Local Herbs
Get the herbal medicines and remedies for your problems right in your garden…
With the term “organic farming” being first quoted in 1939 by Lord Northbourne in his book “Look to the Land,” started a movement - the organic movement, which has lead to a variety of innovations in food production and drug production processes. Started at smaller local levels and on a broader perspective at national levels today, some where the local food and herbal movement has come to a halt. This is our effort towards the revival of the local herb movement and taking it to the heights of the sky!!
During the Wild Food Summit on the White Earth reservation here in northern Minnesota, as a part of a challenging experiment people were encouraged to pledge for consuming the food grown within a radius of 250 mile of their living place for a Year. To a great and pleasant surprise for all of us, the experiment was beyond doubt ground-breaking and opened up some really enormous educational opportunities. It also compelled each one of them to appreciate the strong spirits and will power of human being and re-think critically regarding the commercialization of edibles. More importantly, the experiment helped them to strengthen the bonding with local farmers, flora and land once again in an even better manner.
The experiment has inspired me to get involved and keep a note of local, national and international food movements. The increased literary work coming up, such as “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” by Michael Pollan and the new release by Sandor Katz titled as “The Revolution will not be Microwaved: Inside America’a Underground Food Movement,” encourages and texts pains to challenge the commercialization and rapid processing of food complexes. The movement is taking organic local food to a subsequently higher level with the concept becoming popular amongst the confident business communities.
During summers you can find local produce in abundance throughout the Viroqua Food Co-op and trust me they are all real local produce, you can even recognize the local artisan cheese makers, bakers, agriculturists and sauerkraut producers if you have stayed here for quite some time.
Still the organic food movement has not touched the production of herbs and dietary supplements. The presence of native tinctures and salves in the department has raised hope of even more little green signs throughout, but still major part of dried herbs are shipped from Frontier’s warehouses and imported from other parts of US and elsewhere.
The herbal market is prospering with pharmaceutical companies coming up with several new herbal products each year and giving competition to the existing ones in the mainstream drug stores. This to some extent is heartening for me to see people moving towards the primordial way of therapeutics and healing. Herbs have now become another product in this price rat race rather being freely and abundantly available resource for the common man. We too have started encountering some problems, just like the large-scale industrialized food industry faces the tribulations:
Exploitation of Flora: With the exploitation of wild herbs, we are endangering more and more herbs, shrubs and other flora, in fact pushing them one step closer to extinction. Some examples that say this loud are native Echinacea, Goldenseal and wild Ginseng. Along with it, collecting herbs from rainforests and exotic places endangers indigenous people and habitats. Compromised quality and degraded effectiveness: To cope with the existing competition within the market, often the mass production is done by compromising on the quality of herbs. The compromised quality of production and storage in turn renders the herbs less potent and effective.
Increased costs for free in nature products: Import of herbs from afar places rather than growing them in native bioregions parks us paying higher transportation costs and even customs on imported herbs. Over 85% of herbs warehoused and sold in the United States are brought from the places far away from the US. The surprising part being, maximum of these products grow inattentively in our neighbors.
Loss of relationship with the harvesters, growers, and producers: A healthy connection with the local herb growers, harvesters and producers ensures high quality and accountability by the suppliers. This strong bond also demystifies the knowledge barrier between the skilled professionals and common people.
The intensifying reputation of organic and herbal health care products has also arise a new danger to ‘backwoods’ suppliers - of being driven out by the large-scale drug corporations and scheming the distribution and sales of herbs with profound regulatory policies, agreements, permits and license requirements.
In earlier times, the day-to-day medical care was continually a responsibility of older and experienced people, usually homemakers and elderly ladies. The knowledge of herbs was common and familiar to all and in fact was one of the main aspects of human lives.
With a lot of legal formalities associated with prescription and formulation of herbal drugs, the herbal industry has a unique charisma and to some extent dread allied with it. Individuals don’t feel comfortable and secure enough to make there own healing tinctures, ointments or common ailment home remedies. This however has encouraged the licensure and stricter regulatory guidelines that is eventually creating huge crevices between health care professionals and layman. I won’t deny that certain medical conditions require an expert care and technologically advanced equipment for treatment, but also believe that some common ailments can easily be taken care of at our own home with the help of knowledge from our cultural inheritance and elders.
I am confident that in coming time the local herbs movements will encourage and allow common man to explore the herbal world around him/her and motivate them towards making their own herbal laboratories in their kitchens and backyards. With efforts of demystifying the skill of herbal drugs making, coming time will see people growing herbs and preparing homemade medicines, cough syrups, salves and so much more right there in their own kitchen.
Preparing first aid items, comfort teas and healing products is so interesting and fun filled that you can actually involves kids too in it and can turn an evening walk into a herb harvesting time from the nearby fields. And trust me you can save on a lot of hard-earn money that goes to your family doctors!
For this great time to become a reality, it is required that each one of us with the knowledge of herbalism, consider it as our responsibility to impart it at atleast neighborhood level. When the information shut in the books will take new shape as practical applications, hands-on trainings, dissertations so on and so forth; we will surely see an improved health condition of human being.
I can envisage the total control of health within the human race and bridging gaps between man and nature. Meanwhile, community co-ops are trying to re-strengthen the bonds between the local herb producers and the common man by providing them with charismatic herbs and freshest edibles from their own bioregion. With local herbs movement joining hands with community food movement, it is not very far that our own community co-ops will give competition to commercial drugstores and pharmacies.
Our own Coulee Region and the Upper Midwest in general is an enormous reserve of a variety of herbs and shrubs. About half of the volumes of herbs, herbal medicines and salves, grow and are seen recklessly and abundantly in our wooded areas and fields. With such a huge potential, our own region can act as an encouragement for the augmentation and intensification of the traditional knowledge of herbal medicine-making and the startup of local herbal entrepreneurship in association with farmers and farmers’ markets.
I just can’t stop imagining how the new time to come would be, with people taking oaths to stick to locally manufactured edibles and herbal remedies for common health complaints. With local herb movement going ahead in full swing with the local foods movement, I see some growing herbs and organic food at a huge level and others sharpening their proficiencies as an herbalist.