Odisha to procure sal seeds from 9 districts.

Subject : Geography

Section: Physical geography

Context:

The government-owned Tribal Development Co-operative Corporation of Odisha Ltd (TDCCOL) decided to procure sal seeds (Shorearobusta) from nine Odisha districts in late May 2023.

Details:

The district administration has entrusted Odisha Rural Development and Marketing Society (ORMAS) to purchase the seeds from the tribals at a fair price at the beginning of the procurement season.
ORMAS has already procured around 150 metric tonnes of sal seeds from the tribals in the district, which would be supplied to a Chhattisgarh-based company.
The move, which comes after a gap of three years, intends to arrest the distress sale of the minor forest produce (MFP).
The government will procure the sal seeds from tribal people at the minimum support price (MSP) of 20rs/kg.
Associated issues:
- Odisha has no major solvent extraction plant that produces oil from sal seeds, due to which the intermediaries procure the seeds from the state at a lower rate and sell them at a higher rate to the oil companies of other states
- The sal seeds will be procured from 9 tribal districts only, the rest of the sal seeds will be sold at throwaway prices.
- Some major districts that are excluded are Deogarh, Koraput, Rayagada, Gajapati, Nayagarh and Mayurbhanj..
- The decision came a bit late, as tribals from many districts have already sold the seeds at 10-15rs/kg.

Sal tree (Shorearobusta):

A species of tree in the family Dipterocarpaceae.
The tree is native to India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Tibet and across the Himalayan regions.
In India, it extends from Chhattisgarh, Assam, Bengal, Odisha and Jharkhand west to the Shivalik Hills in Haryana, east of the Yamuna.
The range also extends through the Eastern Ghats and to the eastern Vindhya and Satpura ranges of central India.
It is often the dominant tree in the forests where it occurs.

Sal seeds in Odisha:

Odisha has a rich depository of sal seeds accounting for 25 per cent of the country’s production, which played a significant role in the economics of the tribal people in the state.
Around 40 per cent of the total tribal populations here are engaged in collecting and processing the seeds to eke out a living.
Other major sal seeds producing states include Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand.
Generally, the collection starts in mid-April and is completed before the onset of monsoon.
After collecting the raw seeds, they are processed, dried, roasted, winnowed and pounded to separate the husk and the kernel.
The process is very difficult and involves the labour of an entire family to produce quality dry seeds.