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Over the past 200 years humans have cleared roughly a third
of the world’s woodlands, and forests continue to disappear
at a rate of 78 million acres per year. Most of these become
agricultural fields because farmers view them as wasted land.
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United
Plant Savers
http://unitedplantsavers.org/
For more on native plants and wildcrafting,
check out the United Plant Savers web site. Bruce
Buren told us that “UPS does a good job
of getting out some or most of the rules of ethical
wildcrafting … it’s what drew me to
become a member.
Tel. (740) 662-0041 Fax. (740) 662.0242
Email:
info@unitedplantsavers.org
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In Glenmont, Ohio, however, Bruce Buren is demonstrating
that forests can be economically valuable. On a sunny autumn
evening, under a canopy of maple trees, Buren scrambles along
a leaf-matted deer trail pointing out plain, stunted-looking
vegetation. Though they appear to be little more than weeds
to the untrained eye, these ginseng plants can be worth $360
a pound.
The owner of “Woodland Farms of America,” Buren
harvests and sells medicinal herbs and has become an organizer
for locals who are interested in entering the business. He
lives with his wife and daughter on top of a steep, forested
hill, 70 miles northeast of Columbus.
From plastic plants to forest dirt
Five years ago, Buren was working as a lawyer and sitting
in an office next to plastic plants. Colleagues had given
these to him because their previous gifts of live plants had
wilted. They were quite surprised when Buren decided to give
up his law practice in Dayton, Ohio and moved to the country
to become a farmer.
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Buren estimates that many farmers
have several thousand dollars worth of unutilized medicinal
herbs on their land. He has received an offer for green
American Ginseng roots at $360 per pound, and has passed
on to others $250,000 in orders for various herbs in the
past year—orders he couldn’t fill. |
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The transition began when Buren’s father, who had been
living on the property, passed away. Buren began making increasingly
frequent trips to take care of the property. “I started
coming down here and taking care of the place on weekends,”
Buren said. “Then I started taking off Fridays to come
down and take care of the place. And then I started taking off
Mondays – Fridays and Mondays. Then I said ‘wait
a minute, what’s going on here and why?’”
Buren’s family had lived on the 80-acre property in Glenmont
for five generations. He grew up hiking forest trails with his
grandfather, who taught him about the medicinal plants that
his ancestors had used because they had little access to a doctor.
Wanting to change his lifestyle and to raise a family, Buren
eventually decided to move into the old house on the property
that his grandfather had built.
Though his former colleagues still wonder how he is able to
manage live plants, Buren grows almost all of his family’s
food and makes his living selling medicinal herbs. Buren harvests
plant such as ginseng, goldenseal, black and blue cohosh, skull
cap, lobelia, wild strawberry, spice bush, Indian hemp, clover,
coltsfoot, trillium, heal-all, jewel weed, snakeroot, chestnut,
and hawthorn.
Buren has a unique philosophy when it comes to producing his
crops. Rather than planting them in fields, he encourages plants
to grow where they are already growing. “I let the plants
tell me where they want to grow,” he said. “That’s
where they’re going to grow the best, the easiest. I don’t
have to do much. I plant the seeds and they’re going to
grow because that’s where they grow.”
Buren's keys to success: little meddling
and a killer Memory game
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Buren helps plants re-seed themselves and watches over plants
such as ginseng for up to seven years before they mature.
Buren also clears out alien plant growth, such as multi-floral
rose and Japanese honeysuckle, which can choke out other plants.
He helps balance his woods by cutting back wild grapevines.
Though native, grapevines sometimes become too prolific and
pull large trees over, causing a loss of shade, which many
herbs need.
Rather than focusing on killing pests, Buren develops native
habitat so that predators feed on each other and maintain
a healthy ecosystem. “You don’t want to do away
with all the bad bugs,” he said. “If you do away
with bad bugs you do away with predators. If you do away with
predators then there’s nothing to stop them from coming
back in force.”
When planting, Buren assumes that pests will eat some of his
garden and that the deer will eat some of his herbs. He plants
enough so that he doesn’t have to worry if a percentage
of the harvest is lost. Buren firmly believes that trying
to get too much out of land isn’t good for it. “One
farm can only produce so much,” he said. “You
can overload the soil and overgrow it. But you’re going
to throw something out of balance and after a while it’s
not going to work.”
Buren harvests most root-plants in late fall or early spring,
when the plant has died back and most of its sap and nutrients
have gone into the root. Plants are difficult to identify
at this time so he relies largely on his memory of plants
from the summer months. “You have to know the forest
well to do this,” Buren acknowledged with a grin. Though
he admitted that learning to identify plants takes a lot of
time and effort, he recommended Peterson’s Field Guide
as an excellent resource for beginners.
When harvesting roots, Buren gently digs around plants to
pry them loose. As he does this, he replants a piece of each
root to replace what has been taken. If the order is for dried
roots, he scrubs, chops, and rinses them. Then he dries them
for 7-10 days on loose-weave cotton sheet.
Buren harvests the stems and leaves of plants before they
flower, because they loose value after full bloom. He picks
them in the morning after the dew has dried but before the
sun has evaporated essential oils. Using sharp shears, he
cuts them at an angle to help the plant heal and to aid in
the prevention of disease.
Buren usually harvests bark in early spring, when leaves begin
to bud and the sap begins to rise. Looking for the green,
inner bark, Buren takes a strip from the trunk and then applies
pruning compound to the wound. At other times, he simply cuts
a new branch into pieces. This is less harmful to the tree,
and more sustainable, but some buyers won’t accept products
harvested in this manner because they believe it doesn’t
offer the most potent product.
