Ruyu Yao, PhD, discusses the value chains of goji berries sourced from China and the implications of this research for understanding links between medicinal plant quality and place. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Medicinal Plant Development, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, China.
In this webinar, SHP Director, Ann Armbrecht speak with Puspa Ghimire, from ANSAB, Nepal; Tarun Prajapati from Cultivator Natural Products, India; and Paulo Barriga from Pebani, Peru about the challenges of the past year in producing and supplying high quality, sustainable, and fairly traded botanicals to the global market.
Please note, because of a technical difficulty, this recording ends rather abruptly. Our apologies!
SHP Director, Ann Armbrecht, speaks with medical ethnobotanist Dr Cassandra Quave who’s book, The Plant Hunter: A Scientist’s Quest for Nature’s Next Medicines, has just been published by Viking Press.
SHP Director, Ann Armbrecht, speaks with medical ethnobotanist Dr Cassandra Quave who’s book, The Plant Hunter: A Scientist’s Quest for Nature’s Next Medicines, has just been published by Viking Press.
In this webinar SHP Director, Ann Armbrecht, speak with four farms growing medicinal plants in different regions of the US (North Carolina, Vermont, Oregon, and Hawaii) about their vision for farming, some specific practices they follow, and the unique challenges they face. We talk about what is needed to shift towards a more equitable system, create more resilient models and what the responsibilities are of botanical companies and buyers of herbal products.
Sourcing botanicals for herbal teas is a complicated process. Most herbal teas are a blend of different ingredients, typically from small-scale producers, including as many as 300 different ingredients in herbal teas, originating in more than 100 countries across Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas. Challenges to sourcing include threats to biodiversity, overuse of pesticides, minimal quality control, and over-harvesting of wild botanical species. This webinar will discuss some of the challenges in sourcing herbal tea ingredients with respect to social equity and biodiversity, with particular attention to how to improve conditions on small farms.
Jan Salick, PhD, and Robbie Hart, PhD, talk about their research on the impacts of climate change on alpine plants in the Himalayas. The Arctic is the only place that is warming faster than the Himalayas. We will talk about how this warming affects plant elevational ranges and phenology and how those changes have the potential to disrupt plant populations, ecological interactions like pollination, and rural livelihoods, including harvesting medicinal plants.
In this webinar, ethnobotanist, Steven King, PhD will discuss his work creating a sustainable harvesting program for Croton lechleri, (the source of Crofelemer) for use in Crofelemer, the first oral botanical drug approved by the US FDA. King in particular will talk about his work with international partners and indigenous and local communities on conserving biological diversity, recognizing intellectual property rights, and and meeting global human health care needs.
NOTE: The recording freezes for a minute or two at the beginning, but continues after that pause. Drawing on stories from almost forty years traveling the world as an anthropologist and ethnobotanist, Wade Davis talks about the importance of culture in understanding ethnobotany. He speaks about the links between cultural and biological diversity and what is at stake for us all with the erosion of this diversity.
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