Marathon County ginseng buyer Raymond Chao, touring with businessmen from Hong Kong, Los Angeles and San Francisco, knows how fickle the demand for the exotic root can be.
"It's a bit like fashion," Chao said during a recent stop to inspect the ginseng Marathon County grower Randy Beilke is selling.
"See the shape, the wrinkled texture? Three years ago, they wanted the straight, long roots. Now they want short, fat roots with short legs."
Marathon County's 1,080 ginseng growers raise about 90 percent of the crop grown in the United States.
October traditionally is the busiest month for sales as buyers carrying laptop computers with modems to fax information overseas make rounds to make deals.
The exotic root is prized in Asia for its value as a medicine or health food. Some consider ginseng a natural aphrodisiac. It takes three years from the time ginseng seed is planted to when the roots are harvested.
"Right now, everybody is trying to get their product to the customers first," said Ron Rambadt, executive director of the Wausau-based Ginseng Board of Wisconsin. "One million pounds were sold in the last three weeks of October 1994."
Marathon County's ginseng roots are worth $40 million to $70 million, based on today's market, observers said.
Growers are digging up this year's crop and have discovered some rot because record August rains drenched fields, spurring fungus growth.
"There's a little more rot than people like to see, even some rust this year," said Jeff Seubert, president of the Ginseng Board of Wisconsin.
Beilke, who has already had 10 buyers to his farm because the word is out that his roots are big, estimated between 5 percent and 10 percent of the crop shows signs of the brownish rot, although his yield is a bit better than average.
BY : Associated Press
SOURCE : Wisconsin State Journal
1995. 10.
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