Experimental Study on Cost Benefit Analysis of Lemon Verbena (Lominat) Cultivation for Herbal Production: The Case of Wondo Genet District, Southern Ethiopia

Abstract

Even though, herbs had been valued for their medicinal, flavoring and aromatic qualities for centuries, the synthetic products of the modern age surpassed their importance, for some time. Never the less, the blind dependence on synthetics is now over and people are turning their face to the naturals with hope of safety and security. In Ethiopia however, other than the traditional aspect, the scientific aspect of Lemon Verbena is not well known and documented, as a result nothing is known about the cost, benefit and profitability of Lemon verbena cultivation for herbal production. Therefore Wondo genet agricultural research center has undertaken cost and benefit analysis for aloysia triphylla at wondo genet experimental site. The selected herb was planted based on the recommended spacing at wondo genet experimental site and the required data was collected. For the analysis net return to land (dollar/ha) was used as a parameter. The analysis shows that the selected herbal plant provides the net return, net present value (NPV) and Benefit-Cost Ratio (BCR) of 12828.5$/ha, 10043.6 and 0.2 at fresh bio mass price of   0.4$/kg respectively.

Keywords: Aloysia Triphyla, Benefit, BCR, Cost  and NPV