Nepalese Government Proposes A Medicinal Herb Economic Stimulus Program

A November 16, 2009 article published on the online edition of Republica reported that Nepal’s Department of Forestry has created a proposal that would employ 30,000 households. The work? Growing medicinal herbs to be sold for a profit.
The proposal to use medicinal herbs as a profitable economic stimulus plan is yet another instance in which the economic and healing power of herbal medicine is gaining respect around the world.

Musli, one of the three main medicinal herbs in the proposal.

The article reads:

“In a bid to implement community income generation scheme for rural households, the Department of Forest (DoF) has proposed employing 30,000 households from 3,000 community forests (CFs) for medicinal herb plantation.
The DoF plan is simple. It will pick five CFs from each of the 600 range posts. Then, 10 households from each CF will be given the job to plant a minimum of 1,000 medicinal herbs. In this way, five CFs will plant 5,000 medicinal herbs. As per the plan, the family members will be employed for 150 days and each person will earn up to Rs 20,000 for working for that duration. There are 30 to 40 CFs in each range post in the country.
“This is a pilot project and if we are successful in the first phase, we will expand the project to incorporate more community forests,” Minister for Forest and Soil Conservation Deepak Bohara said.”