ABSTRACT
This chapter traces complex supply networks of medicinal plants feeding the growing Ayurvedic industry in Kerala, South India. It follows plants through formal and informal pathways from wild collection to the factories, showing just how dependent the industry is on its suppliers, mostly local agents working with groups of collectors. Based on long-term fieldwork and extensive surveys conducted in Central Kerala with stakeholders including Ayurvedic company managers, private traders, local intermediaries, and plant gatherers, this chapter explores how Ayurvedic raw material supply is progressively transformed through a combination of decreasing availability of natural resources, liberalisation of state-controlled channels, socioeconomic change in rural areas, and shifting medicine consumption patterns. It argues that the sector as a whole is at a watershed moment, when distances between plant sources and transforming units widen, and longstanding channels are forced to recompose and evolve. Going far beyond simple, linear supply chain analyses, this chapter identifies these changes and the multi-dimensional complexity of raw material supply as crucial and dynamic aspects of Asian medical industries.
