Sang Ginseng Farming
Yesterday I mentioned that Harlan Kelsey, proprietor of the first Native plant nursery in the United States, pioneered the sustainable cultivation of ginseng (Panax quinquifolius). The wild American ginseng—with its distinctive five leaf clusters—differs from the Asian ginseng (Panax ginseng, or Panax notoginseng)—in minor aspects of its structure. When Chinese herbalists discovered from Jesuit missionaries that North America hosted robust populations of wild ginseng, their demand sparked a foraging boom, first in Canada in the eighteenth century, and the eastern United States. Wild ginseng had been nearly extirpated in China and Korea from overharvesting. Beginning in the 1860s wild ginseng hunters began combing the forests and fields of Appalachia for the wind America root to export. [Some botanical authorities list the wild Chinese ginseng as being extinct.] By 1900 the wild populations of American ginseng were becoming rare. It was then Harley Kelsey elaborated a scheme for farming ginseng.
Despite the lack of scientific proof of the curative efficacy of gintonin and the ginsenoside chemicals in the roots, both Asian and traditional Western alternative medicine have deemed it a tonic, a systemic purifier, and a palliative for heart ailments. The Cherokees esteemed the plant greatly, regarding it a sentient being. The Chinese herbalists regarded American ginseng as a promoter of yin energy, an especially valuable for aging humans. If you go into any well stocked health food store, you will find counters full of ginseng teas and capsules. “It was CBD before CBD.”
Harlan Kelsey was among the first to plant mountain fields of “Sang.” Cultivated ginseng remains a robust form of American agriculture with Hsu farms in Wisconsin the largest such enterprise, but dozens of farms emerging in Appalachia during the past 50 years. They don’t much advertise their work, in part because of a disparity in the market: the Chinese pay substantially more for old wild mountain grown Panax than for farmed. Farmers profit by not framing themselves as cultivators and passing roots off as foraged.
The line between farmed and foraged is blurred in another way. Old harvested parts of Appalachia have seasoned hunters who wild cultivate, by planting the seeds of a mature plant into the harvest floor before harvesting it. This way native stands in well drained hardwood hollows expand. The roots of mature plants are excavated so they remain intact. The danger is new foragers—often curiously enough—itinerant Koreans who come, pick, and vanish.
Because mice love to eat ginseng root, farmers maintain semi-feral cat populations in their patches.
The regulation of ginseng is something of a problem. It is classified as endangered, but the truth of the matter is that forest farming of ginseng has made it more plentiful in 2020 than any time in recorded history.