Hardy Aloe Uproots Cotton, Sugar as Texas Staple

HARLINGEN, Texas —  Something about the aloe plant evokes the image of a gifted child who needs little coaxing to do well.

It takes root under perverse conditions -- hot, dry weather preferred. Its healing powers are said to give soothing comfort to everything from burns to ulcers. It can be processed into juice, capsule or shampoo.

And a growing world market is looking to Harlingen for its aloe fix.

With little tending, the crop is turning a more steady profit than old mainstays such as cotton and sugar ever could.

An acre yields 5,000 to 7,000 pounds monthly. Growers net about 10 cents per pound, or $500 to $700 for each acre harvested. That’s four times the average for cotton and grain and on a par with sugar cane, which is more expensive to grow.

There are about 2,000 acres of aloe vera being harvested in the Rio Grande Valley -- 95% of the aloe grown in the United States. From the expressway linking the region’s small cities, neat rows of the pointy plant are a curious break from a landscape of prickly pear and mesquite.

“Normally, you see them as a small-statured houseplant,” said Robert Lonard, a University of Texas-Pan American biologist who specializes in Rio Grande Valley flora. “Here, they’re more spectacular because they grow right outside.”

Sometimes, not intentionally, Lonard said with a laugh as he remembered how he once threw his aloe plants on the compost pile only to have the aloe root there.

Aloe planted decades ago now grows waist-high in front of boarded-up homes in a former retirement community.

Just about every family has an aloe vera anecdote.

In his own childhood, Harlingen Mayor Connie de la Garza recalls, the ooze inside the long, waxy leaves was also the answer to everything from scrapes to sour stomachs.

“When we were kids growing up, ... we used to get a cut, someone would run out to slice a piece,” he said.

The aloe is a succulent, with leaves that can hold water for long periods. Too much water can rot the plant, and it would take the most severe drought to dry it out. That makes it ideal for the valley, which gets little rainfall but is irrigated by the Rio Grande.

The plant’s only other enemy is cold, which rules out the crop for most areas to the north and west, where nighttime temperatures fall during winter.

In 1983, a rare freeze wiped out the valley’s citrus crop and devastated roadside palm trees. It also killed the aloe.

Aloe is believed to have originated in Africa and has been traded through the ancient world as far as India and the Far East. The Sumerians are thought to have used aloe as a laxative, the Greeks to stop hair loss. The Roman physician Pliny the Elder recommended it as an antiperspirant. The Bible mentions the plant as part of the mixture used to embalm Jesus Christ.

More recently, Cold War-era scientists found it effective in treating radiation burns. Japanese researchers have reported anti-tumor agents, and doctors in India have told diabetics to ingest it to lower glucose levels.

Spanish conquistadors and missionaries brought the plant with them to the new world, and the popularity of the hardy plant quickly spread throughout Mexico.

Curanderos, the folk healers who occupy storefronts throughout South Texas’ steamy downtowns, still peddle a host of aloe vera treatments that have been handed down through the centuries.

Unable to pinpoint, extract or mimic the plant’s “miracle” properties, researchers have concluded that it’s a combination of elements, including amino acids; sterols, which act like cortisone to combat inflammation, and salicylic acid, an aspirin-like compound. Its stickiness helps bind wounds.

Aloe is a member of the lily family, as are garlic, onions and asparagus.

Split a leaf and you’ll find little tubules clinging to the outer rind, from which comes a sticky liquid that has been isolated for medicinal uses. The “inner fillet” -- the gelatinous inner membrane -- is processed for cosmetic uses, such as lotions or shampoos.

Polysaccharides, which work with the immune system, may be the most important elements for healing. They’re sometimes used to treat cancer in house cats.

“It is the 200-plus constituents working synergistically together,” said Gene Hane of the International Aloe Science Council. “Aloe vera does so many tremendous things, it’s kind of hard to see where the benefits begin and end.”

As manager of Harlingen’s Aloe Laboratories, a $2-million factory opened last year by the Japanese-owned Harmony Green Inc., Luis Rodriguez’s goal is to process large quantities of the plant without destroying its purported healing powers.

During a recent tour, he showed how field workers cut the mature leaves by hand -- there’s no good way to do it mechanically -- then fill crates that are driven to the factory a few miles away.

From there, he said, the skins are removed from the fillets, which are pasteurized and processed into juices, capsules and gels. Warehouse shelves are laden with products packed for export worldwide.

U.S. retailers are just catching on to the demand for aloe juices or tonics.

And although Americans have embraced the plant as a topical treatment for sunburn and chafed skin, in other parts of the world, it is as likely to be consumed internally to guard against everything from ulcers to AIDS. In the Caribbean, it is acknowledged as the bona-fide topical remedy for children who suck their thumbs.

Rodriguez, a Mexico-born chemist, swears by the plant’s powers. Whether in the fields or the factory, he has taken to drinking the juice -- much as the Japanese do. And he is first to experiment with new aloe products.

“If you ask me when was I last sick, I’d say I don’t know,” he said. “Ten years ... not even a small cold.”