How Can Medicinal and Aromatic Plants Be Evaluated as Alternative Livelihoods for the Rural People? A Normative Assessment of the Ways to Be Addressed

The poverty is of the most challenging and multidimensional problems for humanity. The majority of the people suffering from the poverty live in the rural areas of the developing countries. All governments with their policymakers have to produce or propose strategically relevant and adequate investments for the rural people in order to reduce the poverty with its multidimensions. In order to minimize that vexing problem of poverty, there are many alternative recipes in addition to conventional agricultural activities. For that context, collecting plants species from wild, which have been evaluated for multiple purposes, might be of the alternative and complementary way of the sustainable life of the rural people. Herewith the chapter, we herein concerned with medicinal and aromatic plants and then focused on the socio-economic of the plants, recommendations to be followed, sine-quo-non roles of woman, factors in conversion of raw materials into the functional materials, considerable roles of traditional knowledge, non-timber forest products, and agricultural policies in rural development.