The Business of Botanicals and Soil Health
Originally published 7/30/2021. Updated with new commentary.
In this episode, Wilson and Ann discuss key areas of sustainability impacting the growth, cultivation and harvesting of herbs. Listen to their conversation to better understand:
Farming Practices - Soil Health: Choice of the crops, variety, seed, rotation, soil fertility, The temperature, soil, terrain, micro-climate and humidity all influence potency of the plant. For the plants to continue to thrive, the entire ecosystem must be protected.
Regenerative Farming: Regenerative farming practices have arrived at the front of the sustainability discussion. While the ideals of regenerative farming are great and noble, regenerative is still a work in progress science-wise, mainly because the impact of regenerative practices are difficult to measure and compare. A single practice sits within a web of interdependent practices, so it may be regenerative on one farm but destructive on another.
Non-GMO Crops: This includes native plant preservation, fertilizers, and doing our best to avoid any non-natural additives
Other resources to learn more about sustainability and building more sustainable manufacturing processes:
Plants are used as medicine by 80% of the world. Similarly, in their 2019 Sustainability Report, the Hartman Group found that in 2019, 51% of consumers purchased sustainable products because they were better for the earth and the environment, up from 32% in 2017.
- APHA ToolKit
- APHA - Sustainability Resources
- SHP - SHP Sustainability & Regenerative Practices Toolkit
- Sustainability in the herb trade - Wilson Lau, Nuherbs
- SHP - Just How Sustainable is the Herb Industry?
Wilson Lau:
Hi, Ann, welcome to the show and really enjoying your new book, The Business of Botanicals, and how you break down the inner workings of the herbs in the botanical industry. Which isn't an easy task at all, so that's why we definitely want to have a chat with you. You would like to make a quick introduction to the audience, so who you are and what you do, that'd be great. Love what you do with The Sustainable Herb Program as well.
Ann:
Great. Thank you. It's great to be here. So I'm the director of The Sustainable Herbs Program, which is a program of the American Botanical Council and it's... And I'm an anthropologist and writer. And I live in Vermont.
Wilson Lau:
Nice. I had the luxury of meeting you when in-person events were still happening in Germany. It was a great experience to talk to you in person and find out more about what you guys were doing with The Sustainable Herbs Program, or were going to be doing, I guess, at that point, right? With The Sustainable Herbs Program. How do you view the sustainability of cultivated herbs? Like how do you view that versus something that's wildcrafted?
Ann:
I don't know if I see it as wildcrafted versus cultivated. It's more, how is sourcing any botanical contributing to the health of the ecosystem and the health of the communities that are involved either growing or harvesting. So then the question is, is the plant being... If it's wild, then there are different questions that you ask, depending on which line you go, whether it's wild harvested. Then there's questions about over harvesting and the resource management plans and things like that. And if you're cultivating, then it's questions about the health of the soil and the inputs that are used and the impact of those inputs in the water quality and air quality, and worker health and things like that.
Wilson Lau:
One of the things that you just mentioned is the sustainability and resource management plan for wild harvested materials. For cultivated materials, do you think there's that same necessity that goes through that or because this cultivation would really need to look at more the inputs and soil health and things that you were mentioning as well? Or how does the sustainability of the herbs itself, if we were looking at that in isolation, be a factor at all with cultivated herbs or because it's cultivated, we really need to focus on the other elements involved?
Ann:
So do you mean the long term availability of the plant?
Wilson Lau:
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Ann:
All the current information about soil health and how we have 60 years of topsoil left. And so maybe it's not the long term sustainability of the particular plant, but of the ecosystem that makes it possible to grow those plants. I mean, to me, it seems like all of that is threatened now with pressures on biodiversity, soil health and climate, the climate crisis. So they're not... And that's what in the introduction, when you talked about my book and the complexity. It's so complex because it's all connected and it's really hard to tease apart and tell that in a clear way, that's not just overwhelming, sort of how to begin.
Wilson Lau:
Yeah. I think one of the things that I was talking to a buddy of mine was that, we may have to start shifting how we measure and look at yield and efficiency. Looking at what's your actual carbon footprint per kilo or per whatever measurement, unit of measurement you're looking at of ingredient or final product per model versus efficiency as maximizing economic value just because…are we measuring the right thing? You could be efficient, harvesting something by ripping it out of the ground and that's horrible for the ecosystem, the sustainability and whatnot but it takes the least amount of labor and costs the least amount. But in reality, the overall impact is horrible.
Ann:
Well, and if you're a worker, then you might make the most money. If you're a wild harvesting, the more you can harvest from one area, the more money you're likely to make. In The Sustainable Herbs Program, so we try and have conversations with different stakeholders and that's one thing, not so much to wild crafters, because it's hard to speak directly but producer groups who purchase from them say that when they feel like they're not getting a good wage or a fair enough wage, they're going to over harvest because that's a way of balancing the balance sheet, I guess.
