When Does “Wildcrafted” Become a Commodity?

There is a question I have been thinking about a lot lately:

Wild ingredients have always been gathered, traded, sold and shared. There is nothing inherently wrong with one person harvesting an ingredient and another person turning it into a finished product.

There is also nothing inherently wrong with a successful wildcraft business growing.

But as wildcrafted products become more popular — and command increasingly premium prices — I think our industry needs to have a conversation about what wildcrafted actually means.

Because when a customer pays a premium for a wildcrafted product, what exactly are they paying for?

What Does “Wildcrafted” Mean to You?

Close your eyes and imagine a wildcrafted product being made.

You probably aren't picturing a conventional supply chain.

You're picturing someone walking through the forest.

Someone who knows what they're looking for. Someone examining individual trees or plants, understanding what can be taken and what should be left behind.

Someone spending hours searching, gathering, carrying and transporting those ingredients home.

That human relationship with the source is part of what makes wildcrafting different.

The ingredient didn't simply arrive from a supplier.

Someone had to go into the wild and harvest it.

And if that story is part of what gives a product its premium value, then consumers deserve to know how much of that story actually exists behind the finished product.

What Happens When Wildcrafting Scales?

This is where things get interesting.

A wildcraft business can grow in more than one way.

Experience matters. Over time, wildcrafters become better at identifying productive areas, planning seasonal harvests, working efficiently in the field, processing larger quantities and building inventory around the natural rhythms of the resource.

Responsible wildcrafting does not automatically mean low-volume production. A knowledgeable harvesting operation can gather and process substantial quantities while still maintaining direct involvement with the source.

But growth also creates choices about how raw materials are obtained.

One option is to bring in outside harvesters.

And I want to be very clear about something:

I don't believe using independent harvesters is inherently unethical.

Done properly, it could create income for skilled wildcrafters and allow traditional forest products to reach more people.

But once other people begin doing the harvesting, new responsibilities appear.

Who are they? How were they trained? Where are they harvesting? How are they harvesting? What ecological standards are expected? Can the raw material be traced?

And perhaps most importantly:

The Forest Is Not a Factory

Conventional manufacturing begins with a target.

We need 1,000 units. We need 10,000 units. We need this much raw material by this date.

Then a supply chain is built to satisfy that demand.

But wildcrafting shouldn't work exactly like that.

The forest is not a factory.

Some years are abundant. Some aren't.

Some areas can support harvesting. Others should be left alone.

Some harvests are extraordinarily productive. Others require considerably more searching for the same amount of material.

That's inconvenient from a business perspective.

But adapting production to real conditions on the land is part of the responsibility that comes with making money from wild resources.

Production can grow substantially without abandoning the first question. The important distinction is whether growth remains connected to knowledge of the land, responsible harvesting and traceable sourcing.

Wildcrafted — Or Made With Wild-Harvested Ingredients?

Maybe our industry needs better language.

Imagine two products.

For the first, the maker enters the forest, gathers the raw ingredient, brings it home, cleans it, processes it and creates the finished product.

For the second, the maker purchases raw ingredients that other people gathered in the wild, then cleans, processes and creates the finished product.

Both may contain genuine wild ingredients.

Both may be handmade.

Both may be excellent products.

But are they the same thing?

Perhaps there is a meaningful distinction between:

Neither description needs to be insulting.

Neither automatically makes one product good and another bad.

It simply tells the customer more accurately who performed each part of the craft.

If It's Premium, What Are We Paying a Premium For?

This may be the biggest question of all.

Wildcrafted products frequently command premium prices — and in many cases they should.

Wild harvesting is expensive.

There is fuel. Travel. Equipment. Hours of searching. Physical labour. Knowledge accumulated over years. Processing losses. Cleaning. Manufacturing. Packaging.

But there is something else that rarely gets talked about:

And the person accepting those risks is the person who actually went into the forest to obtain the ingredient.

That's worth remembering when we talk about the value of wild-harvested materials.

Because nature doesn't produce ingredients according to a purchase order, and those ingredients don't magically arrive at a workshop.

Someone went out there and got them.

If a company begins outsourcing the harvesting itself, then the person doing that harvesting has become an essential part of the value chain.

The harvester isn't merely supplying a cheap raw material.

They are performing the wildcrafting.

Their time matters. Their knowledge matters. Their fuel and equipment matter. Their physical labour matters. The risks they accept matter. And their stewardship of the land matters.

So if consumers are paying a premium because something is wildcrafted, I think it's reasonable to ask how that premium travels backward through the supply chain.

Can Wildcrafting Scale Ethically?

I believe it can.

One business may scale by becoming more experienced and efficient at harvesting and processing its own materials.

Another may eventually work with a network of knowledgeable independent wildcrafters.

If outside harvesters are involved, they should be trained in the company's harvesting standards.

They should be compensated fairly.

Their harvesting locations should be known.

The source of the ingredients should remain traceable.

The company should know the people gathering its materials.

Harvesting standards should be respected.

And customers should be openly told how the system works.

That doesn't sound like something we should oppose.

That sounds like an opportunity to build an ethical wildcrafting economy.

The issue isn't necessarily growth.

The issue is what gets lost in pursuit of it.

Our Standard at Alberta Wildcraft

At Alberta Wildcraft, our sourcing system is unusually direct.

When you purchase our spruce and pine resin products, the resin wasn't delivered to us by an anonymous supplier.

We went out and found it.

We drove the kilometres.

We walked the forest.

We stood at the trees.

We gathered the resin.

We carried it home.

We cleaned it.

We processed it.

And we made your product from it.

Personally harvesting our resin does not mean Alberta Wildcraft is limited to tiny production volumes.

Years of working with spruce and pine resin have made us better at identifying productive areas, planning larger seasonal harvests, processing substantial quantities of raw material and building inventory around demand.

That's how we choose to scale: through experience, harvesting knowledge, processing capacity and inventory planning while maintaining direct control over where our resin comes from.

Growth doesn't require us to disconnect from the forest.

As Alberta Wildcraft grows, the resin in our products is still resin we personally went out and harvested.

That gives us something increasingly valuable as production expands: direct knowledge of our raw material from the tree to the finished product.

We know where it came from because we were there.

We know how it was harvested because we harvested it.

And we know how it was handled because it stayed in our hands from the forest through processing.

Could Alberta Wildcraft eventually reach a scale where additional skilled wildcrafters become part of the operation? Absolutely.

If that happens, traceability, fair compensation and responsible harvesting would remain non-negotiable.

But growth itself isn't something we're opposed to.

We're building Alberta Wildcraft as a commercial wildcraft business capable of growing production while preserving direct control over our source.

For us, scale isn't about separating ourselves from the harvest.

It's about becoming better at what we already do.

Wildcrafted Should Mean Something

This isn't about deciding who is or isn't allowed to use the word wildcrafted.

It's about asking our industry to think more deeply about what that word represents.

If wildcrafted, handmade and sustainable help justify a premium price, those words should come with meaningful standards.

Traceability.

Stewardship.

Knowledge.

Fair compensation.

Accountability.

Transparency.

And respect for the people and landscapes that make these products possible.

The future of wildcrafting doesn't have to be a choice between staying small and becoming an anonymous commodity supply chain.

It can be about figuring out how to grow while keeping the craft connected to the people and landscapes that make it possible.

Because the real value of a wildcrafted product doesn't begin when it reaches the workshop.

It begins in the forest.