Integrated Agriculture: Lavender Honey and Apiculture 

Context: In Kashmir’s Pulwama, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research’s Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine (CSIR-IIIM) is producing India’s first monofloral lavender honey, a kilogram of which sells for up to ₹6,000. 

Lavender Honey

• The product is developed under the flagship CSIR Floriculture Mission, and is poised to feed the market for functional foods and grow sustainable agriculture and rural bio-enterprise.
• A kilogram of it sells between ₹5,000 and ₹6,000 in the global market, six times higher than the price of regular organic honey.
• The CSIR-IIIM is in the process of filing for geographical indication (GI) for Kashmir lavender honey and upscale its production in the coming years.

About Lavender

• Lavender is a perennial aromatic plant native to countries bordering the Mediterranean. It is a non-native species of aromatic plant in India. 
• It is used as an ornamental plant and commercially cultivated as a culinary herb and to extract essential oils.

Benefits of cultivating Lavender: 

• Purple Revolution: Expansion of lavender cultivation for commercial purposes (E.g., production of lavender honey, essential oils etc.) 
• Lavender isnot susceptible to pest infestation and acts as a pest barrier due to its antifungal, antimicrobial, and anti-bacterial properties.
  • The highly fragrant crop produces volatile organic compounds diffusing a strong scent that deters insects and pests by overpowering the insect’s olfactory receptors. This makes the pest unable to detect other scents (E.g., apple blossoms). 
  • Rodents attack the roots and stems of fruit-bearing trees like apples and plums. Lavender has been proven to keep away rodents. 

CSIR-Aroma Mission: 

• Launched in 2016, the mission focuses on cultivation of aromatic crops (lavender, rose, lemongrass, rosemary, vetiver, mint, etc.) and generating new avenues of self-livelihood and entrepreneurship.
• Under the CSIR-Aroma Mission, lavender farmers are offered end-to-end support, including cultivation, processing, value addition, and marketing.

CSIR Floriculture Mission: 

• Launched in 2021, the mission focuses on promoting the floriculture sector in India. It includes commercial floral crops, seasonal/annual crops, wild ornaments and cultivation of flower crops for honey bee rearing. 
• Floriculture can give 5 times more return than the traditional crops to farmers besides having potential to provide employment to a large number of people.

Beekeeping/ Sweet Revolution

• The scientific practice of Beekeeping (Apiculture) has the potential to promote eco-friendly and sustainable agriculture along with higher yields leading to increase in income levels of farmers. The Sweet Revolution can act as a major tool to promote socio-economic development.

Beekeeping has great potential for the small and marginal farmers, landless labourers etc. on account of following reasons:

• Increases crop yields by 20-30% through cross pollination.
• Additional source of income for paid pollination service.
• Less capital Intensive and hence can be practiced by poor farmers.
• Requires no land and can be practiced by landless labourers.
• Other products such as bee pollen, bee-venom costlier than honey. 
• Nutritional Security: More than a third of the global food basket is comprised of bee pollinated crops. 
• Growing demand for honey in the overseas market and hence scope for more export earnings. 

The Government has launched the National Beekeeping and Honey Mission in 2020 to harness the potential of the Sweet Revolution. Beekeeping should be considered as an input of agriculture, which could enhance the efficacy of other inputs and accordingly training should be provided to farmers.