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FROM COWSHED TO DOORSTEP
Branding Cow dung online
8/23/2016 10:43:42 PM
Dr. Pragya Khanna

You can find almost
anything on eBay,
Amazon, ShopClues these days, maybe a new car, electronic gadgets, garments, books, shoes, jewellery or any presents for your loved ones and, remarkably, cow dung cakes from India.
Like consumers around the globe, nowadays, we find Indians flocking to the online marketplace in horde these days. But there's one bizarre item flying off the virtual shelves: Online retailers say cow dung patties are selling like hot cakes.
Yes! The Cow Dung patties! Cow poop mixed with hay and dried in the sun, made mainly by women in rural areas and used to fuel fires, have long been available in India's villages. But online retailers including Amazon and eBay are now reaching out to the country's ever-increasing urban population and the orders come mostly from cities where it would be difficult to buy dung cakes.
It has come to be known that in the cold weather in urban areas, people tend to keep themselves warm by lighting fires at outdoor events; moreover, the people who grew up in rural areas find the peaty smell of dung fires pleasant, reminding them of the old days. People also buy the dung cakes to light fires for ritual ceremonies to mark the beginning of the New Year and for the winter festival known as Lohri, celebrated in northern India, hence the sales catch up during these months. Dung cakes are also used as organic manure, and some sellers market them for use in kitchen gardens.
Now some retailers are getting orders so large that they are offering free global delivery, and some customers, from urban areas inside India and abroad, are asking for gift wrapping.
Just a quick search for 'cow dung cake' on eBay or Amazon brings up dozens of results to buy packs of patties from India and Pakistan.
Dung cakes, made from the by-products of animal husbandry, are traditionally used as fuel in India for making food in a domestic hearth called a Chulha. They are made by hand by village women and are traditionally made from cow or buffalo dung. One dung cake of an average size gives 2100 kJ worth of energy. Dung cakes are also known as uple, kande, gosse or thepdi locally.
These are the cakes of cow dung moulded by bare hands with a curvature to be able to keep stuck to the walls. Once dried they are put in a pile and covered with thatch. This bio-fuel has been used for a long time primarily of two reasons 1. for easy disposal of cow dung 2. easily available and cheap fuel. After burning the residue ash is used to wash hands since it becomes germs free as bi-product of burning and sprinkled also on crops to get rid of certain pests.
As per the research conducted by the Centre for Science and Environment, the e-business of cow dung cakes involves e-tailers, local traders and villagers. After collecting dried dung patties from the village, the trader packages and sells them in bulk to e-tailers or other sellers. Shopping websites such as eBay.in, Amazon.in, and Shopclues.com sell the patties in packs of eight, 15 and 24 to customers ranging from farmers looking for compost to the everyday householder, who needs it mainly for religious rituals. The e-tailers also ship them to the non-resident Indian population across the world.
The price per cake depends on the quality, region and weight. E-tailers say they sell 300 to 400 dried dung cakes every day and the profit margin is about 30 per cent for most of the stakeholders.
The cow dung is utilized for fields, plants as fertilizer, as also for gas plants. This is an efficacious disinfectant and often used as fuel in lieu of firewood in India. Cow Dung is antiseptic. Not only is it free from bacteria, it does a good job of killing it. Dried dung is odorless, and produces a slow, even heat. Additionally, smoke from a dung fire keeps flies away and acts as a mosquito repellent.
If packed on the outside walls of a house, cow dung acts as an insulator, keeping heat out in the summer and holding it inside in winter.
According to Ayurveda Cow dung has natural healing properties. It is said that there would be no fear of modern day pollution, radiation and infection if one takes cow dung bath daily. It has transcendental property of curing skin diseases and reducing toxins of blood. It makes body effulgent. In Ayurveda cow dung is described as germicidal, nourishing, gives brightness to body, destroyer of bad smell, absorber, virya vardhak (increase intelligence), Rasayukta (moisturizer, fatty) and supremely pure and holy.
Fertilizing the garden or a field is a tried-and-true way to get ornamental and edible plants to grow, flower and fruit at their optimum levels. Manure is one of the oldest methods of fertilization, and using cow manure in a home garden is actually fairly simple. Cow manure contains the three main plant nutrients: nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. Although some natural variation occurs among manure from different cows, the amounts in fresh cow manure with bedding or litter are roughly 11 percent nitrogen, 4 percent phosphorus and 10 percent potassium, and the nutrients become available to plants at a moderate speed. Fresh cow manure with bedding or litter also has sizable water content -- 86 percent; therefore, it is beneficial because it helps to keep soil evenly moist throughout the growing season.
Now-a-days since processed and quality cow dung cakes and bars are available in attractive packing which can help one to overcome any kind of skin allergy or skin disease besides providing plethora of other benefits, people are buying them unreservedly.
Feeling nostalgic? There's no better way to take yourself back than with your nose: Research shows that aromas can bring back powerful memories. And for some in India, nothing brings back childhood quite like the distinct smell of cow poop.
As the Associated Press reports, patties made of dried cow dung and hay has become an internet sensation for nostalgic shoppers, who use the fragrant cakes for fuel and in ritual fires and also for their urban kitchen gardens.
India has a massive bovine population-nearly 300 million as of 2012. All those cows produce a lot of poop, which is then used as both fertilizer and fuel. Chris Copp writes for 'Full Stop India' that dung is "a commodity so intertwined with daily survival that it is nearly impossible to think of life without it."
India is thought to use as much as 400 million tons of cow dung for cooking fuel alone each year, with approximately 30 percent of rural fuel production dependent on animal waste.
But rapid urbanization in India means that more and more people are moving from rural areas to cities that don't rely on cow dung for fuel. That's leading to new demand for cow dung in urban areas-and thanks to sites like Amazon and eBay, cow patties are just a click away.
The benefits of e-commerce can be seen to affect three major stakeholders: organizations, consumers and society. What used to be a single physical marketplace located in a geographical area has now become a borderless marketplace including national and international markets. By becoming e-commerce enabled, businesses now have access to people all around the world. E-commerce has revolutionized the way consumers buy goods and services. The pull-type processing allows for products and services to be customized to the customer's requirements. Businesses can be contacted by or contact customers or suppliers at any time.
Enables customers to shop or conduct other transactions 24 hours a day, all year round from almost any location. To bring to a close the two major benefits being offered by e-shopping include 1. Remote shopping: this is where customer do not have to leave their houses to buy their products who live in place that are quite a distance from shops or for people who can't drive this will make their lives easier as they can just order their products online and they will be delivered straight to their houses without them having to travel long distances. 2. Ordering anytime: this is a major benefit of E-commerce systems for customer as they can buy products online via Ecommerce system at anytime.
As is rightly said that necessity is the mother of invention. And it is the need of the rural population selling these cow dung patties on large scale, combined with the reluctance on part of the young educated boys and girls to get their hands dirty, which led the BPS Women's University at Khanpur Kalan to develop a machine that makes cow-dung cakes (known as upla in common parlance). With LPG cylinders or electric heaters still to reach the interiors, the university decided to create a machine that can make uplas with minimal human intervention.
The machine, can operate on electricity or be hand powered. A combination of dung and straw is fed into the machine, the mixture is compressed to drain out the water and dry cakes, little larger than bathing soaps, are produced as a result.
Now, the next time you drive past a farm and smell cow manure, here's something to think about while you're holding your nose. The stinky stuff could be an inexpensive source for living an organic and a healthy lifestyle.
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