Making money through herbs in Himachal
Medicinal and aromatic plants are critical to Himachal Pradesh's rural economy. Twenty four of the 100 most important medicinal plant species traded in the country are found in the state. The state exports some 2,500 tonnes of medicinal plants and their parts. The legal annual trade in medicinal plants in the state is worth about Rs 10 crore at current market prices. The state government earns about Rs 40 lakh per annum from export permits for medicinal plants.
However, this trade is largely unregulated. The state does not have any quality control or certification standards and ends up losing hefty revenue. More importantly, local people who have rights to collect these medicinal plants from forests, end up getting a rough deal.
The state government is not totally impervious to such challenges.The Himachal Pradesh Forestry Sector Medicinal Plants Policy (hpfsmpp) 2006, for instance, aims to further the basic objectives of meeting the minor forest produce requirements of the state's rural and tribal populations in accordance with the National Forest Policy, 1988. Moreover, in 2003, the state government authorised gram panchayats to issue passes for transporting 37 types of medicinal plants extracted within their territorial jurisdictions.
History of collection hpfsmpp is in many ways a continuation of the forest settlements that began in 1860s in the princely states that became part of Himachal Pradesh. Most of these settlements gave the following rights to local people: cutting grass, grazing cattle in the specified forests, removing medicinal roots, fruits, flowers, fuelwood and taking splinters of deodhar and kail stumps. In certain erstwhile princely states, these rights are known as bartan and holders of these rights are called bartandars.
According to a study conducted by the state forest department, the most important parameter governing the distribution of medicinal plants in the state is altitude: low-value, high-volume species commonly occur at lower altitude, while high-value species, extracted in smaller quantities are found at high altitudes. The majority of valuable medicinal herbs are concentrated at high altitudes while other minor forest produce (including marchella mushroom and dhoop) is found at lower reaches.
The distribution and collection of herbs within panchayats or villages in high altitude zones of the state, like Kulu, also vary with altitude. The lowest level of fields are reserved for agriculture and horticulture, the middle-level lands have forests or community lands where people have rights over timber, fodder and fuelwood, and pastures having high value medicinal and aromatic plant species are usually found at higher reaches of villages or panchayats.
Sustainable extraction Sustainable extraction is the most critical necessity in the medicinal plants sector. Many experts reckon that a commodity-focussed approach