CARBERRY, Man. – The hardest task in selling plants as medicine is breaking into the marketplace.
That’s one way a new medicinal herb producer group in Manitoba wants to help its members, but it won’t be the association’s first challenge.
“Personal contact with your buyers is important, but the quality of the product is what will sell the product in the end,” said Clayton Jackson, market researcher for the herb section of the Manitoba Crop Diversification Centre in Carberry.
The centre held a field day July 18 to mark the formation of the Medicinal and Aromatic Plants Association of Manitoba. More than 50 producers and potential growers were guided through a maze of demonstration plots, including echinacea, milk thistle, valerian, ginseng and feverfew.
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Clarence Marzolf, acting chair of the association, said medicinal plant growers must build high quality, consistent product before lining up potential buyers.
“Contracts we get will want large amounts and if we want a secure place in the market we’ll have to be able to guarantee supply,” said Marzolf, who grows St. John’s Wort, feverfew and tansy on his Woodlands farm.
“The part now is to get people to learn the do’s and don’t’s of growing.”
Getting other interested
That’s why Herb Abell became a member of the association. The Elie, Man. farmer said he hopes sharing information with other growers will help his echinacea and Siberian ginseng plots flourish.
Abell has already encountered some of the pitfalls of growing medicinals.
“I just got the echinacea growing when the cattle stomped out the plants.”
The group hopes to help growers and processors take advantage of heightened consumer interest in personal health and natural remedies.
