By Emily Springfield
After a long day, you reach for your favorite herbs to make a soothing cup of tea: a spoonful of tulsi, a scoop of chamomile, and a pinch of peppermint…perfect! Just what you need to unwind. The fragrant brew might relax you, but did you ever wonder what went into bringing the herbs to your cup?
It turns out, your tulsi might be from India, your chamomile from Croatia, and your mint from Washington State. Just like other types of produce can come with a heavy load of “food miles,” medicinal herbs can rack up “tea miles” on the way to your cup. The reasons to buy locally or regionally grown herbs are similar to the reasons to buy local food:
reduce the environmental impact of shipping
support the local economy
ensure availability of supplies
Since the vast majority of herbs sold in the US come from abroad, the herbal supply chain is especially vulnerable to disruptions such as war, shipping delays, and weather. There are dozens of steps from grower to teacup, and an interruption anywhere along the chain can mean certain herbs become suddenly unavailable.
How feasible would it be to create a local supply of medicinal herbs here in Michigan? After all, many of the most popular tea and medicinal herbs can be grown here. It turns out, it’s complicated. Let’s take a look at the current state of the local herb scene and its biggest challenges: growing at scale, processing and distributing, cost to buyers, and risk to farmers.
The Current State of Medicinal Herbs in Michigan
Michigan actually has a good climate for growing dozens of useful and delicious herbs. Obviously, temperate plants like echinacea and mints grow easily here. We’re chilly enough for some of the cold-area plants like schisandra, ginseng, and goldenseal. Even some tropical or Mediterranean plants can be grown here as annuals—for example, ashwagandha and licorice—given the right soil and an indoor start. And many native and naturalized plants, like nettles, raspberries, and plantain, already thrive so well they are considered “weeds” by many. Obviously, there are also some plants that we won’t be able to grow well here, but there are enough varieties that thrive in this area to stock a fairly complete apothecary.
There are dozens of herbalists in the state growing and wildcrafting herbs to support some of their clients’ needs and, sometimes, to sell bulk herbs, blends, tinctures, and salves to those who know where to find them. There is also one sizeable herb farm in the state, Golden Hour Herb Farm in Potterville, which sells extremely high-quality fresh and dry bulk herbs by the ounce or pound.
In addition, there are several brick-and-mortar local herb shops who stock wide varieties of herbs from several sources. Bloodroot Herb Shop (Ypsilanti) and Moondrop Herbals (Grand Rapids) both source their herbs as much as possible from Golden Hour and other US-based farms, only ordering from other sources if needed. A pressing issue, however, is that there are simply not enough locally-produced herbs to fill the large–and increasing–demand for herbal medicines.
Growers Are Needed— at Scale
According to the American Botanical Council’s (ABC’s) 2023 Herb Market Report, Americans spent over $15 billion on herbal supplements in 2023, and the market is growing nearly 5% annually. But despite this huge market, only a very small percentage of those herbs are grown in this country—let alone this state.
Three of the most common herb suppliers in the U.S. (retail and wholesale) are Mountain Rose Herbs, Starwest Botanicals, and Frontier Co-op. They each deal in hundreds of thousands of pounds of herbs a year aggregated from large farms and distributors around the world. When I spoke to a Mountain Rose employee last year, he said that Mountain Rose “regularly hears from farmers with a hundred pounds of dried herbs to sell, but we aren’t really interested unless you have 10,000 pounds to sell all at once.”
To give some perspective, the “larger” farms in the U.S., such as Oshala Farm, Zach Woods Farm, Foster Farm, and Healing Spirits farm, each grow several thousand pounds of herbs each year. Pacific Botanicals is one of the largest herb farms in the U.S. with over 100 acres in production. Of these, Pacific might possibly be able to make Mountain Rose’s “10,000 pound minimum” but none of the other farms could.
Golden Hour Herb Farm, which is currently Michigan’s largest commercial herb farm, has an annual output of about 4,000 pounds per year, making them a small-to-medium size farm. The individual herbalists in Michigan who grow and forage their own herbs might only grow a few pounds each year.
What Stands in the Way of a Local Herb Economy?
Since there is a lot of demand and Michigan has a good climate for growing many medicinal herbs, why aren’t more people filling that niche? In short—it’s incredibly difficult and risky to start a farm and rely on it for your income. The must-have list for starting an herb farm is daunting:
Land
Basic farm machinery, like tractors and plows
Seeds and seed starting equipment, including a hoop house
Harvesting equipment, from harvest hooks to special plows for harvesting roots
Specialized drying facilities and processing screens, choppers, etc.
