According to Vaidya Rajesh Kotecha, Secretary, Ministry of Ayush, the manufacturing industry in Ayush has grown eightfold in the last 10 years and has enormous potential to strengthen the economy and export.

Along with the Department of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, he was presenting at the national capital’s stakeholder consultation conference. Other ministries, including the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, the Ministry of Food Processing Industries, the National Plant Medicinal Board (NPMB), State Horticulture Missions (SHMs), ICAR, State Medicinal Plant Boards, forward-thinking farmers, and prominent private companies from the medicinal plant industry, participated in the meeting, which aimed to encourage the cultivation and use of medicinal plants nationwide.

“The Ayush industry has a great deal of room to develop. Over the last ten years, the Ayush manufacturing industry has expanded eightfold, and it has enormous export potential. The industry has a lot of economic potential, and demand for Ayush items, like as medicinal herbs, has increased significantly since the Covid-19 outbreak, according to Kotecha.

The potential of the Ayush sector to boost domestic production of medical plants as well as interstate commerce and export of medicinal plants was emphasized by Agriculture Ministry Secretary Devesh Chaturvedi.

“To promote medicinal plants at the national level, we need better convergence between the Ministry of Ayush and Agriculture departments and collaboration with State Medicinal Plant Boards,” he said. In order to improve the sector, Chaturvedi emphasized the need of a mission-mode program for the production of medicinal plants, which would discover effective farming methods and other procedures.

The meeting’s main objectives were to discuss ways to create medicinal plant clusters that are specific to a given region, help farmers and industry players form partnerships for guaranteed procurement and the development of an end-to-end value chain, talk about the creation of special mandis and marketing platforms to guarantee farmers receive fair prices, and support research, training, and extension services to increase stakeholder capacity.

Additionally, the stakeholders and participants recommended crop-specific locations for the creation of medicinal plant clusters.

By establishing specialized mandis for these products and guaranteeing farmers get fair pricing, these clusters would concentrate on marketing, industrial collaborations, farmer training, production, and area growth.

The need to identify financial incentives and legislative interventions to encourage farmers to cultivate medicinal plants was also emphasized by the experts.