State Officials Are Fighting Back by Making It Harder to Steal The Popular Root.
North Carolina ginseng growers can expect good prices for the popular roots when this year's harvest season begins Sept. 1.
That is, if someone doesn't steal them first. Many growers have given up the occupation because they lose their plants to poachers after several years of 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 Appalachian mountains.
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, however, 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 ginseng 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-in area has long been a felony in North Carolina, but catching poachers can be difficult.
State officials are fighting back with proposals for new laws that could take effect next spring. The state Department of Agriculture wants to require people who dig ginseng on someone else's property to carry written permission with them. The suggestion came from law-enforcement officers who say ginseng collectors often tell them they have
permission, but don't have it with them.
The second change would make possession of freshly dug ginseng plants on someone else'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. "Prices have been skyrocketing in the past year or two. The demand is just outstripping the supply."
The Plantt Conservvation Board will hold a meeting in Asheville on Wednesday on how it can help growers, dealers and collectors take advantage of the booming market.
W. Scott Persons of Sylva, author of a book on growing ginseng , said many people start out believing that they can get rich quickly from the plant. But growing the type of plants that are valuable requires a lot of effort.
The plant that yields the best roots has to be grown in the wild, on slopes or under hardwood trees, for several years.
"It's kind of hard to make a living at it," said Marj Boyer, the state ginseng coordinator for the Department of Agriculture. "It takes several years to get a harvestable root. The plant has to grow a few years before it can be pulled."
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.
Persons said theft is the reason hundreds more Appalachian residents don't sprinkle the region's hardwood-covered hillsides with ginseng plants. Like Alderman, he is phasing
out his crop because he hardly has any left by the time the season comes around.
- BY : The Associated Press
- SOURCE : Greensboro News Record1996.08.25
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