Starter Kit. Idea 114 of 500. Cluster 5
Herbal-garden nurseries selling certified medicinal plants to the treatment centres
The mechanism, from the book
Ayurveda is a system of medicine the world already recognises and seeks out. The demand is there; what Sri Lanka needs is more of its own names, known and asked for abroad.
The first step
Visit the Ayurveda centres and practitioners in your district and ask each which plants they buy, how much, from whom, and what quality problems they have. Write the answers in a table. If three of them name the same plant and the same problem, grow that plant first and offer them a supply agreement. A signed order for next season is your start.
- Who pays first
- An Ayurveda treatment centre that needs a reliable, traceable supply of the plants it uses every day.
- What leaves today
- Treatment centres cannot prove where their plants came from, and without that proof no product made from them can pass a foreign inspection.
Ask first
- Department of Ayurveda. Ask which medicinal plants treatment centres most need, and what certification means.
- Department of Agriculture. Ask what support exists for nurseries growing medicinal plants.
Check before you spend
That the plants are correctly identified, that any certification claimed is real, and that rare plants are propagated legally.
Find out these three numbers
- Which plants do treatment centres buy most?
- What do they pay per plant today?
- How long does each plant take to grow to sale?
A comparison from the book
Costa Rica. Chapter Eleven
"Selling raw samples from a forest is the same mistake as exporting cinnamon in bales."
Selling only the raw plant repeats the old mistake; grow and certify it properly.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.