Medicinal plants await good marketing

The cultivation of medicinal plants has become a lucrative agribusiness, thanks to the increasing use of relatively safe and affordable plant-based remedies for common ailments. With the depletion of the herbal resources of forests, which have typically been the main source of procuring therapeutically important vegetation, these plants now need to be grown on agricultural fields to meet their burgeoning demand from the pharmaceutical, cosmetics, and other industries. These plants generally do not require much investment, or large landholdings, to grow but give high returns. Some knowledge of the plant-specific agronomic practices is, no doubt, helpful to get good yields but this information is now readily available from various sources. Many public- and private-sector institutions provide training in growing medicinal plants. Most of the large manufacturers of herbal drugs and other value-added products prefer to go in for contract farming of these plants, guaranteeing the growers to buy their entire produce at mutually agreed prices. Several farmers’ producer organisations and start-ups have also entered this field. Many of them have developed their own brands as well. Most importantly, exports of curative herbs, their extracts, and other products are also going up. India shipped Ayurvedic drugs, skincare products, and other herbal items worth around $539 million in 2019-20, mostly to Europe and other developed countries.
 

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), over 80 per cent of the people across the world rely on plant-based home remedies for minor health issues. Indigenous systems of medication are usually the first choice of most people for primary health care. More importantly, about 40 per cent of all the approved pharmaceutical products in use today are derived from plants and other natural substances. In India, the traditional health management systems are rooted far more firmly than in most other countries. Apart from Ayurveda, the ancient healing system, which is now undergoing rapid modernisation, some other therapies like Siddha and Unani have become a regular part of the Indian health care regime. Even Homeopathy, which uses a large number of medicines derived from plants, has got firmly established in the country. Recently, the WHO signed an agreement with India to set up a Global Centre for Traditional Medicines at Jamnagar in Gujarat. This institution will work for harnessing the potential of traditional remedies from across the world through modern science and technology.

Fortunately, India is endowed with a huge and diversified wealth of plant species having curative traits. Of about 18,000 types of plants found in the country’s 15 well-defined agro-climatic zones, about half are said to have some kind of therapeutic properties. The Botanical Survey of India (BSI) has documented about 8,000 medicinal plants. Most of them are natives of the Himalayas, Western Ghats, and regions unaffected by anthropogenic interventions, like parts of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. A large number of them are being preserved in botanical gardens located in different phytogeographical regions. Apart from the BSI, some other organisations, notably the National Medicinal Plants Board (NMPB) and the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, are engaged in conserving and preserving medicinal plants. Of this huge treasury of therapeutic herbage, about 2,800 plant species are in common use in the Indian systems of medicines. Around a thousand of these are traded actively in the markets, with nearly 200 having traded volumes in excess of 100 tonnes a year.

Growers of mass-consumed medicinal plants like Tulsi (holy basil), Aloe Vera, Brahmi, Ashwagandha, Isabgol, and Senna, for instance, can generate profits of more than Rs 1,00,000 per hectare in a year. The other curative plants of significant commercial value include Shankhapushpi, Atees, Karanj, Guggal, Bael, Satavari, Kalmegh, Ashok, Giloe, Safed Musli, and Amla.

Among the states, Rajasthan has the largest area under medicinal plants while Madhya Pradesh leads in production. The other states that account for significant areas and production of these plants and their value-enhanced products include Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, and Bihar. Many other states, too, possess ample potential for herbal farming but much of that remains untapped.

However, marketing has been one of the weak links in the value chain of herbal farming. This is due chiefly to the dominance of middlemen, who exploit the growers and collectors of these plants from the wild. There has hardly been any transparency in price discovery. This aspect is now sought to be addressed by the Ministry of Ayush (acronym for Ayurveda, Yoga, Unani, Siddha, and Homeopathy). The latest initiative in this direction is the launch of e-CHARAK, an electronic platform for interaction between various stakeholders in the medicinal plants sector. This portal, developed jointly by the Ayush ministry’s NMPB and the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), allows sale, purchase and sharing of material as well as knowhow between different stakeholders. However, more such reform-oriented interventions are called for to allow the medicinal plants sector to grow to its potential.

surinder.sud@gmail.com