Palma Sola Permaculture

Jubilee Organics grows all-natural crops that heal

In his early 30s, Ryan Duncan was faced with a choice: Continue down the path of declining health or learn to grow his own medicine.

He picked the latter, and from that pivotal decision Jubilee Organics was born.

“I originally started this for myself and my family but there was a real interest from the community,” says Duncan, a financial services professional who began backyard farming on Anna Maria Island in 2013. “This permaculture agroforestry we’re doing is the way to heal our bodies, our environment, and our ecosystem. It’s a labor of love.”

Duncan began cultivating that love in 2007, when was diagnosed with Stage 2 hypertension at the age of 32 and told it would be a lifelong battle. Determined to find a better option than prescription drugs to treat his symptoms, he began investigating the medicinal properties of food grown in living soil. That mission grew into a biodiverse 12-acre farm in the Palma Sola area that utilizes a permaculture strategy for high-density food production.

Current crops include Egyptian spinach, mango, okra, moringa, turmeric, and heirloom sweet potatoes. Duncan incorporates this produce into packaged soups and sauces, such as Healing Greens Savory Soup, Thai Coconut Curry sauce, Energizing Jambalaya savory stew, and Comforting Plantato Chowder. Jubilee is a two-prong operation: Duncan sells produce in bulk to The Chiles Restaurant Group, and runs a soup business that offers monthly boxed shipments to individuals (occasionally people can buy surplus produce from the website as well).

“I look all over the world, and there are lots of varieties of food and greens that are much healthier than what we’re generally consuming in the west,” Duncan says. “Egyptian spinach is called the vegetable of kings and was used 4,000 years ago to heal a pharaoh on his deathbed. That story inspired me to utilize the Egyptian spinach in our Healing Greens soup, based off that old recipe they used to heal the pharaoh.”

Duncan also takes his farming cues from natural lifecycles of growth by featuring only seasonal produce in his products. From the Jubilee perspective, nature does not use herbicides, pesticides, or fertilizers that chemically alter the healthy soil. Nature builds nutrient-dense soil through a cycle of germination, growth, and maturation followed by death, leaving the cycle to repeat.

“My desire is to preserve real food from real seeds that have not been genetically modified. It is urgent that we have a seed bank and access to seed-from-seed food in this time,” Duncan says. “Most of the food we’re eating is grown from some type of genetically modified seed, which is why we’re experiencing a lot of autoimmune disorders. This is about utilizing farm practices to grow the food that will heal us.”

> Jubilee Organics: 9004 9th Ave NW, Bradenton, 813-286-7606; jubileeorganics.org