Medicinal plants are fragile and Buren stressed that safe
handling is critical. Because plants mold easily, he only
harvests when he has orders, doesn’t harvest when plants
are wet, and stores them in a well-ventilated space that is
free of pests. He keeps them in a shaded spot because sunlight
will deprive many of their value. He packs plants in cardboard
boxes lined with clean paper and occasionally uses icepacks.
Buren has developed a niche supplying small herb quantities
to herbalists and naturopathic doctors. He spends a lot of
time advertising by telephone, email, mail, attending conventions,
and finding plants whenever receiving requests. Because his
plants are of good quality, he is gaining many customers by
referrals from others and his business is doing well. “Its
enough to support you economically,” Buren said. “There’s
a good market out there.”
The moral is let them lie where they
may
Increasing awareness of how herbs are grown has driven demand
and prices upwards, also helping Buren’s business. In
the past, almost all herbs were considered organic and wildcrafters
harvesting plants from the side of the road or using unsustainable
practices often filled the herb market. Recently, customers
(and certification agencies) have realized that pollutants
are damaging to medicinal plants and that some harvesting
practices have endangered plant species. “It used to
be that some of the organic certification places would accept
wild crafting as organic because everybody had it in their
mind that wild crafting was going out into the pristine wilds
and picking this stuff,” said Buren. “And that’s
just not the case.”
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Buren is working with local farmers
to organize a cooperative to help farmers supplement their
income by harvesting medicinal plants. One of his biggest
challenges is convincing people that what they consider
unproductive land is actually worth something. “A
lot of farmers can’t think past a corn, hay, soybean
rotation,” he said. “Everything else is just
weeds." |
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New laws now regulate the harvesting of herbs such as ginseng,
to insure that species survival isn’t threatened. Buyers
now have plants tested for chemicals and the chemical composition
of plants before accepting shipment. They also require producers
to submit details of the harvest site and harvest activities.
Buren noted that some ethnic groups, such as Chinese, pay
extraordinarily high prices for plants that meet strict standards
and are grown in native habitat.
This is another reason Buren encourages plants to grow where
they’re already growing. “There is value in where
they have developed,” he said. “It took a long
time for them to develop there and the dosages are based on
the past when they’re grown in native habitat. So when
you take them out of native habitat, and if they’re
producing constituents at different levels, then the dosages
are going to change.”
Buren told the story of a doctor who was in India and learned
about a plant that was effective against Hepatitis B. When
the doctor tried to grow the plant in the U.S., however, the
medication formula wasn’t effective. Studies showed
that in the native soil there was a microbe that attacked
the plant, causing the plant to produce the chemical compound
that was effective against Hepatitis B.
“When you take these things out of their native habitat
you don’t know what you’re doing,” Buren
said. “There are some studies going on now that suggest
that in the native habitat plants have to compete and that
competition gives them the constituent and characteristics
that they have that make them effective.” Buren expressed
distrust over commercial Echinacea growing, where farmers
strip everything out of the field except the Echinacea.
Buren’s efforts at producing quality plants have been
rewarded by positive laboratory results. “They said,
send us some samples and we’ll see if it’s as
good as what you say,” Bruce said. “Then they
came back and said ‘wow, whatever you guys are doing
you’re doing right.’ So that was nice confirmation.”
Along with his efforts to harvest plants from their native
habitat, Buren credits his good location for the quality of
his plants. He is well protected on top of the hill and there
are no farms nearby that might contaminate his land.
Go Big is not an option
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Farm-at-a-glance
Woodland Farms of America
Glenmont, OH
Size: 80 acres
Operation: Sustainable wildcrafting
of forested lands
What is harvested: Ginseng, goldenseal,
black and blue cohosh, skull cap, lobelia, wild
strawberry, spice bush, Indian hemp, clover, coltsfoot,
trillium, heal-all, jewel weed, snakeroot, chestnut,
and hawthorn |
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Buren is working with local farmers to organize a cooperative
to help farmers supplement their income by harvesting medicinal
plants. One of his biggest challenges is convincing people
that what they consider unproductive land is actually worth
something. “A lot of farmers can’t think past
a corn, hay, soybean rotation,” he said. “Everything
else is just weeds.”
As Buren explained, however, there are over 120 native herbs
in the region, many of which are in increasing demand. Because
most herbs cannot be mass-produced, large corporate farms
do not heavily influence the herbal market. More stringent
standards and loss of habitat have left the market looking
for new sources. Buren estimates that many farmers have several
thousand dollars worth of unutilized medicinal herbs on their
land. He has received an offer for green American Ginseng
roots at $360 per pound, and has passed on to others $250,000
in orders for various herbs in the past year—orders
he couldn’t fill.
Larger buyers usually want large quantities and Buren often
gets requests for more herbs than he has available. He has
recently talked to one herbal company that is looking for
farmers to grow 300,000 acres of specialty crops like borage.
Another was looking for 5,000 pounds of dried dandelion root,
milkthistle seed, and Echinacea angustifolia root. Buren is
encouraging small-time growers, who don’t have the time
to spend marketing as he does, to pool resources so that they
can market to larger companies.
Buren feels that medicinal plants can revolutionize small-time
farming and blur our categories of “crops” and
“weeds.” “To me, herbal farming is a very
special endeavor,” Buren said. “It is humbling
to learn that the indigenous plants that we have been taught
to look at as weeds actually have far greater nutritional
value and medicinal value than the horticultural selections
we have been taught to value.”
Buren is demonstrating that forests are much more than wasted
land. Our woodlands are precious for many reasons and, managed
sustainably, can be economically valuable as well.
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