India is a land blessed with rich and manifold soil types, bearing valuable herbs and medicinal plants like no other. Unfortunately though, the significance, and even the knowledge and awareness of these wonder products are on the decline. As part of its agricultural initiatives, Mrida actively promotes one of India’s best known natural healers – Turmeric or ‘Haldi’, in marginal farmlands through contract farming, in an organic and sustainable manner. The Company encourages cultivation, introduces farmers and women folk to processes that add value to the product, provides business opportunities, generates additional income and livelihoods at the Base of the Pyramid (BOP), and brings prosperity to the farmers and to villages as a whole.
Harvesting of Haldi is followed by boiling and drying to add value as well as income to the cultivator. The dried product can then be converted into powder and graded, packed by the villagers or by Self Help Groups formed by them, adding further value and generating additional income, with Mrida providing market linkages for the finished product. Mrida is also building manufacturing facilities where Haldi in various forms can be procured from farmers and groups and processed into high value finished products to be sold in premium markets across the globe. In all cases, the processes involved are geared to enhance rural livelihoods and facilitate sustainable development.
Join Mrida and rural India to promote sustainable and organic farming, take steps towards healthier living, while promoting rural livelihoods as well as forgotten wonder products growing on our soils.
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