From
tulsi to turmeric, echinacea to elderberry, medicinal herbs are big
business—but do they deliver on their healing promise to those who
consume them, those who provide them, and to the natural world?
“An
eye-opener. . . . [Armbrecht] challenges ideas of what medicine can be
and how business practices can corrupt, and expand, our notions of
plant-based healing.”—The Boston Globe
“[This] is
one of the most important and readable books on the subject of herbs
available today. Ann’s story of her journey and the amazing message her
book conveys moved me to tears. . . . Thank you, Ann, for listening to
the plants as deeply as you have, for pointing the way forward, and for
having the courage to lead us there.”—Rosemary Gladstar, author of Rosemary Gladstar’s Medicinal Herbs
Using
herbal medicines to heal the body is an ancient practice, but in the
twenty-first century, it is also a worldwide industry. Yet most
consumers know very little about where those herbs come from and how
they are processed into the hundreds of products that fill store
shelves. In Following the Herbal Harvest (originally published in hardcover as The Business of Botanicals),
author Ann Armbrecht embarks on a journey to follow herbal medicines
from source to shelf. Her travels in North America, Europe, and India
reveal the inner workings of the botanicals industry as she confronts
complex questions about the ethical and ecological issues of mass
production of medicines derived from these healing plants, many of which
are imperiled in the wild.
This is the first book to explore the
interconnected web of the global herb industry and an invaluable
resource for conscious consumers who want to better understand the
social and environmental impacts of the products they buy.
Inspired
by her travels, Ann founded the Sustainable Herbs Initiative (SHI),
which is devoted to motivating change in the herbal products industry.
In a new epilogue for the paperback edition, the author describes how
SHI’s Learning Lab and Learning Journeys are bringing together
stakeholders from herbal product companies to explore how they might
collaboratively work to address the problems of poverty, biodiversity
loss, and the climate crisis.
Because, as Ann writes, “Herbal
medicine is about creating wellness, resilience. It is about wholeness.
From that, a huge industry has developed . . . an industry that I
discovered too often ignores the social, environmental, economic and
spiritual causes of disease in the world. And yet, we can’t be well
until and unless the water we drink, the air we breathe, and the soil in
which our food is grown is well. What does it mean to be in the
business of wellness in a world that is not well?”
“Armbrecht
masterfully manages the challenges and complexity of her source material
. . . [She] is a spirited storyteller . . . [and] presents all this
with the skill of an anthropologist and the heart of an
herbalist.”—Journal of the American Herbalists Guild
“For those who loved Braiding Sweetgrass,
this book is a perfect opportunity to go deeper into understanding the
complex and co-evolutionary journey of plants and people.”—Angela
McElwee, former president and CEO of Gaia Herbs