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The Organic Medicinal Herb Farmer: CH 1 - Why Grow Medicinal Herbs?
The Organic Medicinal Herb Farmer: CH 1 - Why Grow Medicinal Herbs?
A New Approach
to Old-World Medicine
In order to understand where we are going, we must
look first at where weve been. Herbalism has a
Figure 1-4. Words that helped define and shape the Western
herbal movement.
and other health-care practitioners are recognizing
the efficacy of botanicals and are far more open to
the integration of medicinal herbs in their treatment
protocols. After all, almost 25 percent of modern
pharmaceutical drugs are now or have been derived
from plant compounds.2 This integrative approach
is the key to bridging the gap between old-world
and new-world medicine and is a vital component to
improving and maintaining the health of our planet
and its inhabitants.
With the resurgence of herbal medicine, this is
an exciting time for those of us who use, gather, or
grow healing herbs. People need these plants. They
want them live, dried, and freshfor the medicine
they make, the gardens they grow, and the classes
they teach. As a result there is a growing need for
medicinal herb farms, and there are many ways herb
growers can participate in and become an integral
part of this green movement.
Although there is great demand for medicinal herbs
and amazing opportunities exist for farmers, there are
still hurdles facing this emerging industry. In 2013 the
Figure 1-6. Colorful sacks display medicinal herbs in an herb shop in Cairo, Egypt. Photograph 2014 Steven Foster
United States imported 70 percent of the raw botanicals used in the manufacture of $5.6 billion dollars
worth of herbal supplements. In the same year we
exported 30 percent of our commodity crops, such as
soy and corn.3 If farmers in the United States have surplus crops to export and there is a growing demand
for herbs, why arent more farmers growing medicinal plants? Why are we continuing to produce record
surpluses of low-value crops such as corn and soy?
In part because old habits die hard. If we ask
the Nebraskan commodity farmer to convert his
thousand acres of corn and soybeans over to such
high-value crops as dandelion and chamomile, he will
likely fall off his combine laughing. That combine
isnt set up to handle crops like chamomile, and the
gigantic grain bins he uses to dry crops arent set up
for dehydrating botanicals. Even if he is motivated
to adapt his equipment to deal with these specialty
crops, hed have to be willing to forfeit his U.S.
Department of Agriculture (USDA) subsidy checks
when he stops producing these commodities
crops for which at times he actually gets paid by the
U.S. government to not harvest when the market
is flooded. Its a hard sell, to say the least. He is as
addicted to corn as is the rest of the country, through
no fault of his own. He is trying to feed his family
and put a little aside for recreation and retirement in
a challenging economy, just like the rest of us.
Now what if we told that same farmer who is
grossing $1,1004 per acre on his corn/soybean rotation that he could gross $20,000 to $40,000 per acre
growing dandelion root and leaf? He could add
another ten species of crops to diversify his offering
and cover-crop half of his land as part of a rotation
to begin restoring the organic matter depleted from
years of poor farming practices. He could hire a consultant specializing in botanical production, retrofit
that combine to harvest chamomile and other botanicals with it. He could convert his grain bins to herb
dehydrators and contact some of the thousands of
small and large herbal product manufacturers in the
United States who are desperately searching for
domestic sources of high-quality bulk herbs. Sounds
simple, right? Well, if only it were that easy.
Figure 1-7. Dandelion is a beloved plant at ZWHF. Photograph courtesy of Bethany Bond
Hurdles in the
Field and Marketplace
Technological advances in agriculture over the past
century in the United States have led to incredible
gains in commodity crop production efficiencies on
a per-acre basis. Almost all of this technology has
gone into developing bigger and faster machinery
to produce more food, fuel, fiber, and shelter, not
medicinal plants. The worlds leading producers of
botanicals, which include China, India, and several
eastern European countries, are way ahead of the
United States in terms of equipment, techniques,
and volume for botanicals production. The USDA
doesnt even collect data regarding the production of
medicinal herbs for commerce in the United States,
so as far as they are concerned, its almost as if commercial medicinal herb farmers dont exist here.
The simple fact is that the resurgence of herbalism in the United States is relatively new. On a
national scale we are just catching up to what the
rest of the world has been doing all along: integrating modern technological medicine into an already
existing foundation of natural healing practices.
Botanicals are the first choice in preventive health
care in most countries outside the United States and
Canada. These countries have developed specialized
equipment and techniques to not only supply their
own raw material needs but also produce enough
surplus to export to countries like ours that are way
behind the curve. Now not only are we buying their
herbs, we are also buying and importing (most often
Figure 1-8. Motherwort in full flower and thriving. Photograph courtesy of Bethany Bond
ensure financial as well as spiritual gains while working in partnership with the nature that surrounds us.
the plants and trees that are the first to occupy the
niche left open after the cows came home one last
time. The brambles were first, their tenacious thorns
establishing a natural barbed-wire fence to protect
the new residents of this piece of earth. Growing
in and among the woody brambles are a dozen or
more species of herbaceous plants, fungi, grasses,
ferns, and legumes. The trees are starting to stand up
proud in the meadow. Now we see what an amazing
job the birds, deer, and other winged and four-legged
creatures have done in seeding this meadow. Wild
apple, hawthorn, pine, pin cherry, quaking aspen
trees, and other newcomers are establishing the
foundation for what will eventually become first
an arboreal softwood forest. When these shortlived softwoods die off and their decaying bodies
Figure 1-9. Diverse woodland beds of goldenseal, wild ginger, bloodroot, and mayapple. Photograph courtesy of Bethany Bond
contribute to the humus layer, the hardwoods, such
as sugar maple, American beech, and yellow birch
will dominate and eventually grow to a magnificent
climax forest. Underneath all of this, we see the thin
layer of humus just starting to form. Next, we come
into the topsoil, which is just starting to regain the
delicate biological balance it had before it was disturbed. It is playing host to a thriving community of
fungi, bacteria, protozoa, and invertebrates. The soil
is thin up here on this hardscrabble Vermont hillside,
but it was much thicker before humans first broke
ground and will, we hope, return again someday to
its former glory, but only if the housing development
doesnt materialize.
The soil is relatively thin in this field, not only
because of the harsh location but also because the
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Of the burgeoning health-minded U.S. population, 23 percent use botanicals, according to a recent
survey commissioned by the Council for Responsible
Nutrition (CRN), Washington, D.C. These statistics
and others show that the medicinal herb market, as a
whole, is strong. The must-have herb of the month
may change, but overall there is a solid foundation of
demand for these products here in the United States
on which to build a medicinal farming industry. We
would advise growers new to the herbal industry to
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