The commercial grower of drug plants can not give too much attention to
the problem of securing a satisfactory market for his product. Growers
who live near the cities in which dealers in crude drugs are located
or in sections where wild medicinal plants are collected may be able
to find a local market, but in many situations the local marketing of
crude drugs in quantity will not be possible. In such cases the grower
should send samples of his product to dealers in crude drugs or to
manufacturers of pharmaceutical preparations and request them to name
a price at which they would purchase his crop. The material for the
samples should not be specially selected or so prepared as to represent
a quality higher than that of the whole lot, since this would give the
purchaser just cause for making a reduction in price on delivery or for
rejecting the whole shipment. It is well to send samples to a number
of dealers, since their prices will be found to vary with the stock on
hand and trade prospects. Before selling, the state of the wholesale
drug market should be learned. The prices to producers are, of course,
always lower than the wholesale price; nevertheless, the grower who is
informed in respect to the wholesale market will be in a position to
judge of the fairness of the prices offered for his crop by dealers.
Under special conditions some crude drugs can be sold at a material
advance over the prevailing market price. By always supplying a
well-prepared, carefully selected drug of high quality some growers
have built up a trade in their particular product for which they secure
extra good prices. Dealers and manufacturers also sometimes make
contracts with reliable growers to take the entire crop of a particular
drug, thus insuring to the grower a definite market and good prices for
the product.