Leh s berry fields
For long, farmers in Ladakh considered the seabuckthorn berry as a weed, for its roots choked their crops. Things started changing after 1995 after an NGO got the berry analysed in a London lab. The results showed that it had high vitamin C content. In 2001 the Leh-based Field Research Laboratory (FRL) of the Defence Research and Development Organisation obtained patents for seabuckthorn nectar (see : bushful of medicine,' Down To Earth, March 31, 2001). This opened up lucrative possibilities.
Enter D K Mittal, head of Ladakh Foods Ltd. His company licensed the recipe for seabuckthorn juice from FRL and started marketing it under the brand 'Leh Berry'. Last year's sales were worth Rs 2 crore. A women's self-help group in Chuchot-Yokma village followed suit and made Rs 27,000 in the last two years by extracting and selling the berries and juice. But unlike Ladakh Foods Ltd, they don't have a Food Processing Order (FPO) licence. So, the Union ministry of food processing stopped them from selling the nectar. The fact that an outsider is making money from a local resource, while local people are being stopped, has irked some Ladakhis. But Ladakh's hill council refuses to buy the local-versus-outsider argument.
"Till Mittal stepped in, the berry had no real value. What's stopping Ladakhis from showing similar initiative?' says the council's chief Thupstan Chhewang. Sanjai K Dwivedi, scientist at FRL, says "The present extraction is 10 per cent of the potential; extraction up to 80 per cent is sustainable,' he says. Mohammed Abbas, range forest officer, however cautions: "The berry is extracted very crudely, damaging the plant. Oil extracted from the seed fetches Rs 40,000 per litre in the international cosmetics market. What will happen to regeneration and the 55 bird species that eat the berry?'