diff --git a/puppet/zulip/files/postgresql/process_fts_updates b/puppet/zulip/files/postgresql/process_fts_updates
index 3645d20e34..a23286874d 100755
--- a/puppet/zulip/files/postgresql/process_fts_updates
+++ b/puppet/zulip/files/postgresql/process_fts_updates
@@ -66,18 +66,24 @@ try:
     os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = 'zproject.settings'
     from django.conf import settings
     remote_postgres_host = settings.REMOTE_POSTGRES_HOST
+    USING_PGROONGA = settings.USING_PGROONGA
 except ImportError as e:
     # process_fts_updates also supports running locally on a remote
     # postgres server; in that case, one can just connect to localhost
     remote_postgres_host = ''
+    USING_PGROONGA = False
 
 # Since we don't want a hard dependency on being able to access the
 # Zulip settings (as we may not be running on a server that has that
 # data), we determine whether we're using pgroonga using
 # /etc/zulip/zulip.conf.
+#
+# However, we still also check the `USING_PGROONGA` variable, since
+# that's all we have in development.
 config_file = six.moves.configparser.RawConfigParser()
 config_file.read("/etc/zulip/zulip.conf")
-USING_PGROONGA = config_file.has_option('machine', 'pgroonga')
+if config_file.has_option('machine', 'pgroonga'):
+    USING_PGROONGA = True
 
 if remote_postgres_host != '':
     postgres_password = ''