But I'd also like what you said about it seems like we're at this moment where it's a lot of reframing how we think about what we see as what we're measuring. What strikes me often at the trade shows I've been at, I've attended, there's conversations on sustainability and those are here and then there's conversations about growth.
And the conversations about growth are about financial growth and there is not the related conversation about growth of what, at what cost, paid for by whom. And I feel like those are the conversations in the sustainability rooms. It's like, "What are the impacts? How do we address those impacts?" And the more... They're hard conversations to have but the more those can be in the same rooms, I feel like what you were saying is that conversation about changing what's being measured as defined is efficient. There's more creative potential for seeing those redefinitions.
Wilson Lau:
Yeah, I definitely think so. I think one of our future guests on this show will be either Anastasia or Brinny from FairWild. And we'll talk more about the FairWild standard and how that applies to wild crafting and how to have more equity in the system. But back to the cultivation side of things, what are some key areas you think of that impacts sustainability, impacts growth, cultivation and harvesting of herbs as far as cultivator herbs go? And like for example, soil health, like farming practices. What are sort of some of the key areas that you see that we've got to start working on more diligently?
Ann:
So I'm not an expert in Regenerative farming or farming practices at all. What we're trying to do is bring in experts. And so right now we're working on like a eight to 10-minute video that is going to be really looking at what specific farming practices that have different names, permaculture, regenerative farming, or analog forestry. But basically it's about caring for the soil and it begins with design and balancing agroforestry with cultivated plants, things that everybody's talking about, composting, not leaving top soil exposed. Things like till, no till.
I think it depends on how the tilling is done and that's different in different ecosystems. We were just in Costa Rica filming in quite steep mountains just to the west of San Jose, this group that's growing turmeric. And the farm manager was saying, he's balancing the impact of on the workers' physical, like how hard the work is with no-till. And so they have a machine that doesn't till super deeply, it tills some so that it's not as... So that the workers will keep doing the work.
And I really look forward to the videos that we can create because the people we spoke with are much more articulate and knowledgeable about it than I can be. But what I appreciated was the way they saw the health of this particular plant, tulsi or whatever they're growing, with biodiversity. It's producing something for a market and getting a good value for that product so that they can stay in business. But it's doing that in a way that's caring for the whole ecosystem.
Wilson Lau:
Yeah. I think as you said, since we do spend a lot of time at the farm level, I think one of the things that people talk about is crop rotations and not monocropping, which is really important. But I think people often overlook the importance of also the ability to use what I call the mixture or hybrid planting, meaning have some turmeric, have something else there or have goldenseal it with ginseng. So that you can use the plant's natural resistance or in resistance to something to sort of help combat the other plants' need for something. So I think finding the right mix of things to grow together, how to rotate so that one crop will replenish the soil when other crops take that away.
Wilson Lau:
So it's very important to know what you're growing, where you're growing it and how that works. And that's well beyond at least mine expertise. I understand at a very conceptual level, I think that's what makes this so hard, is that there's no easy or simple answer. Like some areas may require a lot of tilling and some of those areas you don't want any tilling, and vice versa. And there's no one size fits all solution in this conversation.
Ann:
Well, and I think that's why.So, I started this project kind of inspired to follow herbs through the supply chain and tell the stories of the people and places behind the finished product. And that's kind of what my book is about, is telling that journey. But I did it because I was seeing the food movement, where there was so much energy and attention to where food comes from and how it's processed. I didn't see that same conversation in the herb industry as I knew it. And so I came in with a lot of naive ideas and judgements about how to do it the right way, and I realized it's much, much more complicated.
In part because there's so many different plants with different requirements, just what you're saying. So it's not like talking about coffee or cacao, you need to understand particular ecosystems or what you've talked about at Neuherbs. The territory where it's grown and how that's different than in another territory and how that impacts the quality, both in measurable and probably immeasurable ways. So it's quite similar to wild harvesting. Some plants you can take them, harvest large quantities of and if it's a root then it's a totally different set of challenges.
Wilson Lau:
I think our version of geo-authentic crops, di-dao Yao Cao. Is the same idea as terroir for wine. And what's going to be really interesting is to me, I'm really keeping an eye on this as global warming happens. Whether you believe it or not, these global weather changes happen. Will the territories or areas that were traditionally the best for certain herb or crop, will they remain that way?
And how does that change traditional use in other things? And the impact of it because as we move from 1500 feet elevation to 2000 feet elevation for a crop, that's going to change the chemistry of the crop as well. What do you feel is missing from the consumer conversation on health and wellness that brands, practitioners, or manufacturers need to address? As far as sustainability goes.
