Dave Smith thinks he could be sitting on an agricultural gold mine -- a cash crop more profitable than Valley spuds and potentially more lucrative than the Mat-Su's most sought-after illegitimate crop, marijuana.
But the former city manager and amateur green thumb won't know for sure for a couple of years.
Smith's potential motherlode is ginseng , a plant whose wrinkled, turniplike roots are sought for their purported medicinal properties.
Sold primarily to Asian countries, ginseng is best known for its use as an aphrodisiac, but it has also been reported to cure everything from colic to breast cancer.
Ginseng is grown throughout Canada and the United States, primarily in Wisconsin and Ontario. Smith thinks the plants can thrive in Alaska, too.
Over the past two years, he's planted more than a million seeds in plots scattered around Mat-Su from the Butte near Palmer to birch forests at Point MacKenzie. Smith also has
persuaded the Alaska Science and Technology Foundation to give him $100,000 in grants to test his theory.
"This could be huge," he said. "It will make potatoes and dairy look small by comparison."
If ginseng can grow here, it could be a major cash crop. Often called the world's most valuable legal crop, ginseng roots have been known to fetch prices of up to $360 a pound.
The most highly prized roots -- those that are extremely old, wrinkled and shaped like humans -- have sold for more than $10,000 each, said Robert Romang, president of the Ginseng
Research Institute of America, a Wisconsin-based nonprofit group that researches and promotes ginseng.
Though there's no scientific basis for it, those that use ginseng claim the older, more wrinkled roots are more powerful, Romang said. The most powerful are those shaped like
humans with two legs and two arms, he said.
Romang said he saw a 95-year-old root in a store in the Chinese city of Shanghai that had been framed like a picture and was being offered for salee at $114,000. It was a luxury item, he said, something people could buy to show off their wealth. "It's kind of like owning a Geo Metro vs. a Mercedes," he said.
But those prices are rare, he said. And despite the plant's value, he was less than optimistic about Smith's chances of success.
Ginseng growers face lots of potential pitfalls, from diseases that rot the roots to an apparent inability to plant in the same area twice.
"The plants will grow for a year, but then they die," Romang said. Most ginseng isn't harvested until it's at least 5 years old, which gives the roots time to grow, he said.
Romang, a ginseng farmer himself for the past 20 years, also warned that the market isn't what it used to be. While the highly prized roots can sell for hundreds of dollars a pound,
more run-of-the-mill ginseng has been ranging from $6 to $24 a pound, he said.
"I wish him luck," Romang said. "But I've lost money each of the past five years."
None of the potential problems dissuade Smith, a one-time heat tape manufacturer who describes himself as a "well-educated country boy."
Smith said he takes pleasure in proving people wrong, especially educated naysayers whom he says are afflicted with "Ph.D. fever."
"All the experts told me it wouldn't work, that's why I'm enjoying it so much," he said.
Smith is no stranger to far-fetched projects. Before he started on ginseng , he was raising wild rice in Fort Yukon, a mostly Athabaskan settlement north of the Arctic Circle. Then the village's city manager, he wanted to make the area the wild rice mecca of the north.
The rice flourished despite winter temperatures that dipped to 65 below, but unfortunately, muskrats found it tasty. They devoured the crop, he said. He still hasn't given up on the rice, but now he's focused on ginseng , which he says takes up all his time.
Smith said he's encouraged by what he's seen so far. The plants he started two years ago are growing well even tthough ginseng had neve
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ants of comparable age from the Midwest, he said, which is to say about the size of a pencil.
Smith said he thinks Alaska has two advantages that could make it cheaper to grow ginseng here than in the Midwest. Because the state is farther north, the sunlight is weaker, he
said. Ginseng plants abhor direct sunlight and most farmers spend thousands constructing shade shelters.
He's also hoping the cool weather and relatively dry climate will help fight off fungi like those that cause root rot that have decimated crops in the Lower 48.
As an unexpected bonus, he said, the state's cool weather so far has kept the plants from producing seeds. Smith thinks that may be directing more energy into the roots, which is
good news since the bigger the root the more its worth.
State agricultural officials are hopeful about Smith's ginseng project, but have adopted a wait and see attitude. "It looks exciting," said Doug Warner, with the state Division of Agriculture in Palmer. "But a lot of work needs to be done."
Smith is the first to try to raise ginseng on an appreciable scale in Alaska as far as state agricultural officials can tell. But he's not totally alone.
University of Alaska Fairbanks horticulturist Meriam Karlsson has also been experimenting with ginseng for the past two years. So far, she's had limited success. The plant has grown well, but area rodents have taken a liking to the roots and seeds.
Smith said he should know in a few years whether his ginseng can pay for itself. And even if it doesn't pan out -- which he thinks is highly unlikely -- there's always his next crop:
black currants.
CUTLINE: Dave Smith, above, is experimenting with growing ginseng as a cash crop in the Mat-Su valleys. He has more than two miles of garden plots at the Alaska Plant Materials Center near Bodenburg Butte. Left, Smith holds a ginseng root.
- BY : S.J. Komarnitsky Daily News Mat-Su Bureau
- SOUURCE : Anchorage Daily News1998.11.09
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