BOONE - North Carolina ginseng growers can expect good prices for the popular roots when this year's harvest begins next Sunday.
That is, if someone doesn't steal them first. Many growers have given up because they lose their plants to poachers after several years of delicately maintaining them.
Ginseng roots have long been touted as the path to good health and longevity, particularly among practitioners of Chinese medicine. The plants grow wild and in cultivated patches
throughout the Appalachians.
North Carolina growers have seen the value of the light-brown, finger-shaped roots climb from $200 a pound in 1990 to as much as $500 a pound last year.
For some, ginseng has become too sought-after for their own good. "I had several thousand dollars' worth of ginseng stolen. I had to give it up," said Red Alderman, a former grower who lives in the rural Creston community of Ashe County. "You spend 10 years trying to grow it, and then somebody steals it. That just doesn't work."
Stealing ginseng from a fenced area has long been a felony in North Carolina, but catching poachers is hard. State officials are fighting back with proposals for laws that could take
effect next spring, The Winston-Salem Journal reported.
The state Department of Agriculture wants to require people who dig ginseng on someone else's property to carry written permission. The suggestion came from law-enforcement officers who say collectors often say they have permission, but don't have it with them.
The second change would make possession of freshly dug ginseng on someone's land direct evidence the plants came from that land.
"This will close a couple of loopholes that people had been using to get out of courts scot-free," said Cecil Frost, who directs the Agriculture Department's plant-conservation
program.
The Plant Conservation Board will meet in Asheville on Wednesday to discuss ways of helping growers, dealers and collectors take advantage of the boomming markket.
North Carolina requires growers to have a permit. Last year, 56 registered growers brought in $3.8 million in sales. More than 95 percent of North Carolina's ginseng crop is exported
to Asia.
- SOURCE : The News Observer Raleigh, NC1996.08.25
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