Fighting the wild ginseng poachers

Travis Cornett didn't realize the man he was chasing through the woods, away from his ginseng patch, had a rap sheet that included a first-degree murder conviction.

Cornett, the owner of High County Ginseng in Boone, had heard from neighbors that David Presnell had been rooting around his wild-simulated ginseng beds on a Friday. When Presnell returned a week later to poach more of the ginseng, Cornett's neighbors alerted him again.

"So I just went and confronted him and called the law," said Cornett. Presnell took off running with $5,000 worth of ginseng, and Cornett gave chase until the cops arrived. After the arrest, Cornett heard he'd aggressively pursued a man who'd been released from prison in 2007 after serving a 16-year sentence for murder.

"When I found out later, it was sort of creepy," Cornett said. "I had confronted him, and it wasn't in too nice of a way, either."

In December, Presnell became the first man to be convicted of a felony for ginseng larceny on private North Carolina land. Ginseng seekers can dig on private land, but only with written permission from the landowner. It's illegal to dig on state-owned land such as what surrounds the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Presnell is serving 30 months of supervised probation as part of a suspended sentence deal.

Last month, Cornett became the first wild-simulated ginseng grower to receive state funding to expand his operations. WNC Agricultural Options, financially supported exclusively by the N.C. Tobacco Trust Fund Commission, awarded a $6,000 grant to Cornett's business, High Country Ginseng.

He'll construct a drying, cooling and storage facility to increase production capacity to fill all the orders for seeds, rootlets and roots that he receives. He said no other ginseng grower in the state is large enough to respond to the demand.

It's a good indication that the state recognizes the potential of ginseng as a whole new cash crop. "Most of the grants they give are for cattle and vegetables," he said.

Black gold

Ginseng, a leafy green perennial with fleshy roots, known for its medicinal properties, grows naturally throughout Asia. It also grows in forested areas from southern Canada to the Southeastern United States, east of the Mississippi and north of Florida. But some of the highest quality ginseng comes from the mountains surrounding the Asheville area.

It's "good, black dirt" that makes Western North Carolina ginseng among the most sought-after — and expensive — in the world, Cornett explained.

Even though the world's best ginseng grows right under our noses, American consumption of the herb is nearly nonexistent. "The only way Americans consume it is through energy drinks," Cornett said. "And the ginseng in energy drinks is from Chinese ginseng, which is junk; you can buy it for $50 per pound."

The Chinese, who call ginseng the King of the Herbs, reportedly discovered it more than 4,000 years ago. "And they devour our ginseng more than anybody's," said Cornett. "They ship their ginseng over here, and our ginseng goes over there."

With other countries paying top dollar for WNC ginseng, poaching has become an epidemic for people like Cornett, who grow wild-simulated ginseng in its natural environment. "It's very expensive, and it's easy to steal because you can hide so good in the woods," he said.

A recent spate of television shows featuring ginseng poachers, such as "Appalachian Outlaws" and "Smoky Mountain Money," have only exacerbated the problem. "It puts thieves in the woods because it's shown how much it's actually worth," said Cornett.

But for Cornett, the shows' popularity is a double-edged sword. While poachers are an increased threat, his business is booming with people wanting to get into ginseng growing. "I sell out of seeds six months in advance, and it's made my business good in that way," he said. "It's twofold, I guess."

An herb for the ages

Even if ginseng's history doesn't run quite as deep in the United States, it's still an important part of American lore.

One of America's oldest exports, ginseng, along with raw furs, helped to sustain the commerce of the colonies. According to wild-simulated ginseng expert W. Scott Persons' book, "Growing and Marketing Ginseng, Goldenseal and Other Medicinal Herbs," wild ginseng gave pioneering homesteaders the cash they needed to sustain themselves until their crops came in.

Daniel Boone made his fortune on ginseng, but there are few who can make a similar fortune these days.

"It was a much bigger part of pre-Colonial and Colonial America than it is now," Persons said. "Now it's the least important economically that it's ever been, even with the prices as they are today."

But what makes wild and wild-simulated ginseng valued over farm-cultivated varieties, which fetch as little as $40 a pound, is what makes it hard to produce: an extraordinarily long growing time.

"If you want to produce ginseng that's the equivalent of wild ginseng, it takes an average of nine years," said Persons. "A lot of things can happen in nine years."

That includes threats such as fires, floods and other reasons for crop failure. But the biggest limit to ginseng production is poaching, said Persons.

"Poaching is the reason that people who know about ginseng are not putting a lot of effort and risk into growing it," he said. "They just know the history and that it's very difficult to protect it, and law enforcement has not historically considered it a very serious crime."

The way things are at the moment, Persons said he doesn't expect ginseng to grow rapidly as an Appalachian cash crop.

"The price is so high that the people who have learned ginseng as a part of their Appalachian culture, they're not the only ones digging it," he said. "Those people were taught by their parents, and their grandparents, to dig in a sustainable manner."

Poachers, however, aren't part of that culture, Persons said. "It is threatening the species, or at least threatening to reduce the species, to the point where it's no longer cost-effective to go out and gather it."

As a result, Persons thinks that limits will be placed on digging and exporting ginseng, "though there still will be a black market, unfortunately."

The only way to combat that is to grow plenty of wild-crafted ginseng, as Cornett does, said Persons. "And that's not going to happen unless we start dealing with the poaching better," he said.

Dig Deeper

Learn more about High Country Ginseng at www.highcountryginseng.com or at 828-964-8226. Persons Tuckasegee Valley Ginseng Farm has supplied planting stock and consultative assistance to ginseng farmers across North America for decades. For more information, or to order a signed book, contact him at 828-293-5189.