Minor Forest Produce will bring support to forest communities

Sustaining over 30 crores of forest dwelling population in India is a challenge. The strategy to address this challenge has to take into account the potential of those forest dwelling communities and the immediately available resources for livelihood. Minor Forest Produce (MFP) is one such opportunity which can turn around the prospects of 10 crore MFP collectors and would also be able to generate employment opportunities nationwide. But fixation of MSP has been done with limited supporting information. To overcome this drawback TERI has recently demonstrated methodology based on several parameters as follows – estimated cost of labour, paid out costs including risk insurance, premium for knowledge / skill, owner’s royalty and adjustment to the inflation using Consumer Price Index for Agriculture labour.