Tara and Chad Philipp had never tasted saffron until they took a camping trip with a family they’d recently met. Around the campfire, their new friends cooked a big pan of paella. The Philipps fell for the sweet, musky flavor of saffron — and were intrigued to learn it was the world’s most expensive spice.
On the way home, Chad Philipp was already researching how to grow saffron on their three-acre plot in the Mojave Desert, east of Los Angeles. His wife was keen to build a new business so he could stop driving a truck and spend more time at home with their children.
“If I get something in my mind, I get obsessed with it pretty quickly,” Chad Philipp said. “I was like, ‘We’re going to do this.’”
A few months later, in 2021, the couple put $20,000 on a credit card to order 60,000 corms, the bulb-like stems that produce the saffron flower. And this past November, they harvested 250 grams of saffron, which they’ll sell for a whopping $100 per gram — as much as 10 times the price of high-quality imported saffron.
The Philipps are part of a resurgence of interest in growing saffron among American small farmers in search of a cash crop, and among cooks and backyard gardeners seeking the thrill of growing the spice. Today, farms are growing saffron in California, Washington, Texas, Pennsylvania and Vermont. Martha Stewart (of course) has saffron planted on her farm in Katonah, New York. And the Philipps have sold more than $1 million worth of corms to 24,000 customers.
Saffron’s fragrant, crimson threads have played a key role in many of the world’s great cuisines since ancient times. They add a golden color and subtle bass note to Indian sweets, Moroccan tagines, Spanish paellas, French bouillabaisse and tachin, a classic Iranian rice dish layered with meat and dried fruit. Today, Iran is the largest producer of saffron in the world, but because of trade restrictions, shoppers in the United States will find the spice imported from countries including Spain, India and Afghanistan.
In 2023, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. imported 175 metric tons of saffron. But domestic production of saffron is so small — a tiny fraction of the saffron sold in the United States — that no one compiles data on it. One reason: Saffron from abroad is far less expensive, because the labor needed to painstakingly harvest each flower and remove its three delicate stigmas by hand is much cheaper than in the United States.
It may come as a surprise that saffron grows at all in the United States. In fact, Americans have been cultivating it since the colonial era, when it was traded on the Philadelphia commodity exchange at the same price as gold. The Pennsylvania Dutch in particular embraced saffron, using it in teas, soups and cakes. They even exported it to Spanish colonies in the Caribbean until the trade was upended by the War of 1812.
Saffron’s modern gold rush began in 2015 at the University of Vermont, where entomologist Margaret Skinner and the agroecologist Arash Ghalehgolabbehbahani began investigating the plant’s viability in colder climates.
“My initial reaction was: ‘Grow it in Vermont? There’s no way,’” Skinner said.
But saffron thrived, even in the northernmost parts of the state. In 2017, the university’s newly formed North American Center for Saffron Research &Development held its first workshop. Farmers from around the country traveled to Burlington to learn how to grow, process and market saffron.
Melinda Price, a founder of Peace &Plenty Farm in Kelseyville, California, was one of them. A former tech executive, she had little experience farming, but knew that she and her husband “couldn’t make a living selling carrots and kale.” Price explored several niche crops: wasabi, vanilla, hops.
Saffron had several advantages the others lacked. Corms planted in September would bloom by November. The two-week harvest season was intense, but the plants needed little attention the rest of the year. And saffron corms replicate themselves underground. A farmer who plants 1,000 corms may have 4,000 the next year.
In 2021, Peace &Plenty harvested 700,000 flowers, which yielded about 3.5 kilograms of saffron. Price sold it to home cooks, and to chefs.
“It smells and tastes so much more intense,” said Perry Hoffman, the chef and a partner at the Boonville Hotel and Restaurant in Northern California and a Peace &Plenty customer. “You can tell the threads are harvested at their peak, so less saffron goes farther in dishes and becomes more cost effective.”
Despite her success, Price now cultivates a smaller saffron crop. She has battled weeds and aggressive gophers. Harvesting saffron is backbreaking work. First, the tiny flowers are picked on hands and knees in the dark; saffron crocuses are best harvested before the sun rises and the flowers open. Then each stigma must be meticulously removed by hand.
“I was doing one flower per five seconds at my fastest, which sounds good,” she said. “But when you have 50,000 to do, it’s daunting.”
These days Peace &Plenty uses much of its saffron to make products like saffron lemonade and saffron-infused honey, which are solid moneymakers — and don’t require a huge crop. “A lot more people drink tea than make paella,” Price said.
Jette Mandl-Abramson has come to a similar conclusion. She and her husband were among the first American farmers to take the plunge, planting 120,000 corms in 2020 on 1.5 acres of their organic farm, Calabash Gardens, in Newbury, Vermont.
The first years brought encouraging harvests. But heavy rainfall and a punishing freeze-and-thaw cycle led to yields of just six grams of saffron in 2022 and 60 in 2023. Although this year’s harvest weighed in at more than 360 grams, Mandl-Abramson said that she, too, is focused on making saffron products. A saffron tincture, used for medicinal purposes, is her bestseller.
“I’d love to say that it’s changing people’s lives,” said Skinner, who helped kindle small farmers’ new interest in saffron. “But mostly it’s adding a little bit to the total bottom line.”
The Philipps, who farm in the Mojave Desert, also hoped to make money selling saffron directly to consumers. But to their surprise, it was the much more affordable corms that captured the imaginations of customers, many of whom have now reaped their first crop and will have cured, ready-to-use saffron this month.
“I honestly don’t even know what saffron tastes like,” said Gary Overstreet, a retired school maintenance worker and avid gardener in Apple Valley, California, who bought and planted a dozen corms this fall. “It’s the most expensive spice in the world. I want to make some rice and see what it tastes like.”
Paul Miller, a retiree and musician in Happy Camp, California, has purchased corms four times from the Philipps. Because his home is “75 miles from the nearest traffic light,” he said, he decided five years ago that it would be smart to grow his own food.
Miller grows many fruits and vegetables, but is attracted to perennials. He has a purple tree collard, a green that can grow 10 feet high, and a sweet tuber called yacón, or Peruvian ground apple.
“It’s almost like bragging rights,” Miller said of growing saffron. “It’s special. And I like that it multiplies itself. I think in this day and age, that’s a smart thing.”
Backyard gardeners, who plant just a few dozen corms, don’t face the same challenges as farmers trying to grow on a large scale. It takes only about an hour to harvest 150 flowers and remove the stigmas. That’s about a gram of saffron, as much as most Americans will use in a year.
Selling the saffron corms has proved so successful that Chad Philipp is almost ready to stop driving his truck for good. “It’s all about spreading the word,” he said. “Who doesn’t want to grow the world’s most expensive spice?”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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