ODI Logo ODI

Trending

What we do

Search

Newsletter

Sign up to our newsletter.

Follow ODI

The Marketing of Non-Timber Forest Products from the Himalayas: The Trade between East Nepal and India

Research reports

Non-timber forest products (NTFPs) from the Middle Hills of Nepal are marketed through various channels, which were systematically described and compared in this paper. The main choices that collectors faced were whether to sell to local traders or to roadhead wholesalers, who exported the goods to India, and whether to sell sooner or later. The advantages of local traders were that they offered credit and transport, labour and storage costs were low, but better profits could be gained from roadhead wholesalers, especially if products were kept until the market picked up. The author suggested that since market information in this locality is already good, the best intervention to improve collectors' incomes would be to develop local cultivation and processing of NTFPs.

David M Edwards