Benefits of Medicinal Aromatic Plants.

 

Medicinal Aromatic Plants (MAPs) can help small-scale farmers to strengthen their livelihoods directly through income generation from their trade as well as health care provision. With strengthened livelihoods comes greater access to a wider range of assets, and a capacity to build these into successful and sustainable activities, thereby reducing vulnerability to poverty in the longer term. 

■ Contribution to sustainable livelihoods.

 For millennia, people have relied on nature – plants, insects, animals and fungi - for their healthcare. Communities, through time, have discovered innumerable plant species with various medicinal uses, and accumulated considerable ethno-botanical knowledge to enhance the quality of their lives. The origins of traditional herbal medicine predate all existing records, and this ancient knowledge, across different parts of the world, is enormous. An estimated 50 000 – 70 000 species of higher plants - 1 in 6 of all species - are used in traditional and modern medicine throughout the world, and many more species are important to the growing market for plant-based cosmetics and other products, representing by far the biggest use of the natural world in terms of number of species. Today, in many developing and transition countries these species make an essential contribution to health care, providing the only effective medicine for the significant proportions of the population, where other forms of medication are either unavailable or unaffordable. An estimated 80 percent of the population in Africa and Asia rely largely on these plant-based drugs for their health care needs, and the WHO has estimated that in coming decades a similar percentage of the world population may well rely on plant-based medicines. Most of these species are used only in folk medicine and the majority of the MAP trade occurs within countries at local level. These local markets provide a potential lucrative trade opportunity for small-scale farmers to diversify into. However approximately 3 000 of these plant species are traded internationally. The Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity values the annual global export of MAPs at US$1.2 bn (based on customs value declarations — the real situation is likely to be higher, based on actual invoiced prices). Some 30 percent of the drugs sold worldwide contain compounds derived from plant material. Approximately 100 plant species have contributed significantly to modern drugs: the anti-cancer compound taxol is extracted from the Pacific Yew Tree (Taxusbrevifolia), and phytochemicals from Pterocarpus osum are used in the treatment of sickle cell disease. Although phyto-pharmaceuticals are heavily regulated and mainly in the hands of large processing firms for medicines, there exists good potential for smallscale farmers to grow plants on a contract farming basis for such large firms.

As a result of the expanding interest in MAPs, new income generating opportunities are opening up for rural populations and in particular for small-scale farmers. MedicinalAromatic Plants (MAPs) can assist in supporting farm households with income generating activities, can provide a ‘safety-net’ if other anticipated incomes fail and overall can help the rural economy by contributing to subsistence medicine and health care provision. With many MAPs, cultivated and/ or sustainably wild harvested, their marketing can provide a complementary source of much needed ready cash for small-scale farmers. Furthermore, activities related to the farming, collection and primary processing of MAPs represent primary opportunities for rural women to engage in income generating activities.

However, despite the fact that the products cultivated and /or collected can have very high value in terms of final products, small-scale farmers and collectors typically receive a small share of the final value, either because they are unaware of the real value, are unable to market it in the form wanted by buyers or are unable to market to these buyers. The degree of processing and adding value varies greatly between plants, and rural context, and while the trade in some products is largely confined to local, national and regional markets, others are successfully internationally traded commodities.