News

Medicinal plants help Nepal’s mountain communities

01.10.2014

In a tiny village called Chepuwa in the Sankhuwasabha district of Nepal, high in the Himalayas and almost four days’ trek from the nearest road, Mikmar Bhote has been growing and selling medicinal and aromatic plants for five years.

A farmer and mother of four, the income she’s earned has allowed her to send her daughters to school and buy a new metal roof for their home. The switch from a traditional wood roof to metal has reduced pressure on nearby bamboo stocks, critical food for endangered species. And the agricultural techniques she uses are helping shore up a fragile, largely deforested local environment while providing critical ingredients for many medicines.

Interest in medicinal plants is nothing new. Hauled to India and other parts of Nepal for use in Ayurvedic medicine, and to China for traditional healing, these plants have been traded for centuries. Chiraito (or Chiretta), for instance, has antibiotic properties and is used to treat over two dozen diseases, disorders, and ailments.

The plants are also now used in many Western medicines, like Taxol, used to treat breast, ovarian, lung, prostate, esophageal, and other cancers.

What’s different is that Bhote has joined with her neighbors to cultivate these plants rather than forage for them, a practice that’s devastating for fragile alpine habitats, particularly when combined with yak herding.

The income, environmental, and social changes Bhote and her neighbors have achieved is an example of what The Mountain Institute (TMI) is working to replicate across the Himalayan region of Nepal.
Fragmented Families

Globally, about 300 million people living in mountain areas are vulnerable to food insecurity. Many of them are desperately poor, with conditions generally worse at higher altitude. As the twelfth poorest country in the world, Nepal has an overall poverty rate of 25 percent (GNI USD 730), but the rate in the high mountain regions averages 46 percent.

There are few good livelihood opportunities for mountain communities. Everyone knows about trekking to Mount Everest; however, earnings for indigenous communities in Nepal tend to be very localized with the bulk of the profits often going to outside companies.

A Better Option

Growing medicinal and aromatic plants can provide an excellent alternative for some mountain regions. Such high value products make economic sense, even if they have to be carried to market on the backs of yaks, mules, horses, or humans. Moreover, these can be produced year after year.

Since 2001, TMI has partnered with local civil society to train farmers to cultivate medicinal and aromatic plants on their own plots as well as on degraded land. TMI has also helped establish cooperatives to further fair trade and improve marketing. Farmers have adapted fast, learning to cultivate on the edges of steep mountain terraces and inter-crop so they can grow medicinal plants side-by-side with other cash and food crops.

The results have been impressive. To date, some 16 000 highland farmers in six districts are cultivating 12 species on over 2 000 hectares. In 2013, the families TMI worked with earned more than USD 800 000 combined. Most impressively, two farmers made over USD 30 000 – a huge sum in impoverished Nepal – and are well on their way to being middle class.

We estimate that these 16 000 farmers are currently providing about 10 percent of Nepali production of medicinal plants. The goal now is to turn others away from wild collecting.

We also hope that such earnings will bring some migrant workers home, and dissuade others from leaving in the first place, reducing the familial fracturing so common in Nepalese households today.