Mountain Rose has 15 contracts with small producers growing on less than 100 acres each.
#MOUNTAIN ROSE HERBS TRIAL#
Bringing woodland crops into production has been especially challenging and we are reaching out to forest farmers in Appalachia to pilot trial these crops for us. We worked with a farm in Washington to try to grow a few Appalachian herbs, but the crops didn’t take. Fifty percent of the time it doesn’t work. The availability of seed stock is a primary challenge, so there is usually a several year investment just producing the seed.
We work with two of our largest US growers, testing the soil and climate to see if they can grow new herb crops for us. Irrigating Echinacea, photo from Mountain Rose Herbs. Unfortunately, there isn’t a strong enough market for this equipment, so it is not available. They have a rich history of cultivating herbs and they understand the conditions needed, soil types, etc. They also have specialized equipment for specific herbs such as harvesting chamomile that just aren’t available in the US. So, we rely on a few herb farming experts with whom we have longstanding relationships.Įurope has much better farm development because they’ve been growing medicinal plants like this for years.
#MOUNTAIN ROSE HERBS HOW TO#
With Boneset, California poppy, plants like this, people don’t know how to grow them. There are textbooks and extension agencies to explain growing these crops. It’s different from growing soybeans or corn. Procurement is the more difficult of the two because there isn’t a lot of empirical knowledge about growing, drying and harvesting medicinal herbs in American farming communities. The Purchasing department focuses on buying manufactured products bought from 3 rd party vendors. These products are all certified organic, cultivated without chemicals, or produced from sustainable sources. Procurement is responsible for farm contracts and development of sources etc. Shawn: Mountain Rose has two departments that handle this: Procurement and Purchasing. They should be read as research notes from a larger process of trying to understand the issues involved in sourcing medicinal plants for a large market, rather as a finished piece.Īnn: Can you talk a bit about sourcing? Where does Mountain Rose buy its herbs and how do you find good partners to do so? Because I feel like this is important information that might be interesting to a lot of people now, before I complete the project, I am posting these selections. It isn’t typical for anthropologists to share selections from interviews during the research process. I am seeking to understand the issues involved in sourcing medicinal plants from multiple points of view – not as an investigative journalist trying to uncover secrets or reveal bad information. This interview is part of my ongoing research for the Sustainable Herbs Project. Below are from my written notes from the interview. I spoke with Shawn Donnille, Vice-President and Co-Owner about sourcing and sustainability issues this past November. What started out as mail-order part of Rosemary Gladstar’s herb shop in northern California more than 20 years ago is now one of the nation’s second-largest distributors of organic dried herbs.
↑Teas - Browse All 24 Browse by region of production: China (5) Nearly all their offerings are also organic certified, and a few also have fair trade certification. Most of the herbs sold by Mountain Rose Herbs are single-origin, and the company identifies the country of origin of each of their herbs. Mountain Rose Herbs is a member of the Zero Waste Alliance and has taken efforts to minimize their environmental impacts both by supporting organic agriculture and through reducing and eliminating waste, including both conventional recycling as well as collecting potential waste products from their production processes for use in creative ways. Mountain Rose Herbs sells tea (including black and green tea as well as herbal tea) directly to the public, in addition to selling bulk herbs and spices which are used by other companies to create their own herbal blends and flavored teas. Mountain Rose Herbs is an herb company founded in 1987 and based in Eugene, OR.
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