Marathon City, WI

When blight destroyed much of the North American ginseng crop in 1904, brothers Edward, Henry, John, and Walter Fromm of Marathon County, Wis., successfully transplanted 100 wild ginseng plants from the woods to the garden.

By 1915, the Fromms were cultivating 15 acres of the perennial herb near Hamburg, Wis., giving birth to an industry that produces one of the state’s most valuable crops on a per-acre basis.

Today, 3,000 acres of artificially shaded, raised-bed gardens around Marathon City (pop. 1,644) produce 1 million pounds of ginseng root annually, or 90 percent of the nation’s total production, making the town the Ginseng Capital of the World.

North-central Wisconsin offers the prime combination of ideal climate (average temperature of 50 degrees, cold winters, and cool summers) and ample rainfall, sloping lands, and virgin, mineral-rich soil necessary to grow domesticated plants with the same properties as wild ginseng.

Ginseng, often called “sheng” in Marathon City, is a root with a curious resemblance to a human figure. It has been prized by American Indian and Chinese cultures for thousands of years for medicinal purposes. The popularity of ginseng—sliced, by the root, in capsules, or as tea—continues into the 21st century.

“Everything about ginseng is special,” says Randy W. Brunn, an agronomist who has been growing ginseng a few miles south of town since 1978. “Cultural techniques, planting, roofing, growing, harvesting, and marketing all are an art.”

Brunn, whose grandfather harvested wild ginseng in the 1950s and 1960s, is one of 859 ginseng growers in Wisconsin. Though Brunn is only a part-time ginseng grower, he speaks of the usual challenges facing farmers and the difficulty of locating land that has not previously produced ginseng.

“After we harvest ginseng on a piece of soil, we will never plant ginseng on that soil again,” says Dave Schumacher, secretary of the Wisconsin Ginseng Growers Association, explaining how ginseng plants—either because of nutrient depletion, disease, or both—die upon successive plantings.

When growers run out of land, they rent, lease, or purchase new acreage. Over the last 44 years, Schumacher’s parents, Harold and Mary, have grown ginseng on seven different farms near Marathon City.

Ginseng is grown with slatted canopies, shading the plants like big trees in a forest. Seasonal chores involve covering the plants with the canopies in spring, weeding in summer, seeding from August to October, and seed and root harvesting in the fall.

“There’s no herbicide for ginseng, so all weeds are pulled by hand,” says Schumacher, who tends 20 acres of ginseng with his parents and brothers, Jim and Dan. “We also harvest the ginseng berries by hand. It’s very time consuming but the only method that works.”

Most growers harvest ginseng after three years to avoid susceptibility to disease. The Schumachers dig up the mature roots after four or five years to increase levels of ginsenocide, ginseng’s active ingredient. The average Wisconsin root harvested at three years has 8 percent of ginsenocide, or roughly double the level found in Korean ginseng, while 5-year-old Wisconsin roots can have levels as high as 20 percent.

Wisconsin ginseng, a yin or “cooling” herb, is prized in Asia as a preventative medicine used long-term to help strengthen the body’s immune system and build resistance to stress and fatigue. Korean or Chinese ginseng is considered a yang or “heating” herb, used only short-term as a stimulant to help the body recover from illness.

Ginseng is labor intensive to grow, but all the hard work produces a valuable crop, which sells for $16 to $20 a pound and generates up to $20 million annually in gross income statewide.

Buyers from Asia come to Marathon City each fall to inspect, bid on, and purchase the dried fleshy, grayish-white roots that are shipped to Hong Kong for grading and redistribution as a root and as a powder.

Nearly a century has passed since the Fromm brothers transplanted the first wild ginseng in Marathon County and now the entire world knows where the best American ginseng comes from.

Schumacher says: “True Wisconsin ginseng will always be in demand.”

Ann Hattes is a freelance writer in Hartland, Wis.

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