Nepali paper plant

 My relatives who are artists do make paper for some of their projects but I know little or nothing about it. 

So I was interested to read today's Global Voices blog, where they publish a report on the Neapli paper plant being grown there.

They note that a plant, Edgeworthia gardneri, aka the Nepali paper bush, that grows in Nepal and nearby areas is now being cultivated by local farmers and exported to Japan to make high quality paper.

The durability of this paper is the reason that the paper note for the Japanese Yen is made from a Nepali plant.

This interested me on several levels: First, because encouraging local crafts and plants is important in these days of globalization that homogenizes everything into cheap but shoddy goods.

However economically, the small craft and small farmers will have to export the goods to make a decent profit, and that means a lot of middle men will become rich too (this has good and bad effects on society and the economy).

I'll give an example:

We used to supervise a  home craft industry ten years ago here, where local ladies could make beautiful Christmas ornaments and get paid 100 pesos (2 dollars) for each one (minimum wage here is seven dollars a day). The ladies could make several a day at home while caring for their families to supplement the family income.

The problem was that the logistics of selling them mean a lot of money went to several middle men for checking quality control, packing and shipping before the ornament sold for16 dollars in the USA.

I suspect the same thing here. 

But it does allow the locals to stay on the farm, instead of finding work overseas as literally millions of Nepali citizens have to do each year.

The second reason I found it interesting is that eventually it will mean monoculture farming of the plant in that area, which has ecological implications for other plants.

Ah, but as the demand increases, and as people get more affluent, they will devise machinery to plant and harvest it more efficiently and so make more of a profit for the farmers. 

This is something we are seeing as our rice farmers were given their traditional plots with land reform: they made a profit, so their kids went to school and had more opportunities to work so left, and the farms are gradually being mechanized. 

But the main reason I found it interesting was that it was part of the history of paper. Something I will have to explore when I have time.

This video is about the trade