Back Talk
How Can We Meet The Public's Demand For Medicinal Herbs Without Threatening The Existence Of The Plants Themselves?
Escalating use of medicinal herbs and habitat destruction are causing an ever-increasing shortage of plant resources, which affects some of the most treasured therapeutic species. Most famously, in 1997 goldenseal was identified as an endangered species in an international treaty, ultimately leading to a "Save the Goldenseal" campaign. A 1998 international study conducted by the Smithsonian Institution reported that one in eight plants worldwide and as many as 29 percent of the 16,000 plant species in the United States are threatened with extinction.
"Three or four years ago we started our "Save the Goldenseal" project at Frontier because we had problems finding the best plants to meet demand. We began an industry and public education program about correct and incorrect uses of goldenseal along with preservation work and goldenseal cultivation. Everyone thought it'd take six to 10 years to turn over to 100 percent cultivated goldenseal, but we did it last summer, way ahead of schedule.
"After the success of the goldenseal project, an opportunity came up to expand on it. We purchased 68 acres in Ohio to establish the National Center for the Preservation of Medicinal Herbs—a farm to protect the future of at-risk traditional herbs. We are planting and researching 13 herbs: goldenseal, American ginseng, black cohosh, blue cohosh, slippery elm, partridgeberry, false unicorn, bloodroot, wild yam, yerba mansa, stone root, lomatium and gold thread.
"Because cultivation provides renewable, expandable supplies of herbs to meet consumer demand, it's the key to relieving the pressure on wild populations.
Steve Phillips
Manager of Social Causes and Customer Education, Frontier Natural Products Co-op;
Coordinator, National Center for the Preservation of Medicinal Herbs Advisory Committee
Boulder, Colo.
"Ayurveda, the traditional Indian system of health care, depends on medicinal herbs. In all, about 1,000 different species of plants are used in this system, while about 130 plants are used in quantities ranging from a few tons to 1,500 tons annually. The herb market is growing at an annual rate of 25 to 30 percent in India, and the Indian government is very much concerned about overharvesting. In the 1990s the government banned the export of 56 raw, whole herbs and their parts unless they are value-added, extracted or formulated so the finished products cannot be separated to yield individual herbs.
"Many Ayurvedic and herbal industries are now investing funds to generate agricultural technology to grow medicinal plants of interest to them. Dabur has greenhouses for generating seeds and saplings for 16 herbs we sell to co-op farmers. Other programs initiated in India are gene banks to store plant germ plasms, sacred groves, protected forests, conservation projects, mass awareness, and tribal and local community conservation involvement.
D.B.A. Narayana, Pharm.D.
General Manager / R&D, Dabur Research Foundation
New Delhi, India
"When you consider the Amazon is disappearing at 22,000 square miles a year, an area the size of Belgium, you realize how quickly things can go. I think large-scale, massive cultivation of botanicals that are intercropped correctly and grown by sustainable means is the only way to preserve some of these plants.
"The problem now is, how do you tell a native person who makes maybe 100 bucks a year and now can make 100 bucks a bag that they can't pick something? All you can do is long-term development programs that help people create an economy they can be proud of and that works for them. With kava, we work with people from the field right on out to finding a viable market for them. Every step along the way there has to be someplace for people to go, or else the whole thing breaks down. It truly is a development project.
Chris Kilham
Medicine hunter, educator, author, researcher; Cowboy Medicine Expeditions
Lincoln, Mass.
"It's exciting to see the growth of the herb market. My customers wonder, however, if they are going to have herbs for themselves and their children, and whether they will be the herbs they want with the quality they've come to expect. My main concern for the future of herbs and the natural foods industry is that there could be a finite amount of these herbs unless we're careful. That awareness is certainly growing among my employees and managers, and they in turn educate our customers.
"Wildcrafting needs to be discouraged. Manufacturers need to buy cultivated herbs. It may be at higher prices because wildcrafters don't have to invest in the soil and all that stuff the farmers do. But from a long-term view it will benefit the entire industry.
Karen Buckey
Owner, The Natural Way markets
St. Louis
