Harvesting spontaneous vegetation or purchase medicinal plants from the market? – case study

Abstract

The paper analyses the effciency of material resources supplying of an enterprise that processes medicinal herbs. The objectives of the research are to identify the most cost-effective alternative of supplying herbs, out of two possible sources: spontaneous vegetation, by initiating a campaign of collection, or purchase them from contractors. Econometric models are developed for choosing the optimal solution, entering data from a business of processing medicinal herbs in a computer program. The results show that there is a quantity of material resources for which is more proftable to get it by initiating a campaign of collecting plants from spontaneous flora, after which, for any additional quantity, it becomes more effcient to be purchased from the market.

Keywords

• econometric models, medicinal herbs, spontaneous flora