manufacturer.

“You can have all the rules and regulations you want. But once you sell (berries) on the streets of Immokalee, there’s no traceability,” Roka said.

Regulations control how a product is sold, “so you can get full value,” Roka said, adding:

“If even 15- to 25 percent of those berries are poached, those berries will influence the price on the market.”

The Naples Daily News reporter Alexi Cardonacontributed to this report.