Climate-controlled storage facilities and containers for finished herbs
In addition to growing, harvesting, and processing the herbs, small-scale farmers must also maneuver marketing and commerce trends:
Navigate complex regulations around harvest handling, farm labor, and food sales
Develop a brand, packaging, and a web site
Market their business to potential customers
Manage individual orders, wholesale bulk orders, and annual pre-orders
Continuously revise what they grow based on what grows and sells well
Compete with lower-priced, inferior quality goods that can be shipped overnight from retail giants like Amazon
And after doing all this, like any farmer, herb farmers are at the mercy of the weather, ravenous deer, and the whims of the market.
A basic conundrum is that herbs must be grown at a certain scale to make it worth buying specialized equipment to make growing, harvesting, and processing more efficient. But you can’t get to that scale without the equipment in place. So, start-up costs are high, and despite the seemingly high selling price of top-quality medicinal herbs, the return on investment is not guaranteed to be enough to cover those expenses.
What Can We Do?
If we want to develop a local herbal economy, similar to the way we’ve developed a local food economy in the last two decades, there are individual and systematic changes that would need to happen to re-localize our herb supply.
Support Local, Regional, or National Vendors to Create Demand
As an individual consumer of herbal medicines and teas, you can make an effort to buy your products from local sources. (See the sidebar for a partial list.) Many of these places offer both “farm gate” and online sales. You can also find local herbalists selling their products at local farmers’ markets and farm stores like Agricole (Chelsea) and Argus Farm Stop (Ann Arbor).
Keep in mind, you will be working with individuals—not a multinational corporation. Your shipments will not go out within hours and arrive overnight. You will not have endless selection. You will almost certainly be able to find herbs of the same variety elsewhere for less money. But in return, you will get fresher, more vibrant, higher-quality herbs, and the satisfaction of knowing you are supporting farmers within your community.
Adjust Your Tastes and Examine Your Assumptions
Effective herbal medicines are found all around the world. We sometimes fall into the assumption that “exotic” herbs from China or India are better than local varieties because we hear them mentioned so often in discussions of the well-known herbal traditions of those areas. However, it may be possible to substitute a locally available product for something that only grows well abroad. For example, tea tree oil has become very popular as an aromatic antimicrobial agent--but locally-grown mint, oregano, and bee balm can have similar effects on some conditions. Talk with a knowledgeable herbalist to determine what substitutions could help you be less reliant of plants from abroad.
New Production Model: The Herbal Cooperative
The standard model of giving up the day job, buying a farm, and going all-in on becoming an herb farmer is risky, financially challenging, back-breaking, and often heart-wrenching. Perhaps it’s time to explore a new model of production. What if, instead of a few large farms, we had dozens of small farms that were also able to share equipment, knowledge, and administrative resources? This could take the form of a cooperative of small-to medium-scale part-time herb growers sharing heavy equipment and infrastructure (like a seed-starting greenhouse and dried herb storage facilities) selling under one brand name.
Farms could be widely distributed geographically and socioeconomically. For example, urban farms on a quarter acre of land could produce enough working only on weekends to provide meaningful supplemental income. If farmers share data on sales and growing plans, they could grow more of high-demand items and not glut the market with any one particular item.
Pooling resources could drastically reduce the amount of per-farm overhead and reduce the startup risks dramatically. Each farmer could focus on a few products that her land grows easily instead of trying to grow “a little bit of everything.” By funneling harvests through one distributor, farmers wouldn’t need to hand-fill individual orders and buyers would get a more streamlined purchasing experience. The model is more resilient, too; if one farmer needs to drop out for a year due to illness, family issues, or other crises, other farms can take up the slack fairly easily.
I will be hosting some discussions and connecting interested people with each other through 2025 with an eye to exploring the possibilities of enhancing cooperation among Michigan herb producers. If you are interested in discussing this vision further, please contact Emily Springfield at info@fenhaven.com.
Emily Springfield is a somatic wellness practitioner, small-scale herb farmer, and local food advocate based in Chelsea, Michigan. Her mission is to bring bountiful health to all through good food, good movement, and good community. Her herbs and tea blends are available through Fenhaven.com and Agricole Farm Stop in Chelsea.
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mcdonald lives in White Lake, with his wife, Stephanie, their three kids, a dog, many cats, and two ferrets. Stephanie is deeply involved in running the business and website, and they “keep doing a little bit better every year.” mcdonald is a very winning fellow – chatty, engaging, tangential, lively, casual. He is a man who has developed a deep love for plants, and it shows. “Plants are awesome,” he says. They are an “intermediary” between nature and humanity.