Farmers perception on cultivating medicinal plants as an agribusiness venture: a study at Pambahinna agrarian services division
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Date
2015
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Uva Wellassa University of Sri Lanka
Abstract
Medicinal plants have been used in Sri Lanka for many purposes since early civilization.
Recently both national and international demand for ayrvedic medicinal materials has been
increased due to increased health awareness. But unfortunately Sri Lankan cultivations presently
do not at least provide for the demand for the country itself, this leads to import many plants
from countries like India, Pakistan and Dubai. Therefore the propose of this research was to
identify farmers perception on medicinal plant cultivation as an agribusiness which could be an
important perspective to develop this sector. This research was particularly carried in
Pambahinna Agrarian Services Division. In the research questions farmers experience and
knowledge on medicinal plant, awareness on markets, potentials and constrains of this industry
was discussed. A survey was conducted among randomly selected sample of 111 farmers within
10 GN (gramasewa niladari) divisions and obtain information through an interviewer
administrated structured questionnaire. Data analyzing was done using mini tab 14 and MS
Excel using descriptive statistics, graphical explanations, and chi square test. Concerning on
awareness, many farmers were aware about the value of medicinal materials but they lack
information about such agribusinesses so they lack motivation and inspiration
Key words: Perception, Medicinal plants, Agribusiness
Introduction
Common medicines like ginger, garlic, and coriander were used by ancient physicians and used
by the people even today. In fact the chemicals used in western drugs were originally extracted
from medicinal plants. There is a current trend evolving in many developed and developing
countries to move back to old traditions in medicine and especially in beauty culture. The
national demand for medicinal plant materials was 3,864,760 kg in 2000 and approximately
1,509,201 kg of this amount were imported to meet the national demand at a cost of about Rs. 13
million (Abeywardana, N and Hettiarachchi, J. K., 2001). Hence great potential exists to
organize the cultivation medicinal plants on commercial scale to increase the domestic supply of
raw materials (Joseph and Abeysekera, 2004; Gunasena et al., 2004). This paper looks at the
farmers’ willingness to cultivate medicinal plants as an agribusiness venture and to find out the
potentials and constraints in medicinal plant cultivation.
Description
Keywords
Agriculture, Export Agriculture, Crop Production, Indigenous Medicine, Medicinal Plants