Making Indian farmers more ‘weed savvy’

Copyright: WHO/P Virot

By: Aakanksha Kumar

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<h1>Making Indian farmers more ‘weed savvy’</h1>
<h4>By: Aakanksha Kumar</h4>
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<p>Rural people in India often rely on using medicinal plants when they are injured or taken ill, but ironically many such plants are considered by farmers to be weeds.<BR><BR>In this article Aakanksha Kumar reports that many of those who collect medicinal plants are unaware of their commercial value. Instead, middlemen collect the valuable ‘weeds’ from farmers at very low prices and sell them on to industries. <BR><BR>By the time the plants reach the national market the price has grown substantially, and is then further inflated in the international market. With a greater awareness at the local level, however, this economic benefit could go direct to the farmers themselves. <BR><BR><a href="http://www.teriin.org/terragreen/issue33/feature.htm#f1" target="_blank" onclick="pageTracker._trackPageview('/tracking/external/'+this.href);" rel="noopener noreferrer">Link to <em>TerraGreen</em> article</A></p>

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<p>This article was originally published on <a href="https://www.scidev.net" target="_blank">SciDev.Net</a>. Read the <a href="https://www.scidev.net/global/features/making-indian-farmers-more-weed-savvy/" target="_blank">original article</a>.</p>
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Rural people in India often rely on using medicinal plants when they are injured or taken ill, but ironically many such plants are considered by farmers to be weeds.

In this article Aakanksha Kumar reports that many of those who collect medicinal plants are unaware of their commercial value. Instead, middlemen collect the valuable ‘weeds’ from farmers at very low prices and sell them on to industries.

By the time the plants reach the national market the price has grown substantially, and is then further inflated in the international market. With a greater awareness at the local level, however, this economic benefit could go direct to the farmers themselves.

Link to TerraGreen article