AGF
Newsletter
Issue #19 Spring 2004
A Project of
Appalachia – Science in the Public Interest
50 Lair St, Mt. Vernon, KY 40456
Phone / Fax – 606-256-0077 / 2779
Website - www.a-spi.org
E-mail – aspi@a-spi.org
Doctoral Student to Explore Obstacles to Ginseng Markets
By Ben Perry
The Appalachian Ginseng Foundation is happy to announce that Randi Pokladnik, a doctoral student at Antioch University will be working with us this year. Randi has chosen to do her required 300-hour service project with AGF and will be looking at obstacles to ginseng and other medicinal herb markets. She anticipates that her work will involve interviews and surveys from growers, marketers and buyers. She will be considering issues such as poaching and standardization of dosages. Working with ASPI will allow her to get a jump on the research for her doctoral dissertation and she is looking forward to providing “hard labor” to further the work of AGF!
Randi was born and raised in the Ohio Valley. Her Great Aunt Zana and Grandmother Rose from West Virginia introduced her to ginseng about 40 years ago. They used to make their spring tonics and taught Randi and her sister about the plants used in the tonics. It must have made an impression, because both Randi and her sister grew up loving the woods, the plants, and the hills of Appalachia. Both went on to college, got degrees in chemistry, and eventually became full time teachers. Randi’s interest in plants was sparked again as her son grew up and studied botany in college. Randi recently spent two years in Iowa, but she couldn’t wait to return to the hills and forests. Her family then moved back, bought four acres of woods, and built a log cabin, then Randi enrolled in the doctoral program.
Her drive to get a doctorate is fueled by several things. She wants to try to find ways that rural folks can make a living on the land without degrading it. She wants to save the plants her Grandmother cherished and, having had both parents die from cancer, she hopes to help find a cure in the forest. She’s “Pretty darn passionate about those hills!” and gets upset when she sees things like mountain top mining, which destroy herb harvests and alter forest ecology forever. She reasons that people will be less likely to destroy and degrade the hills of Appalachia if they can see the value of healthy, intact forests.
Bianca was originally hired to teach our Appalachian Ecology Program in area elementary schools, but we soon found out that she had a passion for medicinal herbs. She holds a B.S. in horticulture from Eastern Kentucky University and has completed the Advanced Herbal Training Program at the Sage Mountain School of Herbs in Vermont. In addition to working as an environmental educator for the US Forest Service and Saving Appalachian Resources, she has worked in local natural food stores as a natural health care educator and also has experience growing a variety of herbs. She has generously offered to help us in any way she can.
The Institute of Culture and Ecology has just released a new report about NTFP’s and biodiversity. Following is information on the article and the abstract for the report. You may read and download this and other reports at http://www.ifcae.org/projects/ncssf1/ .
Jones, Eric T., Rebecca
J. McLain, Kathryn A. Lynch, The Relationship between Nontimber Forest
Product Management and Biodiversity in the United States, March 2004,
Institute for Culture and Ecology.
Abstract: Nontimber forest products (NTFP) in the United States
are harvested for commercial and noncommercial purposes and include thousands
of wild or semi-wild species or parts of species used for medicines, foods,
decorations, fragrances, containers, dyes, fuel, shelter, art, ceremonial
purposes, and more. Despite the known and substantial economic value
of a few individual NTFPs, and the unknown,
but likely high economic value of NTFPs in aggregate,
historically managers have not included them as important factors in forest
management. Not only do NTFPs comprise
a significant part of the biological diversity of forest ecosystems, but
given the lack of formal NTFP research, the many people who harvest NTFPs part or fulltime have the most knowledge about them.
Consequently, efforts to conserve biodiversity are unlikely to succeed
unless knowledge about NTFPs, and the effects
on them of various forest management activities such as timber removal,
grazing, prescribed burning, and NTFP harvesting practices, becomes an
integral part of forest management. This research project attempts
to address these issues through achieving two objectives: 1) to advance
understanding of the role and impact of NTFP management in forest ecosystem
sustainability and biodiversity; and 2) to support the ability of
LOIDL CHEMISTRY LABORATORY BEGINNINGS
The beginnings of the Loidl Laboratory go back to the forest and the protection of the forest from removal or destruction, a main focus of ASPI. Al Fritsch, then executive director of ASPI, in discussions with staff and consultants saw ginseng as an excellent focus to help protect our forests. In order to grow healthy, wild ginseng plants a good dense forest cover is needed. So ASPI saw ginseng as a valuable crop, which if growing in a forest, would cause the owners of that forest to protect the trees from removal as a cash crop. Since ginseng is a much more valuable crop and it can be harvested much sooner than the forest without destroying the forest, it was decided to promote thegrowth of virtually wild ginseng. Syl Yunker has been a faithful consultant for ginseng growing and harvesting. To help bring ginseng growing to the small farm owner, the Appalachian Ginseng Foundation was started.
Even though ginseng can be harvested sooner than the trees of a forest, ginseng plants, in particular the root, is not desired by buyers until it is twelve to fifteen years old or older. For the farmer of a small forest this is a long time to wait for a cash crop. As a result, the leaves were investigated as a source of the ginsenocides which were the active ingredients in the mature root. Since the leaves feed the root, it was thought that the leaf would also have the ginsenocides. A seach of the literature on ginseng surfaced a few articles discussing the extraction of ginsenocides from the ginseng leaf. ASPI decided to develop theextraction procedure and a facility was needed for this study.
A small tool shed on the ASPI demonstration site was selected
to be converted into the chemical extraction laboratory. A generous donor
from
Jack Kieffer, April, 2004
