Dairy farmer puts down new roots

Growing ginseng is labour intensive. www.panax.ch

Swiss ginseng could soon be on sale at a pharmacy near you thanks to pioneering trials in the Emmental.

Dairy farmer, Walter Schindler, is anticipating a bumper crop this autumn, seven years after he first began growing the plant on his farm near Burgdorf in canton Bern.

Trial and error have led to marked improvements in production since he and his family harvested the first crop of American ginseng in Autumn 2000.

“We made a lot mistakes,” Schindler’s brother-in-law, Daniel Senn, told swissinfo. “We only harvested a little but we’ve learnt from experience.”

The Schindlers have ten ares (or a tenth of a hectare) under ginseng. If all goes according to plan, they could produce up to 30 kilograms per are. Ginseng fetches about SFr65 for 100 grams.

Reaping the benefits

The story of the Emmental’s flirtation with ginseng has its roots in the 1990s when one of Schindler’s relatives on a visit from the United States pointed out that the region shared a similar climate to Wisconsin where the crop is grown.

Schindler planted some American seeds on a small patch of land on his 14-hectare farm and sat back to wait for the harvest. Some five years later he was able to reap the benefits.

“It’s a project that takes time,” Schindler told swissinfo. “You need to be persistent and you’re not going to earn much money for a few years.”

Ginseng is not only a slow growing crop. It is also labour intensive and hard to cultivate.

“Everything must be done by hand,” said Senn. “We cannot do the weeding mechanically because it can damage the root. The only thing we can do mechanically is to prepare the field initially.”

Legal requirements

Successful cultivation requires well-drained land, plenty of shadow and little wind and sun. Growers have to create a woodland environment – the plant’s natural habitat – to ensure enough shadow.

Since their first crop, the Schindlers have switched from American to Asian ginseng to comply with Switzerland’s strict pharmacological regulations.

“You can only sell ginseng in pharmacies as a medicine and not as food,” said Senn. “If it is a medicine, only Asian ginseng is recognised.”

If the project takes off commercially, the Schindlers plan to cooperate with growers in the Netherlands, Germany and Britain.

Traditional medicine

Ginseng has been used in traditional medicine for thousands of years. It is believed to prevent ageing, improve sexual performance and boost the body’s immune system. Some studies also indicate that ginseng can improve memory.

Asiatic or Chinese Ginseng is a native of Manchuria, Chinese Tartary and other parts of eastern Asia and is largely cultivated there as well as in Korea and Japan. It is also a native of North America.

Senn thinks it could be some time before Emmental becomes as famous for its ginseng as its cheese.

“In other countries they have hundreds of years of experience,” he said. “We cannot compete with that.”

by Vincent Landon