My left brain and right brain had different reactions to this.
Left brain: Yeah. Mandrake roots look like creepy midget people. Anybody who saw Pan's Labyrinth knows that ::eyeroll::. Right. Humans are exploitative inconsiderate jerks, except for the young ones who don't know any better. Old hat, man. Old hat. And while we're at it how about being consistent in your ideology? You can't cry foul on the destruction of a race of people on one hand and then write about their conversion into natural folk remedies as if it is part of the circle of life on the other. If you're going to have a creepy witch girl, let her be a creepy witch girl. Let me see her innocent soul get corrupted by the desire for power, don't sweep all the evil under the rug of mystic animism.
Right brain: Wow! This is just like Pan's Labyrinth from the mandrake root's perspective! What a unique take on the exploitative nature of humanity and how we struggle to preserve something of the culture of our childhood in the face of people in positions of power. And nothing ever changes. Life is a series of cycles, but yet there is something that lasts after all, isn't there? Even if humans destroyed the mandrake people's entire culture, forcing them into vegetative states and eventually grinding them up and consuming them in order to prolong their lives...doesn't that mean that the mandrake root people and humans are now, in some way, one? You are what you eat...And if you want to hunt rabbits, you've got to think rabbit thoughts.
Mandrake roots is people! Let my vegetables go!