Underground Medicine - part one - Big Herb is a jerk

First, a riddle -

What is the one thing that God lacks?

By definition, God is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent. So what's the one thing God could possibly lack?




Limitations.

Good one, eh? We'll circle back to that in a minute.

Next, an alarming statistic:

Consumers spent an estimated $7.452 billion on herbal supplements in 2016. In the United States alone!! here's the source if'n you don't believe me.

Yes, folks, there is such a thing as Big Herbal, although it is strangely difficult to research who these companies are and how they source their raw materials. I'm a damn good Googler, and I've reached many a dead end trying to find that information.

The very idea of it creeps me out anyway, so I gave up trying to find anything meaningful after a few hours. What I found was scary enough. Yuck.

When I'm not creeped out by it all, I'm amused. A fool and his money are soon parted, they say (and that's a lot of money!), but more to the point, people who buy and use "herbal supplements" generally do so because they don't want to dance with the faceless pharmaceutical industry anymore .. so they choose the cold embrace of Big Herb?

Oh the irony.

As discussed here and there on this blog, even dealing with the midsized herbal supply companies is problematic when it comes to how the herbs we want to work with are sourced. There's an awfully good chance our wildcrafted herbs have been ripped none-too-carefully from sensitive eco-systems.

There is the seemingly better option, at least karma-wise, of farmed herbs, so I thought I would take a look at what that's all about.

I chose to look into ginseng, since it's a commonly used 'supplement' (I hate that word, by the way). Now that the wild populations of ginseng are pretty much tapped out, most ginseng is field grown. And you'd think that would be a good thing, right? Less concern about environmental impact, one would think, right?

Well, check this out:

"Natural" medicine my ass!!

Stunningly, an article I found here offers this little tidbit of information -

 After harvesting ginseng on a particular field, a farmer can’t use that land, ever, to grow another ginseng crop.

“There’s actually a thing called the replant disease…. Ginseng can’t be grown on the same ground again,” said Tom Winter, a ginseng grower in Norfolk County, south of Brantford, Ont.

“One of the problems of ginseng is that you’re always looking for land. Once you harvested the crop you’re looking for another farm… or land to rent or to buy.”

Concerned about the "carbon footprint" of Big Agriculture? You'd never think ginseng would be part of the problem, now would you? Well, it is. You saw the size of that machinery. Oh, and to top it all off, ginseng is becoming one of the more popular choices for growing on fields that once supported tobacco .. if you have any idea of the level of toxicity of the average tobacco field, I doubt you'll ever look at ginseng the same way again.

Why the practices behind the smiling face of "natural medicine" aren't on the radar of the 'enlightened consumer' is beyond me. Why haven't we been talking about this?

I could go much, much further into the dark and twisted world of Big Herb but I ain't gonna. Instead, I'm going to do what I always do - promote the idea of growing our own and/or learning to forage in the wild responsibly.

What does this have to do with God and his lack of limitations? Well Big Herb (and Big Ag) act like they think they're God. No limitations to the lengths they'll go to to expand their bottom line. And funnily enough, the bigger they get, the worse the products that they produce become. We've all heard that vegetables and fruits grown by conventional farming methods contain fewer nutrients than those grown on small scale, organic farms or (better yet) in our own back yards. The same is, of course, true for something like ginseng or any other medicinal plant. Even IF (big if) the herbal product you buy isn't cut with fillers, the quality is not as good as it could be.

Medicinal plants grow naturally in poly-cultures. They have natural companions. Between them, these varieties of plants, soil bacteria and fungi create the optimal conditions for the growth of all of them (and the animals and insects, too). There are checks and balances; within each poly-culture or eco-system are natural protections from pests or diseases. Within each plant are natural protections from same, and they share resources through the mycorrhizal networks. This is true in any environment; although most studies focus on the forest, meadows and mountainsides are just the same.

These conditions simply don't exist in the Big Ag, monoculture model of food or medicinal herb production. In a sense, these poly-cultures, these eco-systems are limitations. Grown outside these limitations, we barely get the same plant. It looks the same, but it isn't the same plant at all.

It is the very limitations and challenges wild plants grow under that gives them their strengths. It's the need to protect itself that makes an antiviral herb like St John'swort antiviral in the first place. That's called a 'secondary characteristic' of the plant's make-up, and that's the medicine we seek. It's the quest for nutrients that makes the roots of dandelion grow so deep. When these plants (and all the rest) are grown commercially they're pampered with irrigation, pesticides and fertilisers. Maybe the 'crop inputs' are organic, maybe not, but the result is the same. The plants no longer need to protect themselves, or strive for nutrients and water, so they become weaker.

In another huge irony, Big Pharma lurks in the background, always. Who do you think makes and supplies all the 'crop inputs' (that's the euphemism for fertilisers, insecticides, herbicides and fungicides) required to grow something like ginseng, which is so disease prone when 'field grown'?

Why Big Pharma, of course!

So of course plants harvested from the wild will be superior, and safer for the consumer. But since over-harvesting plants from the wild is nasty, and farm grown is nasty .. what's left to anyone who wants to use plants instead of drugs to improve their health?

Why, Underground Medicine of course. (Catchy phrase, ain't it? I made it up myself!)

Learning our limits and working within them - just like nature does - opens up a world of possibilities for us that the clusterfuck of Big Herb, Big Ag and Big Pharma don't want you to know about.

And that's what this blog is for, people. That's what every damn post in here has been about. As you'll notice, I've even renamed it to reflect that.

So for the next post or two, we'll review the basics of how absolutely anyone can work with plant medicines AND avoid getting into bed with those jerks who want you to think you can't do it without them.

Fuck 'em.

Underground Medicine, yahoo!