The Medicinal Plant Industry

The terms wildcrafting and wild-harvesting have come into liberal use with the blossoming medicinal plant industry.  “His skill goes back to the hunters and gatherers at the dawn of humanity, but it has been resurrected under a trendy new name: wildcrafting” (Goldberg, “From Necessity New Forest Industry Rises”). “Wildcrafting” picked up more substantial meaning in the last twenty-five years as herbal medicine has become widely popularized in the United States. In this sense, wildcrafting refers specifically to the harvesting of uncultivated, or wild, plants to be marketed as products. It has become a word for a new niche market and wild plants have become resources to be commodified and commercialized. 

Just in the last several years the Non-Timber Forest Product market has boomed 20 percent annually (Goldberg). With high demand for certain medicinal plants native to North America, such as ginseng, goldenseal, and blue cohosh, wildcrafting often became almost synonymous with the poaching of medicinal plants for their high commercial value. With a market economy as the foundation of our livelihoods, there is a tendency for commercial value to dominate over ethical and traditional values. 

While poaching is one face of wildcrafting presented to the public, it tends to discredit a long-standing tradition of plant foraging that creates positive human relationships with and sustainable subsistence from the natural world. It’s important to understand the difference between poaching and wildcrafting of wild plants. Poaching  implies disrespect for natural resources, boundaries and life forms. However, wildcrafting, when practiced conscientiously, maintains value as a craft that supports people’s livelihoods, as a valid economic pursuit with potential to strengthen and sustain local economies, as a promoter of culture, food and craft appreciation, and as a reminder of our human place in and responsibility to ecological systems.