Are we missing the forest for the trees? Greater than timber grows in forests — including products value many tens of billions of dollars. Because these goods go unrecorded in official trade statistics, their economic value escapes our attention. Consequently, clear opportunities to combat poverty are being missed, in accordance with a University of Copenhagen economist.
Within the Roman Empire, custom taxes on spices, black pepper specifically, accounted for as much as a 3rd of the empire’s annual income. And in the course of the late Middle Ages, European efforts to chop out middle men and monopolise the spice trade led to colonization in Asia. Historically, non-timber forest products have ceaselessly played a key role in the worldwide economy.
Today nonetheless, non-timber forest products are neglected when the values of forests are recorded in official trade statistics. This is applicable each within the EU and globally. And it’s despite the indisputable fact that these products account for a big a part of the economies of many countries — from medicinal plants and edible insects to nuts, berries and herbs, to materials like bamboo and latex.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that annual producer income from non-wood products is US$ 88 billion — and when the added value of processing and other links in the worth chain are included, the worth of those products rockets as much as trillions of dollars.
In line with Professor Carsten Smith-Hall, an economist on the University of Copenhagen’s Department of Food and Resource Economics, that is an excellent reason to start including forest products like ginseng, shea nuts, acai berries, baobab and acacia gum into global trade accounts.
“We estimate that roughly 30,000 different non-timber forest products are traded internationally, but lower than fifty of them currently have a commodity code. We’re talking about goods value enormous sums of cash that aren’t being recorded in official statistics — and are due to this fact invisible. Because of this the countries and communities that deliver these goods don’t earn enough from them, partly because there isn’t a investment in local processing firms,” says Smith-Hall, a world-leading bioeconomy researcher. He adds:
“Because we underestimate the role of those goods, we’re wasting clear opportunities to combat poverty. These are goods that contribute significantly to food security, health and employment in large parts of the world, especially in low- and middle-income countries.”
Carsten Smith-Hall and James Chamberlain from the U.S. Department of Agriculture have written a commentary within the journal Forest Policy and Economics, by which they argue for the nice, though yet to be realized, potential.
Adding value
Examples of useful products that go unrecorded, but are traded in informal markets, are quite a few. One in every of these is caterpillar fungus (Ophiocordyceps sinensis), a fungus that infects after which erupts from the heads of mummified moth larvae. On the Tibetan plateau and within the Himalayas, people collect the medicinal mushroom that they call yartsa gunbu — and can be often called the Viagra of the Himalayas -at every opportunity.
“Caterpillar fungus is exported to China, where it’s sold as an aphrodisiac and traditional medicine. Rural gatherers can sell it for about €11,500 per kilo. It fights poverty and helps transform local communities. That’s, it allows people to send their children to higher schools and construct recent houses. But since the trade goes unrecorded, local communities don’t get what they might out of the product,” says Carsten Smith-Hall.
The professor goes on to clarify that the consequence of products like these not appearing in official trade accounts is that they’re ignored in necessary contexts:
“The products aren’t prioritised when funds are allocated for the event of industries and recent technology. Because of this many countries are missing out on the massive sums of cash involved within the processing of a product within the country where a raw material is harvested. Processing is where you actually see value being added to a product.”
One other major consequence is that non-timber products are ignored when developing policies for a way natural resources ought to be managed. Though official registries could also serve biodiversity, Smith-Hall points out:
“Lots of these products appear on various red lists because they’re believed to be overexploited. In such cases, investment could also be needed to develop cultivation technology, versus harvesting them within the wild. But when investors and decision-makers aren’t aware of the importance of a product, the cash finally ends up elsewhere.”
Focus and systematize
In line with the researchers, considered one of the obstacles standing in the best way of non-timber products being included in trade accounts today is the overwhelmingly large variety of products. It’s a priority for which they’ve advice.
“There’s a general perception amongst researchers and public agencies that there are just too many products to administer. But when you list the economically necessary products in a rustic, ones which can be traded in large quantities, you may shorten the list from, for instance, 2,000 items to perhaps only fifteen. This lets people know which species to take an interest in and where to higher focus research and technological investments. For instance, in relation to developing cultivation techniques,” says Carsten Smith-Hall.
Moreover, the researchers recommend establishing systematic data collection at local, national and global levels of the volumes traded and costs fetched. They indicate that tools have already been developed for this and may very well be made more widely available.
“We have now an enormous untapped potential here that may contribute in tackling extreme poverty and at the identical time conserving nature and biodiversity. But this requires us to broaden our horizons and not only maintain the normal concentrate on timber because the only necessary forest resource,” Carsten Smith-Hall concludes.
THE IMPORTANCE OF NON-TIMBER PRODUCTS
- Only a really limited variety of non-timber product types appear in official trade statistics today. These include coffee, cocoa, rubber, vanilla, avocado and bananas, that are all considered agricultural crops. The researchers estimate that tens of hundreds of various non-timber products are traded worldwide which aren’t included within the statistics. Nonetheless, the variety of economically significant products is way smaller.
- One study estimates that between 3.5 and 5.8 billion people currently use non-timber products. About half of those users live in rural areas within the Global South, while the opposite half live in urban areas and the Global North.
- Within the subtropics and tropics, it’s estimated that roughly 28% of rural household income comes from non-timber products.
SHEA NUTS AS SAFETY NET
Shea nut oil is a typical ingredient in body care products, but can be utilized in chocolate and other products. Shea nuts are an example of a non-timber forestry product that plays a very important role in rural West African communities.
“Shea nuts prevent people from sinking deeper into poverty in Ghana, Burkina Faso and other places. Global demand for them has grown, contributing to local incomes and providing a security net for people if, for instance, their cattle are stolen or there’s a sudden death within the family. At these times, many individuals exit and harvest these nuts to cover sudden income gaps,” explains Carsten Smith-Hall.
HOW INVISIBLE TRADE WORKS
“Many non-timber products are harvested by small-scale farmers within the countryside at certain times of the yr — for instance, once they aren’t working within the fields. At these times, they go into the forest to reap. This makes production relatively hidden. Typically, smallholders then go to the village and sell the products to an area trader. The trader loads the products onto a truck, and so they are transported to wholesalers, who often export them unprocessed to other countries. Nonetheless, these long logistics and value chains are also largely invisible,” says Carsten Smith-Hall.
