You Can Make Money Harvesting and Selling Botanicals

By The Mother Earth News Editors
Published on September 1, 1977
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Photo By Fotolia/dusk
Learn about harvesting and selling botanicals.

A guide to harvesting and selling botanicals as a small business.

Not everyone lives where medicinal roots and herbs can be found in abundance. Almost every relatively green region of the U.S. and Canada, however, boasts at least one native “medicine plant”. Which means — as Lyle E. Staab, Jr., of St. James, Missouri knows so well — that almost every homesteader or rural dweller in North America can avail himself/herself of the novel make-money-in-the-outdoors technique described below.

Maybe you didn’t know it, but — even in this day and age of chemical this and synthetic that — literally hundreds of drugs, medicinal ointments, and cosmetics are still made from raw, dried roots and herbs. And I’ll also bet you probably didn’t know that the companies which process these roots and herbs (or “botanicals”) into medicines generally obtain their raw materials from freelance foragers . . . people who collect, dry, and sell medicinal plants for profit.

I’ve been collecting and selling common botanicals — May apple, poke root, and blackberry root, to name a few — for some time now, and (overall) I’ve found it to be a worthwhile moneymaking activity. With the “tricks of the trade” I’m about to give you here, you should be able to make worthwhile amounts of money this way, too . . . provided, of course, that you don’t mind working outdoors or setting your own hours! (You’ll be doing both!)

How Profitable Can Harvesting and Selling Botanicals Be?

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