Planting Millions of Trees to Feed Billions of People
Terviva is an agricultural innovation company partnering with farmers to grow and harvest pongamia, a climate-resilient tree which helps to reforest land and revitalize communities.
After more than a decade of innovation, we’ve created an equitable and transparent supply chain where we transform pongamia beans into feedstock for biofuel and sustainable food ingredients called Ponova®.
A Super Tree Suited for a Climate-Changing World
Pongamia is a regenerative, permanent tree crop historically used in Asia for reforestation. Dubbed a super tree, pongamia thrives in subtropical climates. It’s uniquely suited to meet today’s environmental challenges because it: sequesters carbon, revitalizes soil health and improves water quality, while growing on land where other crops can’t grow. This helps avoid deforestation and revitalizes agricultural lands and communities around the world.
The Power of Pongamia
Equitable & Transparent Supply Chain
Terviva’s equitable and transparent supply chain includes wild harvesting non-GMO beans in India with predominantly women-led community leadership of harvesting and bean collection in smallholder and indigenous communities.
Terviva also partners with U.S. growers in Florida where pongamia is helping to revitalize local agriculture as a replacement crop for citrus, which has been decimated over the past 15 years due to climate change and disease.
In Hawai’i, pongamia trees grow on former pineapple and sugar cane fields, helping to revitalize the land while in Australia, pongamia’s valuable drought-tolerant qualities become prominent, granting rural communities the opportunity to expand their agronomic footprint.
Our Impact
Environment
One pongamia tree removes one tonne of carbon in its first 20 years. Each acre of pongamia orchard removes on average 5 tonnes of carbon per year.
Not all trees are nitrogen fixing, but pongamia is one of them. It can sink both carbon and nitrogen into the ground and replenish soil health.
Community
In India, over 290 women community leaders manage wild harvesting and bean collection with over 40,000 lives impacted through our 2023 harvest.
We pay 30-65% over the minimum government support price for wild harvest pongamia beans across India, improving bean collectors livelihoods by almost 50%
