Ohioans earn extra income selling ginseng

By MARY BETH LANE

The Columbus Dispatch

RUTLAND, Ohio

To the unpracticed eye, the cluster of green leaves poking up from the forest floor looked like any other plant.

But Chip Carroll’s keen eye recognized immediately that he had found one of the thousands of ginseng plants that he grows on his land.

He crouched and dug gingerly around the plant with a wide-bladed soil knife. He gave the stem a wide berth, he explained while digging, because he didn’t want to chance slicing into the prize.

The ginseng roots that he pulled up feel ropey and fibrous, and they are smudged with soil. They also are good as gold – or green gold, as ginseng is sometimes called.

The business of growing, digging and selling ginseng is lucrative and gaining popularity. Record numbers of Ohioans have taken to digging and selling it.

Consequently, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources is considering new rules to regulate the business.

“Ginseng brings in, gosh, I don’t know how many millions of dollars to Ohioans,” said Melissa Moser, ginseng permit coordinator with the department’s Division of Wildlife, “and many people rely on the money they earn from ginseng-digging to pay their bills.”

Ginseng grows wild in Ohio. It also grows as the wild-simulated ginseng that Carroll and others are cultivating from seeds on their forested land as a cash crop.

Rural Action – a community-service organization in Athens County – and southeastern Ohio members of the national nonprofit organization United Plant Savers are working to encourage ginseng cultivation as a source of economic development in the impoverished region.

Both groups have helped to distribute seeds and hold workshops. They also have circulated fact sheets and other publications to promote growing wild-simulated ginseng and teach people how to do it.

“Through growing this as a crop in the forest, you can generate more income over the long term than through a single timber harvest,” which might produce $20,000 for the landowner in the short term, said Carroll, who has worked with both organizations promoting ginseng and other medicinal plants.

American ginseng grown in Ohio and other states is exported to Asian markets, which control the fluctuating prices similar to commodities or stock markets.

The dried roots are valued for their medicinal benefits, said to cure just about anything that ails the body, including stress, colitis, diabetes and erectile dysfunction.

Ginseng harvested in Ohio fetched up to $1,000 per pound in 2013 and up to $800 per pound last year. Now it is selling for $400 to $500 per pound, Moser said.

The biggest reason for the price drop is the slowdown in the Chinese economy, said Joseph Gillogly, a dealer in Zanesville who is paying diggers $500 per pound for wild and wild-simulated ginseng. Wild-simulated ginseng fetches as much as wild, Gillogly said, provided that it is of good quality.

Carroll began planting ginseng on his wooded 5 acres in Meigs County and on a neighbor’s land when he and his wife, Amy, a special-education teacher in the Athens school district, moved into their home in 1999.

He has planted seeds in each of the 16 years since then so the plants would mature on a staggered schedule and potentially would grow roots that could fetch an average of $15,000 annually when harvested and sold. Plants must be at least 5 years old to be legally collected and marketed, but maturity at 10 years or older yields the best roots, Carroll said.

Right now, “without any effort,” he said, he makes up to $3,000 annually, but he hopes to make more once he has started to harvest and market the roots from plants that are 20 years old.

It could become the college fund for the couple’s 5-year-old son, Eli.

Ohio’s harvest season began on Sept. 1 and runs through Dec. 31. State law prohibits digging ginseng out of season and prohibits digging it on state land or on private land without written permission of the landowner.

American ginseng is a protected plant species. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service regulates it through ginseng-management programs administered by Ohio and other ginseng-producing states.

State rules require dealers to register annually and obtain a free annual permit to buy and sell ginseng. They also must have their yearly collection of ginseng weighed at a Division of Wildlife office. Only then, after the ginseng is certified, is it ready to be legally exported.

Diggers who sell to dealers don’t need a permit. But they must complete state-issued forms including their names and addresses and the county and dates in which they dug the plants.

State officials are discussing whether to charge dealers a permit fee (the only fee they now pay is $3 per pound when their ginseng is state-certified) and whether to require a permit and fee from diggers. The fees would establish a fund to help administer the state’s ginseng-management program, including law enforcement and the record-keeping required by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Moser said.

The division doesn’t receive state general-revenue-fund money; it uses the income from hunting and fishing licenses and some federal money to operate programs that include ginseng management, she said.

Seventy dealers are registered with the state to buy and sell ginseng. The number of diggers is thought to range from 5,000 to 10,000; 8,924 reported harvesting ginseng last year, according to Division of Wildlife records.

The state doesn’t track how many people are growing wild-simulated ginseng, but national ginseng expert and author W. Scott Persons has estimated Ohio has 500.

The average grower is small and generates supplemental income of $2,000 or so, but established growers who invest the significant time needed to build up their stock could consistently earn up to $10,000 annually, said Tanner Filyaw of Rural Action’s sustainable-forestry program.

Filyaw, who is developing a ginseng-related research project while studying for a master’s degree in environmental studies at Ohio University, said the region’s abundant forest cover provides ideal conditions for the plant.

“The development potential could be on a variety of scales, from personal operations to cooperative marketing,” he wrote by email. “I would like to see a mix of both, giving producers more options to collectively market for peak prices and still be able to have a successful independent income opportunity.”