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'Sanging Out' the Land: Wisconsin's Multimillion-Dollar Ginseng Industry |
| Section: CULTURE / HERITAGE |
| Author: Sue Bridwell Beckham |
| Publication: The world & I online |
| Issue Date: 10/1/1994 |
| Size: 3,132 Words, 19,103 Characters |
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Folklore contends that if you want to break into Wisconsin's $60 million a year ginseng industry, you must divorce your wife, move to Marathon County, marry a grower's daughter, and then perhaps a "sanger," or grower, will share his secrets. There is something to it. Ginseng growers are remarkably tight-lipped. "Only God and the growers know what they're doing," says Leo Martin, a Wisconsin agricultural agent, "and neither is talking."
The secrecy persists even though ginseng cultivation has achieved respectability as a state-regulated and -promoted enterprise. Indeed, the ginseng industry is credited with the fact that Wisconsin is one of the few states not to have an export deficit. Plantations are visible from virtually any highway, including the major four-lane thoroughfares. The...
. . .
...t into cultivation. As one grower grumbled in the St. Paul Pioneer Press on May 23,1993: "People could make a good living off an acre [a couple of years ago], but now they have 10 acres. It used to be a prestige thing, something exotic. Now it is like growing potatoes or corn. There are so many people in it, everybody and their brother. It's no big deal to say you are a ginseng farmer now ."
(806 of 19,103 characters)
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