If you are a gardener or farmer in North America thinking of growing Asian medicinal herbs, mostly Chinese, The Chinese Medicinal Herb Farm: a Cultivator’s Guide to Small-Scale Organic Herb Production was written for you. It’s both a how-to and reference guide. If you consume or prescribe Chinese medicinal herbs and want to understand why your growing them regeneratively is crucial (hopefully you do!), chapters one, two, and five are for you. This substantial book is colorful, beautifully laid-out, and easy to read.
The popularity of Chinese medicine has exploded all over the world. Demand for Chinese medicinal herbs has outstripped supply of plants harvested traditionally, ie. from the wild and in an ecologically renewable manner. This is partly due to sheer volume of clients, but also to dwindling intact wild ecosystems in China and other countries traditionally harvesting them. Supply is also down due to urbanization, pollution, over-harvesting, and climate change--like everywhere.