WAUSAU, Wisconsin — Hundreds of cardboard boxes filled with ginseng root crowded Will Hsu’s warehouse on a humid June day. The morning before, a shipment of 30,000 pounds (13,608 kilograms) of ginseng left for China, but the more than 150,000 pounds that remain in warehouses across Marathon county is an abnormally large amount for Wisconsin’s ginseng industry at this time of year.
“Usually by summer, it’s all gone, and this is empty, so we can work on processing and doing other stuff, getting ready for the next season,” said the second-generation ginseng farmer, pointing to the rolls of plant shade cloth and machinery that need to be serviced.