by PAT CURRIE
It may not look like much, but the $63,000 federal investment announced Friday to boost sales of Ontario-grown ginseng in Asia might leverage a much brighter future for about 140 Norfolk County farmers.
"I’m very pleased," Doug Bradley, chairman of the Ontario Ginseng Growers Association, said Friday after Diane Finley, minister of human resources and skills development, made the announcement in Simcoe, once the heart of Ontario’s lucrative "tobacco belt." Finley was subbing for federal Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz.
Bradley said only about 6,000 acres are planted in ginseng in the county. Ginseng is a four-year crop. Only 1,500 to 2,000 acres of the root are harvested each year but prices have almost doubled to the $18-$22 a pound range in the past three years, meaning the latest five-million-pound crop had a value of some $100 million, he said.
Bradley, a former farm-equipment dealer, got into growing ginseng in 1986 "when there was something like a gold rush going on" as dozens of farmers abandoned tobacco and shifted to other crops including ginseng.
"Now the amateurs have been weeded out," he said, leaving the survivors to benefit from a five-year marketing program their association has signed with Ottawa.
Aimed at greater penetration into the huge market in Asia – initially in Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China – where ginseng is highly prized as a natural boon to healthy living, the program has an annual budget of $120,000 financed 50-50 by the federal government and the ginseng growers association, he said. BF
Comments
Since China seems to be able to grow things like apples far-cheaper than we can, why can't they grow their own ginseng, and do it far cheaper than we can?
Ginseng is, at best, just another price-driven commodity, and why would anyone, or any government, half-way around the world, want to compete on price with people who can beat us every time, in addition to not having to pay the type of transportation costs we have to pay to get the product to their market?
Are we not just setting ourselves up for a disaster even bigger than tobacco itself?
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
Unfortunately Stephen your are missing the keys to the Ontario Ginseng crop.
North American Ginseng works differently in the body as a heat reduction ie. "Yin" Asian Ginseng works to increase body heat, ie "Yang"
Of North American growing regions, Ontario has taken the cultivation to a new level with its own variety and cultivation practices that have been copied but never duplicated. Much in the same way Ontario farmers do a better job of IP soybeans.
Dan Denniss, Fingal, ON
If I'm one of the billion or so Chinese who've grown up with "Yang" ginseng, what's the attraction, other than oriental superstition, of "Yin" ginseng?
I wish ginseng growers well, but it still doesn't appear to be the business to be in, if you have a nervous banker.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
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