Wild or farmed, sales increasing for ginseng
Posted on Sunday, May 11, 2008
KINGSTON — Deep in the hills, growers monitor secret plots of land in a quest to cash in on the Ozarks’ most valuable herb.
Ginseng, coveted for a gnarled root ball that’s said to cure a litany of ills, sold for as much as $ 850 a pound last year — three times the going rate for a pound of marijuana, according to Newton County Sheriff Keith Slape.
With prices expected to crack $ 1, 000 this year, the quirky plant promises extra cash for rural families struggling with food and gasoline bills.
For many, it’s a tradition to hunt for ginseng growing wild in the woods. Ginseng hunters anticipate the opening of a new season every September. But with the plants increasingly scarce and ginseng-hunting bans in effect on the Ozark-St. Francis National Forest and other public lands, an alternative is taking root on back 40 s around the Ozarks: “wild-simulated ginseng.” It’s an attempt to produce homegrown root that sells wild. It’s no easy task in a marketplace dominated by Asian consumers who covet wild ginseng root as a traditional medicine that draws its power from the forest floor — but disdain the cultivated variety as a weak imitation worth pennies on the dollar.
The root buyers who supply the Asian markets can easily spot the imitators, said Roxann Phillips, a metals analyst who grows ginseng as a sideline on her Madison County property.
No one can say how much wild-simulated ginseng is growing in the Arkansas Ozarks, because most of the plots are carefully hidden. Phillips’ seedlings popped up at the farmer’s market on the Kingston Square this spring, one visible sign of the enterprise.
On a recent Saturday at the tiny market, Phillips riffled the leaves of a dozen ginseng plants she was selling for $ 5 apiece. She was promoting her year-old seedlings as starter plants for other wild-simulated ginseng patches.
The concept is simple. Plant the seedlings in un-tilled ground with the proper shade, and then leave them alone without so much as weeding the patch. That way, Phillips said, the roots will develop the gnarled growth pattern that brings top dollar. Cultivated roots grow straighter and fatter, like a carrot, she said.
Although a landowner has to wait years to profit on the slowgrowing plants, wild-simulated ginseng is catching on, said Andy Hankins, who observes the global ginseng trade from his post as an Extension specialist at Virginia State University.
“If you hear about a crop you can sell for $ 800 a pound for the dry roots, you’re going to get interested,” he said.
For those willing to wait a little longer for the potential payoff, seed suppliers offer a cheaper alternative to ginseng seedlings, he said.
In Kingston, Phillips said she has had steady sales of seedlings. She declined to identify customers. Secrecy prevails in the ginseng woods, where plant poachers are the No. 1 threat.
Gary Monk, patrol captain on the Ozark-St. Francis National Forest, said that despite a ban imposed in 2000 and renewed annually since, the plants continue to vanish from the public forest.
With prices rising, they are getting harder to find, agreed Kenny Wright, 64, a Madison County ginseng hunter who said he has been tramping into the woods in search of the shrubby plants since he was 4 years old.
He takes a denim shoulder bag, a supply of bottled water and sardines, and a holster to hold his digging mattock and a. 22-caliber revolver.
“That’s for bears,” he explained.
Last year, Wright gathered four pounds of roots, collecting a top price of $ 840 a pound. The most he had gotten previously was $ 400, he said.
With the dollar weak and supplies tight, the word in the ginseng woods is that prices will go even higher this year.
“I’ve heard anywhere from $ 900 to $ 1, 200 a pound when they start buying,” said Slape, the Newton County sheriff. By comparison, he said a pound of marijuana — another Ozarks cash crop — sells for $ 250 to $ 500 a pound.
The sheriff himself is a ginseng hunter. With prices high, so are lots of people, he suggested.
“I’ve got a lot of deputies planning their vacations and leaves during ginseng season,” he said.
A handful of dealers are licensed to buy Arkansas roots, according to the state Plant Board. Depending on weather, the state produces 500 to 2, 000 pounds a year, said Paul Shell, plant inspection and quarantine manager at the Plant Board. It takes 200-300 plants to produce a pound of roots.
Though the state Plant Board tracks ginseng sales, it doesn’t distinguish between wild-simulated and wild, Shell said. Often, neither does the market. If wildsimulated ginseng is managed properly, Shell said, it can sell for the same price as the wild.
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