Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, September 18, 1993 TAG: 9309180163
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KAREN BARNES STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NATURAL BRIDGE LENGTH: Medium
"We buy raw furs, hides, ginseng, scrap metal," it reads.
Inside, dried ginseng hangs from nails in the concrete-block walls, and ginseng ginger ale is kept cold inside a cooler.
Kenneth Ferguson, 42, is a third-generation ginseng buyer. He points to an unusually large root, now gnarled and brown, suspended from a string. "That one weighed a pound and a half when it was raw," he said. Usually it takes about 3 pounds of raw root to dry into 1 pound, he said.
Behind the counter, a plastic shopping bag of fresh, bitter-tasting roots contains about 3 pounds of the prized traditional remedy. Beside it, two sealed pouches of dried root wait to be exported to China.
"The Chinese like the black dirt on them so they can tell where it came from," Ferguson said. "I think this is the best ginseng in Virginia."
One of the top buyers in the area, he usually purchases about 1,000 pounds from several hundred diggers each season. He's paying $230 per pound so far this year, but expects the price to go up within the next two months.
"Personally, I think our season being dry, the season may be short," he said. He's bought almost 150 pounds so far, but said the harvest is still young.
Veteran ginseng buyer Paul Lawson's stockpile is about half his usual level for this time of year.
The combination of this year's dry summer and lower prices on the Asian market, the biggest consumer of the crooked root, is prompting ginseng diggers to hold out for a higher price, he said.
"The market is starting out cheap this summer and then we'll just see," he said from his home in Norton in Southwest Virginia. "It might take another month or two."
Currently, diggers can fetch $212 per pound from Lawson, down from last season's high of $270.
So far, 25 people have paid $20 apiece for a permit to gather ginseng and sell it in the state, said Joe Hedrick, a U.S. forest ranger in the Glenwood district. His district covers more than 75,000 acres stretching from the James River near Glasgow to Virginia 652 near Cloverdale. He said last year's number of permits was the same.
The official season for picking on private land began Aug. 15 and runs through Dec. 31. Picking ginseng on federal land requires a permit. Gathering it is illegal along the Blue Ridge Parkway. The penalty for picking without a permit or illegally can be costly, according to Dirk Wiley, a park ranger on the Blue Ridge Parkway. They can be as severe as a $5,000 fine and/or six months in jail.
So far this year, there have been only a half-dozen incidents, none major, he said.
Jerry Chase, a regional supervisor with the state Agriculture Department's office of plant protection, said he expects this year's harvest to match last year's 13,000 pounds.
More than half of that came from the southwest region of the state, he said.
Almost 70 ginseng buyers registered last year, he added.
Wytheville registered the highest number of certified pickers with 238, followed by Harrisonburg, he said. The corridor from Winchester to Roanoke is a prime spot for ginseng, said Andy Hankins, a specialist in alternative agriculture at Virginia State University in Petersburg.
Hankins grows gingseng on a quarter-acre of wooded land, to closely resemble the plant's natural environment. He encourages more people to follow his cultivation practice to protect the dwindling number of indigenous plants.
"Its existence is threatened to become endangered," he said. "I'd like to see everyone stop picking and grow it so the wild ginseng could recover."
But cultivated ginseng is not as highly prized and pulls in only $40 to $60 a pound. The cultivated root is white and smooth, but the wild variety is twisted and brownish. The Asians believe that the wild root is stronger.
But increasing demand from the Far East keeps Virginia growers and diggers busy harvesting both types. "We always have more market demand than we can meet," he said.
Ginseng is considered a multi-use herbal remedy, said Brenda Noel, manager of General Nutrition Center at Tanglewood Mall. The gnarled, dried root can be ground into powder, put in gelatine capsules and pills, or be taken as a straight liquid to help with impotence, stress, low energy levels, cold and chest problems and to strengthen the immune system, she said.
by CNB