While wild harvesting usually has a long standing tradition, in many countries, the traditional knowledge is being lost, either due to emigration, changes in land use, or geopolitical disruptions. The work is often not very attractive to young people, not paid very well or people now simply lack the knowledge and thus wild harvesting ceases. Additionally, the cultivation and wild harvest of medicinal herbs is financially risky for small farmers. To compete on the global market, they often have to fulfil high quality standards, and if their crops fail these, they may lose the whole crop, or get very little for it. To be able to compete with low prices for their crops they have to invest in getting machinery to do harvests en masse, an investment only few small farmers can afford (6). Often these farmers and collectors have to go into partnerships with bigger companies, which usually means those companies have more power in setting demands and prices. However, these partnerships can also prove beneficial to collectors and growers, if they are part of a supportive and sustainable supply chain, rather than an exploitative one. 

One producer in Kosovo, Agroproduct sh.p.k, has been working with collectors around the country, offering training as well as establishing processing facilities and providing fair wages to their collectors and growers. They are now offering over 60 products from wild collection sites, which are often areas with high biodiversity, and strict conservation protection(7). Collectors are trained in sustainable plant harvest rates and monitoring takes place to control the impact this has on the environment(8). The land is Organic and FairWild certified, offering the greatest protection for land and people. Why ‘Organic’? you may ask. No pesticides are used, if the herbs are gathered from the wild. Why would organic certification be needed? 

While it is true that no pesticides are being used, when wild harvesting, pesticide contamination is still a great concern for those herbs. Non-point source pollution refers to pollution of the environment that does not originate from a single, identifiable source but rather comes from multiple, dispersed sources. It is a significant concern for the cultivation and collection of medicinal herbs, as more and more land is being used for agricultural or industrial production, where chemical residues such as heavy metals, pesticides or petroleum products can escape into the environment, most commonly by wind or water (8). Recent studies found that around the world wild harvested herbs showed concerning levels of heavy metal and pesticide residues more commonly compared to cultivated ones, eliciting this problem for wild harvested herbs(10,11). One study found that 45% of pesticides detected were not approved by the European Union Commission(11). Organically grown herbs are subjected to rigorous testing to detect levels of pesticides, which would perhaps otherwise go unnoticed. And organically certified land is often surrounded with a ‘buffer’ zone, to protect it from any pollution that might occur due to the use of pesticides on neighbouring land. 

The work that companies such as Agroproduct sh.p.k do is incredibly important. It not only preserves the traditional knowledge around the cultivation and collection of medicinal plants, but by enabling people in rural areas to gain a sufficient financial income from their biodiversity rich landscapes in an environmentally sustainable way, it also protects those environments from being used in other potentially more harmful ways. Additionally, by certifying the land and the plants gathered from it ‘Organic’ humans are committing more and more to keep the environment free from pesticides. 

While little data is available on the overall population status of wild Marshmallow plants, it seems that due to its broad range of habitats across the globe, and perhaps due to its long standing importance as a medicinal herb, Marshmallow is not, as such, threatened with extinction. It is commonly cultivated in many countries, as well as wild-harvested in some. While wild-harvest of herbs can be a stressor on the natural environment, it can also be done in a supportive and sustainable way. Therefore Marshmallow can be easily used as a sustainable medicinal plant, and perhaps even in case of other herbs that are less easily accessed in a sustainable way, such as Slippery Elm, which, often used in a similar way, faces more issues in regards to its survival, of which you can read more about in our article on the sustainability of slippery elm. 

While wild plant populations of Marshmallow are not existentially threatened at this point, it is still crucial to familiarise ourselves with where we source our herbs, how they were grown and harvested and how the people involved in the process are doing.