A yearly ritual is under way in the heart of dairy country. Ginseng harvesting season starts when the last of the bright red berries fall in September.
This year the Ginseng Board of Wisconsin anticipates a yield of about two million pounds (900,000 kilograms) of the bittersweet root. Most of it is headed for China, where
ginseng has been an important part of the pharmacopoeia for thousands of years.
"The market is ready to explode," said Ron Rambadt, executive director of the quasi-governmental board. "When we look at China, as the doors swing further open, there is good opportunity for us. The question is always how fast the doors will swing and how much we will be allowed into the market."
Growers in the United States and Canada together produce over 4 million pounds of ginseng annually. This year, the combined ginseng exports of both countries should bring in around $140 million.
Although ginseng is one of the most labor-intensive crops to cultivate, family farmers in both countries are setting aside a few acres to try their hand.
"Everybody's trying to find a commodity to save the family farm," said Bill Broda, president of the Ginseng Growers Association of Canada. Large farmers, too, are growing ginseng. In British Columbia two ginseng companies are trading on the NASDAQ and Toronto stock markets and the Vancouver commodities markets.
Ginseng is native to both Asia and North America, where Native Americans valued it as much as their Chinese counterparts. But American ginseng is valued for qualities that distinguish it from its Asian cousins. Ginseng grown in North America is more bittersweet, and is considered to hold more "yin" properties. It cools the "heat" of respiratory and digestive systems of those who are constitutionally "yang," or more prone to stress.
Those who have tried cultivating the American strain of ginseng in China, Korea and Australia have not been successful, Mr. Rambadt said. A delicate plant, ginseng is highly ssensitive to variations from its native habitat.
French Canadians are believed to have been the first to capitalize on the plant. In the late 1600s, Jesuits missionaries near Quebec City recognized the plant from their previous assignment in China. Wild ginseng soon became a regular export, with even the famous frontiersman said to have Daniel Boone shipped some down barges to Philadelphia.
By 1900, ginseng was second only to fur as Canada's leading cash export, said Dr. Tom Francis, a founder of the Canadian Ginseng Research Foundation at the University of Toronto
medical school.
Around the same time, farmers in Wisconsin and Ontario developed methods of cultivating ginseng , which was becoming more and more rare in the loamy, hardwood forests. Farming is difficult and costly about $30,000 per acre in start-up costs, and the plants take at least three years to mature. They are also very susceptible to disease and weather
conditions.
Ginseng is on endangered species lists in both the United States and Canada, and is regulated by federal authorities. Other restrictions and tariffs have made some markets unprofitable, such as Japan and South Korea.
Wisconsin produces about 90 percent of all ginseng in the United States, with most of that exported to Hong Kong, China, Taiwan and Southeast Asia. The Ginseng Board's 1,300 members
tax themselves for every pound of ginseng they produce, and use the money for research and for promoting their crop, Mr.Rambadt said.
Since its formation in 1986, the board has seen its members' annual sales of ginseng rise from $23 million to about $70 million.
ONTARIO ginseng grows in tobacco country, where a successful acre can produce the same revenue as 50 acres of tobacco or 500 acres of corn, Mr. Broda said. He started growing ginseng in 1981 as a supplemental crop on his tobacco farm, but gave up tobacco entirely in 1987.
The 250-member association, which was formed in 1983, is older than its Wisconnsin counterpart, Mr. Broda said. In 1985 the growers' attempt to convince politicians to ban the export of American ginseng seed fell on deaf ears. But the group did help found a research garden and sponsored an international conference in Vancouver last year, the first ever to pull together growers, agents and scientists.
"We're trying to get better organized to face competition and we've hired a marketing company to develop a strategy," Mr. Broda said. "The market is there, it's just a matter of knowing how to develop it."
The world's largest ginseng company is Vancouver-based Chai Na Ta Corp., which has about 1,400 acres under cultivation, according to Jerry Gill, president and chief executive
officer. Founded in 1981, the company was listed on the Toronto and NASDAQ exchanges in 1988.
The company's ginseng is sent to Chai Na Ta's grating factory, in Wuxi, China the largest in that country where it is sorted, prepared and packaged for sale or export. Research is
performed by the company's Canadian operation.
"We became the first corporate ginseng farmer, and because we're vertically integrated, we're four times bigger than our nearest competitor," Mr. Gill said.
In October the company aims to begin selling ginseng capsules, and Mr. Gill envisions a concentrate now being developed as being a big seller.
"I see it in the future to be the new soy sauce or the ketchup of the Orient," said Mr. Gill, who emigrated from his native Hong Kong in 1960. "I see it in every home, where people come home from work tired and use it in soup or stir-fry."
- BY : Robert Frank
- SOURCE : International Herald Tribune1995.10.09
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