Ann:
I think it's our responsibility. What is the consumer's responsibility? There's a way that the conversation is very much focused on and it's the definition of consumer. It's a consumer, it's not a partnership, it's a company that is convincing me to buy the ingredient so that the company stays in business essentially. You have bigger goals and all that but that's essentially it. Like if people don't buy the product, then the company goes out of business.
It’s why I started The Sustainable Herbs Program first really consumer oriented to building on my night of a day. I realized when I would go visit producer groups and the Farewell certified groups in Hungary and Poland, that I was first able to visit. And I was like, "I don't know, how do I tell if this is a good practice or a bad practice?"
It was really hard. And so I would ask Joseph Brinkman, who's been an advisor of this project all along, from Traditional Medicinals. And he often would say, "It depends." Because it's really... Or I would ask him a simple question in an email and I get a long paragraph with the complexity of it.
And so I created this program to educate consumers so we can ask better questions of companies to understand the challenges that you all face in trying to meet our expectations. So it's not just, "Oh, this product isn't perfectly, regeneratively grown. Then I'm going to go to this other company." It's not that you're doing it better or worse, it's a really hard thing to do but that requires us understanding that. For me, us as a consumer.
And then though how companies tend to treat consumers is just, "Our product's great," is just marketing language. And in my vision is that there's a possibility for companies to really invite consumers in and let them see the challenges and become more of a partner. Like you at Nuherbs, you are trying to care for wild plants. You're trying to care for the people who grow the plants but it's hard.
And if you're allocating resources, you either do it to sell your products or to invest in the communities where you source. And if consumers sort of see that by buying your products, they're helping you do your mission. They're taking some responsibility for that, not just buying the product. And if you don't do it well enough, jumping ship and going to someone else. But that requires companies trusting to share a little bit more and consumers pausing a bit and not being so judgmental And quick.
Wilson Lau:
Yeah.
Ann:
I don't know if I'm being clear, but-
Wilson Lau:
No, I think it's very clear. I think what you're talking about is like a partnership between the consumer and the company. And how do we make the partnership in a way that allows us to have a conversation and dialogue about it because there's no such thing as a hundred percent sustainability. There's always more you can do and there's always something you can do better. And there's always something that you didn't do as well as you thought you could. And I think that's absolutely correct.
Ann:
Yeah. And it's challenging, look at the things about fair trade and we buy fair trade and think, "Oh, it's having this X impact." And then when it's revealed, oh, in fact they only make this much money and all kinds of stories. And then people say, "Oh, fair trade's no good." And what it really is are trying steps, and tools to try and address these huge challenges about poverty and climate change and biodiversity loss that no certification is going to address on its own, you know?
Wilson Lau:
Yeah. And I think you're absolutely correct that what certification does is sets this table. And that's sort of the starting point. And then where do you go from there, that starting point to become better and better at what you do and more, how does your system become more equitable and how do you select better growing practices and all these things. So I think the lesson I'm taking away from today is that it is continual... This is a journey and that will require continual work and inputs as we can go along the path. It's not like we'll get there tomorrow or ever get there. It's just a journey that we have to keep improving and doing better at.
Ann:
I feel like.. One question, I have one issue. I think a lot about those companies, it would be great to see companies talk about price with consumers. Because there is this idea... I don't know if it's still but I came to herbal medicine because it was... The idea is it's cheaper, it's more natural. But in fact it is not always cheaper and it can be quite expensive to take the quantity of a product that you need to have the kind of impact. So that's one thing, the price of a product. And then the money is distributed along the value chain.
Often people who are doing the work at the source make the least amount and I understand their costs involved and value added and all of that, but it would be... I don't know how to make it... I mean, this is what we're trying to do at The Sustainable Herbs Program. We create spaces where some of these harder conversations can be had about where the money's going and the choices that are being made about... Like trade shows, it costs quite a bit of money and that's a reason for the investment but that money is taken from another part of the chain and the circle. And so I would love to hear those kinds of conversations about... Yeah.
Wilson Lau:
Yeah. I think those are important conversations to have. It's like, can we ever get to the point where there's the ever lane of herbs where we can sort of share the pricing dynamics, who gets what and whatnot. But I think the shared amount of inputs just makes it a lot harder conversation. You can approximate but to get to a very detailed number, it becomes hard because you have to remember not everyone works from origin. And it's easy to work from origin with something like coffee. I shouldn't say easy, easier. Where it is a huge crop but it's a lot harder when you're talking about thousand kilos across hundreds of hectares, it was wildcrafted. It just becomes a different conversation.
Ann:
Yeah, yeah.
Wilson Lau:
Yeah. But I would love to have more of these conversations in the future with you and definitely looking forward to following what you're doing at The Sustainable Herbs Project. And let's keep in touch Ann. And that it's really... It was a great pleasure to speak with you and thank you for the time.
Ann:
Great, thanks so much. It's been great to speak with you