Boar meat to cheese, gewogs to specialize products

Some gewogs will even have wild boar meat as a potential product to market once the agriculture ministry’s One Gewog Three Products (OGTP) program begins the next financial year.
To vitalize the economy in the grassroots, the ministry has come up with a list of 60 products that can be marketed from the gewogs. The OGTP planning exercise was conducted by the ministry in all 20 dzongkhags.
The products were identified based on the market availability, production potentials, and possibility for linking markets to production areas.
The agriculture minister, Lyonpo Pema Gyamtsho (PhD) said the products have been allocated to each gewog based on climatic conditions, favorability of soil conditions, topography of the area and with a special emphasis on the socio-economic conditions.
“We looked into the market of the product and if there is a market then the profitability of the product,” he said.
The ministry has also looked into cultural implications. For example, though meat has a good market it is not socially acceptable to rear animals and then slaughter them for meat later.
“The meat products will be focused mostly in areas where it is socially and agro-economically acceptable,” said the minister.
The OGTP program will help the farmers achieve “economy of scale.” Lyonpo Pema Gyamtsho said farmers always try to produce everything in their farms which creates the problem of achieving economy of scale.
The minister added that, to have anything that is profitable, there was a need to have the required quantity so that it becomes easier to invest in improving the quality and then to processing.
“It then becomes cheaper for marketing in terms of reducing transportation cost,” he said.
The market for the products is seen both locally and for export. Some of the non-wood forest products like mushrooms, cordyceps, medicinal plants and coffee will vie for the foreign market.
Some of the non-wood forest products are subjected to its sustainability because of which there is limited access to these products.
However, the ministry plans on changing some of the forest policies to give a viable environment to the collection of non-wood forest products in order to give access to the farmers.
Eggs will be one of the products for 49 gewogs in 15 dzongkhags, chilies in 24 gewogs in ten dzongkhags, oranges will be one of the products in 53 gewogs in 13 dzongkhags, rice will be a product in 28 gewogs in 14 dzongkhags and cheese and butter will be a product in 53 gewogs in 19 dzongkhags.
Some of the other products are tree saplings, wood products for handicrafts, grass brooms, ecotourism, ice cream, fermented cheese, mustard and hazelnut.