2020 was an undeniably impactful year for the global herbal supply chain, perhaps doubly so for suppliers going above and beyond to adhere to sustainability and fair trade certifications in the midst of a public health crisis, overall economic tumult, and unprecedented demand.
 
To get some views from the field, the American Botanical Council’s Sustainable Herbs Program (SHP) director Ann Armbrecht recently discussed the impact that a tumultuous year has had on Fair Trade-certified herbal suppliers with those whose perspectives are drawn directly from the field. Those involved in the conversation were Puspa Ghimire from ANSAB, a Nepalese supplier, Tarun Prajapati from the India-based Cultivator Natural Products, and Paulo Barriga, from Pebani, an herbal supplier based in Peru.
 
Each region of the globe presented plenty of unique challenges to operations, both in the realm of more conventional farming and wild-crafting, both of which are challenging feats even in the absence of the current global catastrophes at play. But, plenty of strategies and compromises along the way ensured that the herbal suppliers were able to operate a business model which is both sustainable and equitable to the rural communities from which these increasingly rare and threatened herbs are derived.
 
Baseline Challenges
Everyone in the discussion described many of the challenges they were facing at baseline, prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
 
“Sustainability is largely audited by the government in Peru,” Barriga said. “There’s lots of wild-crafting here, and in many ways it’s done informally and these operations can’t be audited. We’re making sure that wild-crafters are re-planting, rather than just stripping the forest. There’s also a huge lumber industry here, eliminating the ecosystem along with the trees. Many community members are also migrating to the cities, so there’s a great deal of lost knowledge regarding the traditional natural medicine, so we need to focus on that issue as well.”
 
“Our challenges on the topic of biodiversity are less since we cultivate, rather than work in wildlife,” Prajapati said. “We’re working on biodiversity on each of our farms as regulations get stricter, and now, each state is working on a different medicinal crop because we can’t grow all of these crops in one place. We want different flora and fauna coming together, especially to preserve water—it creates some real challenges with post-harvest management. But we’re using new communications platforms to prevent waste, which helps us communicate with 2,000-plus farmers who speak several different languages, and we can keep them informed on operations and weather so they can reduce waste.”
 
Wild harvesting in Nepal certainly has its fair share of challenges as well, Ghimire said. “Our biggest threats are forest fires, over-grazing, and premature or excessive harvesting in some cases,” he said. “Social issues present another, less dire threat, as profit share was once much worse for communities—it’s still not reasonable at the bottom. Harvesters aren’t getting a fair price, but some of our traceability and certification schemes are ensuring fair compensation and sustainability measures. Still, they’re only used in a limited part of the country. We’re looking to support management, the creation of enterprises, supporting development and marketing of products, and collaborating with policymakers on analysis and recommendations.”
 
Staying Safe and Operational
Once COVID-19 made its footfalls in each respective country, each of the supplier spokespersons mentioned unique threats during the global peak of the pandemic.
 
Barriga said that even in the isolated harvesting communities, the health threat presented by COVID-19 still became a challenge.
 
“Peru started with a quarantine that got extended for 110 days; it was a really tough time,” he said. “Government health departments weren’t present, and we had to support these communities as they protected themselves. We kept paying them for their work, until they were able to get the crops out of the field. Restrictions on transportation created problems for our supply chain. The government did provide some money for those who were in extreme need, but they had to leave the community and some of them got infected, though it was manageable.”
 
Challenges directly related to COVID-19 were less pressing for fair trade farming operations conducted in Rajasthan, Prajapati said.
 
“We were able to get a special permit from the government as an essential business, so we were only shut down for a week. During the peak of the pandemic, no one in our whole operation was affected; we paid people in advance because we knew how much crop we were going to get and paid them ahead of time for it. With a huge demand, we had to really work to keep supply up on time while keeping price factors normal for our customers, even though some companies doubled the price of their ingredients due to the demand.”
 
In Nepal, where many medicinal herbs require a trek up into the mountains to harvest, there was plenty of adversity faced directly due to the pandemic.
 
“Our operations are remote and normally require 2-3 days of transport with airline connections involved,” Ghimire said. “We had plenty of training personnel involved with traceability training, inventory, and audits before the lockdown in the field. Our management plans called for higher FairWild certification capacities, and during training there was always a section on COVID safety precautions which was really helpful for our people. Our harvests involve groups venturing out into the mountains for about a month for cordyceps, and we missed a collection period, but we hope that this March and April we can resume with some precautions. We had about 50,000 people migrate to cities in Nepal and the province in India where we work, so respective villages were getting highly populated, however, those migrants immediately started to grow crops which helped as we had to abandon the crop lands in the mountains.
 
Futureproofing
In order to ensure resilience for sustainable, fair trade operations in the years to come, each member of the panel shared some essential goals that must be met in long-term relationships with ingredient buyers. Fortunately, the demand for products which are fair trade, sustainable, and organic is burgeoning, making loftier ideals all the more possible in the collection and trade of rare and threatened medicinal herbs.
 
Barriga said that, along the way to FairWild certification, Pebani has had to make compromises to reach a holistic, sustainable model. “We’ve tried to avoid losing community members who choose to migrate. There must be long-term commitment and fair wages, and we need to train the native community to manage these crops. Plenty of other crops also work within the area that can mesh well, such as cacao. It’s important to teach them how to enterprise on their own and create their own farming operations. Also, the native community owns all of the land that we work on, and it’s a reliable model for both us and them.”
 
“As the demand grows, we think we could go back and get the organic certification again in many of our wild-crafting areas,” Barriga said. “It’s important that we continue to investigate and audit all of our crops for continued growth, and we need our clients to visit and have direct contact so that they know we’re focused on sustainable sourcing and working with the community. As a company, it’s important to know your buyer wants a long-term relationship to support long-term reforestation effort. These long-term contracts also give our native community an awareness that their products are valuable to other countries, giving them more interest in what they’re doing.”
 
Prajapati also has seen the mounting interest in organic and sustainable products as a major windfall in recent years, and he believes the return on investment in social and environmental causes will continue to grow in the years ahead, following several less rewarding years. He believes that this, combined with creating positions in sustainable agriculture which require formal education, will ensure a more viable future for the operations he’s involved with.
 
“People aren’t necessarily keeping social and environmental causes in mind, and might not be willing to buy at a premium,” he said. “We’re also relying heavily on long-term contracts with buyers. Things, at the moment, are still incomplete, and we sometimes lose money on fair trade premiums, but the time will come. At one point, less than 1% of people were using organic products, but I think there’s a much greater understanding today.”
 
Ghimire said that relationships between suppliers and buyers should involve a shared burden in order to more efficiently support the marginalized communities who are at the forefront of the medicinal herb trade but don’t have the means to bear the brunt of sustainability.
 
“To get a facility off the ground, getting certified isn’t easy and can be a burden for small-time collectors,” he said. “Also, markets and buyers have a variety of certification preferences, and if there could be an international standard, we would benefit from some kind of universal quality scheme. People don’t know all of the different standards; they only see one logo and don’t have time to dig deep and understand all of the details. Having one logo that signifies environmental, economic, and social indicators would be a big help for our farmers. Farmers need better traceability practices, and we need buyers to support us as we build capacity and bear the cost of certification.”
 
Furthermore, farming on mountains in Nepal is a highly risky undertaking, and the communities involved are deprived of emergency resources.
 
“We also need more opportunities besides harvesting for these people. Education and drinking water are needed, and we would be very lucky to be able to welcome companies to our products if they’d help us in these areas,” he said.