Churches Buy More Expensive `Eco-Palms’ for Palm Sunday

c. 2006 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Combining ecology and theology, hundreds of churches are choosing “eco-palms” for their Palm Sunday services this year. It’s an idea resonating with congregations that had not previously given much thought to where palms come from, but have interests in other justice causes, such as “fair trade coffee,” that help […]

c. 2006 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Combining ecology and theology, hundreds of churches are choosing “eco-palms” for their Palm Sunday services this year.

It’s an idea resonating with congregations that had not previously given much thought to where palms come from, but have interests in other justice causes, such as “fair trade coffee,” that help support poor Third World coffee growers.


“To have in our hand on Palm Sunday a palm that we know has been harvested in an ecologically friendly way, in a way that’s going to benefit the communities and the people who harvested them, adds that much more depth to our celebration of Palm Sunday,” said Brenda Meier, parish projects coordinator for Lutheran World Relief.

The Baltimore-based relief agency has taken the lead in promoting palm fronds that preserve the environment and livelihood of Mexican and Guatemalan harvesters.

A pilot program last year involved 20 mostly Midwestern churches in the purchase of 5,000 palms. This year, orders have been made for more than 65,000 palms from 230 churches in at least 26 states.

That’s a small fraction of the more than 300 million palm fronds that experts say are harvested each year for U.S. consumption, but advocates hope that interest in eco-palms will grow as more learn about the movement.

Activists say Palm Sunday, when Christians recall Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, is the perfect time to draw attention to the issue. Always a week before Easter, Palm Sunday falls on April 9 this year; Eastern Orthodox churches celebrate the day a week later.

The movement involves agricultural experts at the University of Minnesota, who work with an exporter that has taught harvesters how to procure the crop with less waste and fewer middlemen, in hopes that the plants and the harvesters’ jobs can last for years. Proponents of eco-palms say typical harvesting in the region led to a focus on quantity rather than quality, leaving harvesters with small earnings while threatening birds and other wildlife that thrive in the shaded forests where the palms grow.

The 22-cents-per-stem price is more than double what other stems can cost, but it includes 5 cents that helps the Latin American communities with development projects such as building a school kitchen or providing health care or insurance.


The project is sponsored by the University of Minnesota’s Center for Integrated Natural Resources and Agricultural Management, which is working with nongovernmental organizations in Guatemala and Mexico. Officials and participants say it is making people think about how the green stems they’ve taken for granted get into their hands once a year.

“People are really surprised,” said RaeLynn Jones Loss, program coordinator for the project at the university. “Most people don’t know where peaches come from. They don’t have any idea where palms come from.”

But she said it can be a challenge to get churches to consider changing their buying practices.

“People, especially churches, are very into habits and so they don’t often change what they’ve already established,” Loss said. “And so just getting them to order means that they have to be pretty excited about the project.”

Dennis Testerman, the environmental stewardship coordinator for American Baptist Churches of the South, said his Charlotte, N.C., congregation questioned the idea of switching companies since its palms came from a Florida plantation and weren’t contributing to destruction of Latin American rain forests. But he compared improving the livelihood of Mexican and Guatemalan harvesters to helping people with a church mission project.

“From that point, it was a relatively easy sell to the congregation,” he said.

Pastor Glenn Berg-Moberg of St. Anthony Park Lutheran Church in St. Paul, Minn., said his church’s practice of purchasing fair trade coffee for several years made it easier to switch to “fair trade palms.”


Churches like his have helped small farmers in Latin America and Africa by buying organically grown, high-quality coffee to help guarantee a living wage for the cooperatives that grow them.

“Christian stewardship intends to be as thorough as possible,” said Berg-Moberg, whose church was in the pilot palm program last year and purchased the palms again this year. “We are affecting people we never meet or see because we celebrate Palm Sunday using these palms. This means our worship practices have an impact on forests in Central America. It’s all too easy to ignore such hidden connections.”

(FIRST OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS. STORY MAY END HERE.)

Lutheran World Relief representatives joined University of Minnesota specialists on a January trip to Guatemala and Mexico to see the project firsthand. It involves close inspection of the palms to ensure they are the right color and are without defects. They’re banded into bundles, wrapped in brown paper and kept in shallow tubs of water until they can be trucked away.

“The more of these steps that can stay within the responsibilities of the communities, the better for them,” Meier said.

Loss said the training on harvesting has reduced the waste of palms from between 50 percent and 60 percent to about 5 percent, helping to preserve biodiversity that ranges from colorful birds to sloths and monkeys.

“There used to be a ton of waste with this,” she said.

Some varieties of the Chamaedorea plant sell for as little as 7 cents a stem, said Leticia Grasso, vice president of WFR Inc., a Zellwood, Fla.-based distributor of cut foliage. But she can imagine that churches might make the choice to pay the 22-cents-per-stem price.


“I would think a church, because of their heart would want to,” she said. “If you know 5 cents is going to the American Heart Association or breast cancer, it does create a price point to where we might buy that.”

(SECOND OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS. STORY MAY END HERE.)

The protection of the environment, which also helps sustain jobs for the people in the region, appealed to churches across denominations.

“The environmentally conscious piece is the one that sticks out for me,” said Karen Cox, pastor of Boulder Mennonite Church in Colorado, who used to order dozens of fronds from a grocery store chain but this year is sharing a crate of 200 stems with five other Mennonite congregations.

Other groups, including the National Council of Churches, are starting to publicize the project.

Cassandra Carmichael, eco-justice program director of the National Council of Churches, bought the eco-palms for her United Methodist Church in Annapolis, Md., this year.

“We felt like it was a way to exhibit in a pragmatic way our right relationship with creation as we celebrate Palm Sunday,” she said of the NCC’s promotion of the program.

“And to do it any other way just wouldn’t do justice to the celebration and the joy we feel at Palm Sunday.”


MO/JL END BANKS

Editors: To obtain photos of Brenda Meier in Central America, palm harvesters in Central America and traditional palms being used in U.S. Palm Sunday services, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.

Donate to Support Independent Journalism!

Donate Now!