How did we come to cultivate ginseng in a monoculture enviroment?
One hears the theory that China cut most of her trees to feed her people 400 years ago, therefore eliminating most organic wild Asian ginseng. This is what Sarah Harriman says, in her book, The Book of Ginseng: “Because the scant wild population of ginseng comes nowhere meeting the demand for its roots in any one year, ginseng has long been cultivated in China, Korea and Japan”. In the Orient, Ginseng was grown for centuries on plantations usually under the control of the government and then sold by a government trade monopoly. Soldiers were commonly used as harvesters. Control and security produced the enviroment for growing ginseng, which needs to faithfully reproduce its natural habitat. Cultivated ginseng has been grown in Asia for the last 400 years. It has been cultivated in America since the early turn of the century, mostly in Wisconsin. Sarah Harriman, states, “The plant has never been common, thriving only in small patches in deep woodlands where very specific cultural demand
