Buddy’s Farm

About Buddy's Farm

Buddy's Farm (Odawara City, Kanagawa Prefecture) is an agricultural corporation known for cultivating somewhat rare mini tomatoes. In roughly six years since founding, it has shipped to local direct sales and restaurants while sticking to varieties with thin skin and strong flavor individuality.

Leveraging that know-how, it began trial cultivation of green papaya last year. Because it secured sufficient yield without agrochemicals, it shifted to full-scale cultivation from this fiscal year.

What is green papaya

Green papaya is papaya harvested in the unripe state before ripening; its flesh is firm and solid, making it a crop suited to heat-cooking and processing. Unlike ripe papaya, it has no sweetness and is characterized by a faint flavor and a crisp, fibrous texture. In Southeast Asia it is used in a wide range of dishes such as salad (som tam), stir-fries, and soups, and its cultivation is gradually spreading in Japan too.

Unripe fruit has a high moisture content and requires appropriate treatment for drying and grinding, but once made into powder it becomes easy to handle and can be used for many purposes such as food, pet food, and supplements. Not only the flesh but also the leaves and stems have a lot of fiber, and overseas there are cases where they are utilized as dried leaves or tea leaves.

About papaya enzyme (papain)

Something often cited as a feature of green papaya is an enzyme called papain. Papain is a protein-degrading enzyme contained in papaya's fruit, leaves, and stems, and it is used in a wide range of fields such as food processing, seasonings, and pet-food raw materials.

Because papain has the property of being somewhat heat-resistant, it is known that combining low-to-medium-temperature drying keeps it easy to handle as an ingredient even after processing.
However, because the enzyme amount varies with variety, ripeness, and cultivation environment, drying conditions and grinding design matched to the state of the raw material become important.

By making green papaya into powder,
· shelf life increases
· it becomes easy to measure
· it becomes easy to use as a blending ingredient
—these properties are gained, making it an ingredient that is easy to handle in both the food and pet fields.

The challenges of green papaya, and creating a new outlet

Green papaya is unfamiliar in general produce distribution, and it is a crop for which securing buyers is difficult.
At Buddy's Farm, with the wish that "if we're going to grow it, we want to deliver it to customers in a valuable form," they were considering utilizing it as a pet supplement ingredient.

However, drying and grinding in-house requires equipment and manpower. So there was a need to build a system in which the processing part is outsourced to OEM and Buddy's Farm concentrates on cultivation.

Support for powdering by Agriture

Agriture received the following request regarding the drying and grinding of green papaya.

We want to process agrochemical-free green papaya into pet powder

We want to adjust the fineness and flavor of the powder to suit the application

We want to collaborate with a nearby welfare facility for the final packaging

At Agriture, after confirming the state of the green papaya, we designed the drying conditions and grinding particle size and finished it into a form usable as a stable powder ingredient. By handling everything from drying to grinding in one integrated flow, we could smoothly connect to the "regional-collaboration-type product creation" that Buddy's Farm aims for.

Potential that extends to the next development, such as mini tomatoes, leaves, and stems

At Buddy's Farm, following green papaya, they are also considering the use of drying and powdering for mini tomatoes and green papaya leaves and stems.

Utilizing out-of-spec mini tomatoes without loss

Turning leaves and stems into snack ingredients for herbivores such as rabbits

Achieving "no-waste farming" across the entire field

Such developments not only broaden the value of the crops but also lead to new product development connecting agriculture and the pet market.

Summary

Buddy's Farm's green papaya powder is a case study that realized a chain of value creation: cultivation → processing → welfare collaboration → pet market.

At Agriture, as in this case,
"we want to create a new outlet for a hard-to-distribute crop"
"we want to turn out-of-spec products into valuable ingredients"
—we respond to such requests from producers while supporting product development that makes the most of our drying and powdering technology.

Buddy's Farm official website:https://buddys-farm.com/

Product information on dried green papaya is here