Forest farming with non-timber forest products: Bringing science to a traditional practice
Farming the forest with understory herbaceous plants, rich in historical anecdote and tradition, represents a category of agroforestry that’s rapidly gaining ground in the Southeast and many parts of the world.
“Take ramps,” says Jim Chamberlain, forest products technologist with the SRS National Agroforestry Center. “Martha Stewart started cooking with ramps (wild onions) in the mid-1990s. It was just the kind of media attention that stirred up a new market. For example, about six years ago, the owner of a mid-western family farm delivered 1,800 pounds of ramps to Chicago restaurants. He made $15,000. Last year he made about $30,000 again harvesting ramps from his wood-lot.”
Ramps, of course, are only a small (though totally unforgettable) part of what the Forest Service calls non-timber forest products (NTFPs) which, in the United States include wild mushrooms, berries, ferns, tree boughs, cones, moss, maple syrup, honey and medicinal products like black cohosh, and ginseng. Even with little active management—a condition Chamberlain and others in the field are working to improve—the NTFP industry has been growing rapidly since the mid-1980s and annually contributes billions of dollars to the U.S. economy.
By managing forestland so that product diversity flourishes, an owner can increase his or her long-term forest value while, at the same time, furthering biodiversity conservation and sustainable forest management.
In 1998, a coalition of scientists, environmental organizations, botanical gardens, and museums reported that 29 percent of the nation’s 16,000 plant species were at risk of extinction (part of a report issued by the Species Survival Commission of the World Conservation Union). Many medicinal plants, an important class of forest products, are in jeopardy from over-harvesting and loss of habitat.
Forest farming activities, on the other hand, support diverse species without interfering with landowner goals and practices related to water capture and filtering, soil erosion control, microclimate moderation and maintenance of habitat for wildlife.
Gathering information
In the South and elsewhere, forest farming is especially attractive on small tracts since it can be entered into on a modest scale with “sweat equity” scheduled to coincide with off-season work loads. SRS, in collaboration with the Virginia Tech Department of Wood Science and Forest Products and Top of the Ozarks Resource Conservation and Development in Missouri, developed one of the first web sites (www.sfp.forprod.vt.edu) devoted to sharing information on NTFP products and markets--information available for harvesters and growers, marketers, processors, and end-users.
There, under medicinal and herbal products, are fact sheets covering: black cohosh, catnip, echinacea, ginseng, goldenseal, slippery elm, St. John’s Wort, and sweet gum. Under decorative products: holiday greenery and vines for wreaths. And under edible products: black walnuts, honey, pecans, persimmon, and shitake mushrooms.
Each product is detailed, covering aspects of uses, cultivation, marketing, harvest, storage and processing. Within the black cohosh profile, for example, there’s a note under “conservation and management concerns” that reads: “To decrease the pressure on the natural habitat, black cohosh can be cultivated. . . . clumps of bugbane (i.e. cohosh) mature quickly and can be divided after only a few years.”
What’s possible to grow, of course, shifts according to region, climate and environment. For example, Florida is the world’s source for saw palmetto, used to treat enlarged prostate, and also as a tonic, antiseptic and expectorant. Regardless of place or plant, the fundamental issues remain the same.
“We manage forests for trees, for wildlife, for water, for endangered species,” says Chamberlain. “But when it comes to non-timber forest products like medicinal plants, we have a big job ahead of us to develop the science and move into managing the resources from which those products originate.
“We recently set up a forest farming network of about 12 landowners and have begun a series of replicated research trials to improve our understanding of the production potential of five native medicinal plants. We are looking at ginseng, goldenseal, black cohosh, false unicorn, and Virginia snakeroot and the feasibility of private landowners producing these as an alternative income source.. We selected these because they are all wild-harvested and have ready markets. Now we can track the production of these important medicinal plants and estimate volume projections. This will help landowners determine how much and when to harvest. Then a landownder can leave the trees and manage the understory productively.”
Diversifying the economics of the forest
Non-timber forest products can supplement or supplant timber cutting. Moreover, active management can maintain ecosystem complexity, restoring biodiversity and balance. Bringing to market a broader range of natural products also leads to economic diversity, a long-standing experience of countless earlier generations.
“Long before the technology existed to cut timber, people were gathering useful products from the woods,” Chamberlain says. “Early European settlers learned from native Americans about useful platns. One of the earliest exports from the New World was sassafras that was collected at Martha’s Vineyard. Ginseng as well as indigo were harvested from the forests and shipped back to the continent.”
Today, with lively markets in alternative medicines, organic foods and natural products and with more and more applied science available via web sites, extension agents and workshops, stewardship of non-timber forest products is likely to become more well-informed, more imaginative and more roundly successful.
“We’re talking about a natural resource that does not get sufficient management,” says Jim, “The SRS and NAC are working hard to figure out ways to manage these resources so that folks can continue this way of life, while ensuring the health of our forests.”
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