Meet Ram Ekwal Saha
Why Partner with Small-Scale Farmers?
Ram Ekwal Saha is a small-scale turmeric farmer in Sangrampur, Nepal, who partners with doTERRA. Through this partnership, doTERRA sources the crops used to create their CPTG Certified Pure Therapeutic Grade Turmeric essential oil, providing Ram Ekwal with a reliable income to educate his eight children.
Discover where Turmeric essential oil comes from and how many lives it touches along the way to you. Meet Ram Ekwal Saha, a father and farmer in Nepal. Listen to his story and find out how turmeric has impacted his family’s life.
doTERRA’s sourcing model benefits farmers like Ram Ekwal in several ways:
Guaranteed Income: He now earns 25% more income while investing less labor into processing.
Streamlined Processing: Farmers do not need to boil or dry the turmeric, saving time and energy.
Local Jobs: doTERRA’s partners hire local women to wash and prepare the turmeric for distillation.
Turmeric essential oil encourages the body’s healthy inflammatory and oxidative stress responses and may support healthy cellular function.* Turmeric oil helps with curcumin absorption, supporting the body’s natural defenses.
The Harvesting and Distillation Process
Turmeric is a rhizome, or an underground stock of the plant from which roots grow, that is typically dried and ground as a spice. It is sometimes grown as an intercrop alongside corn, sugarcane, and other crops. Many farmers grow turmeric after they have been growing sugarcane for a few years.
They pull out the sugarcane and plant turmeric because it helps provide nutrients for the soil. Farmers in India often say that growing turmeric is like a natural pesticide and fungicide for the soil—growing turmeric has proved healthy for the soil itself—and that sugarcane planted after turmeric has a significantly higher yield.
The essential oil is produced through steam distillation. After farming and harvesting (done by both men and women), the turmeric roots are sorted into various grades (typically by women). Our Turmeric essential oil is a blend that comes from distilling both dried and fresh turmeric.