Rural women set up spices unit
Rajesh Sharma
Una, June 22
The Swan Women Federation, an umbrella organisation of 453 women self-help groups in Una district, has set up a spices processing unit. The move aims at providing value addition and marketing support to the spices cultivated by over 6,400 rural women.
The unit has been set up on panchayat land at Kangar village, Haroli, under the Swan River Integrated Watershed Management Project (IWMP). It has been funded by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).
RK Dogra, Divisional Forest Officer-cum-Deputy Director of the Swan River IWMP, said the eight-year long project, implemented at a cost of Rs 220 crore, culminated in April this year, meeting its objective of establishing linkages between the livelihood of local farmers and the Swan river through an integrated approach, including agriculture, horticulture, animal husbandry, soil conservation and fisheries.
Dogra said during the project period, women self-help groups were constituted in almost every ward. Women group leaders from 50 panchayats in Una decided to form a federation for collective procurement of farm inputs, technical support for weed & pest management, collective usage of water resources, besides value addition and marketing of produce.
Federation chairperson Subhadra Devi said in view of the damage to crops by wild animals, the women decided to switch over to cultivating turmeric, fenugreek and coriander, which were not the natural food of monkeys and blue bull. Consequently two years ago, the project supported the federation with 1,000 quintal of turmeric seeds from which the self-help groups harvested 10,000 quintal of turmeric.
Federation vice-president Anuranjana Sharma said lack of marketing facilities prompted them to set up a spices processing and packaging unit, for which Kangar panchayat provided them land, while the Swan River IWMP supported them with machinery that included a boiler, polisher, cold pulveriser and a pouch packaging machine. She said the turmeric powder cultivated in the area had high content of curcumin, a natural agent known to have anti-aging, anti-cancerous and anti-oxidant properties.
“The turmeric powder ‘Swan Spices’ comes in 100, 200 and 500 gm packing,” said Sneh Dogra, one of the directors of the federation. She said government agencies like anganwaris and government schools had already placed orders for mid-day meals, while the Chintpurni Temple Trust had also decided to use the locally produced turmeric powder to prepare daily ‘langar’ for devotees. The Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya, the Police Lines mess and local wholesalers have also decided to support the women farmers.
Subhadra Devi said they maintained the highest level of quality of the packaged food and minimum profits just enough to sustain the charity programmes of the federation like campaign against female foeticide, scholarships to deserving girls and health check-up camps for rural women. ‘With turmeric powder to begin with, the federation will also go in for packaging coriander, mango and “triphala” powder, besides whole fenugreek in the coming days,” she said.
