Our Motivation

Darjeeling Himalayas being situated in one of the bio-diversity hot spots of the world are virtual gold mines of medicinal plants. Of the 1500 odd medicinal plants known in the country, this region alone has more than 500 well-known medicinal plants. This number would go up if lesser-known plants were included in the list.  

Unfortunately, with rampant collection from the wild by unscrupulous traders and with practically no effort in planting them back, many of the medicinal plants are fast going extinct. The Government of India has classified many of them as “Endangered”.

Understanding the situation, many self-help groups and farmer associations got together and started planting medicinal plants, but with no one to help them with marketing, many lost all motivation.

Also, the few traders and individuals who had come forward to help with marketing took complete advantage of the situation and financially exploited the poor farmers.

This, coupled with long-standing problems like acute water shortage, small land holdings of the farmers, lack of communication and transport facilities, had pushed the local communities towards economic depravity.

Considering the economic potential of the region coupled with the hard working nature of our people, it was simply impossible to ignore the depravity our people were experiencing. We felt it was time we did something about it, something to improve the economic situation of our people while protecting our natural heritage.  Hence, our motivation behind “Organo”.