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earning from the rising demand for local forest honey over the past several years, the East Nusa Tenggara administration has pledged support for a wider promotion of the product and to help local farmers develop capacity.

The head of the province'€™s Industry and Trade agency, Bruno Kupok, said the local government had so far been involved in the promotion of the product, locally known as Timor Amfoang forest honey, and was planning to prepare other support, including offering revolving capital loans to farmer groups for manufacturing the product.

'€œAt the initial stage, we have been promoting the Timor Amfoang forest honey at exhibitions held outside the province. We have also regularly promoted the product in our local exhibitions,'€ Bruno told The Jakarta Post on Monday.

Bruno, however, did not elaborate on the amount of money that would be allocated by the local administration for the proposed loan program.

Named after a region in the province, the Timor Amfoang forest honey is believed by local people to help cure open wounds and several diseases, including tuberculosis, hypertension and heart disease. It can also be used as a beauty treatment.

The product was initially introduced to the national market in 2003 by a local company called CV Amfoang Jaya, which currently relies on raw honey supplies from 43 local farmer groups spread across the province.

'€œInitially, we only managed to produce 500 bottles of honey per month and gradually increased our monthly production to 2,000 bottles. Now, we are able to produce 4,000 bottles of forest honey every month,'€ Amfoang Jaya director Roby Manoh said, adding that the company was expecting to increase the production capacity to 10,000 bottles per month by the end of the year.

A bottle of Timor Amfoang forest honey contains 650 milliliters of the product and sells for Rp 100,000 (US$7.50) in the local market. The company also recently opened two new outlets in Jakarta, which sell the same product for Rp 150,000 a bottle.

Roby said the unique taste of Timor Amfoang forest honey was derived from the diversity of trees in the local forests, which include, among others, sandalwood, eucalyptus, jackfruit and mango trees.

'€œThe bees that produce forest honey are better when not farmed. If we farm them, the honey they produce will be prone to contamination by chemical substances,'€ he said.

'€œSo, we prefer to maintain the authenticity of the honey by directly taking it from the forests.'€

Local farmer Yesaya Banu, who leads a 30-member honey farmer group in East Amfoang, welcomes the local administration'€™s pledge to support local farmers.

He, for example, has urged the local government to provide farmers with safety equipment to support their daily jobs.

'€œA honey farmer usually climbs trees as high as 20 meters without any safety equipment. The government could help improve our job safety by providing safety ropes or safety belts,'€ he said.

According to Yesaya, local farmers can only harvest forest honey twice a month to maintain the quality of the product, which has been deemed to be the best quality honey in the country.

Yesaya said his group could produce more than 1,000 liters of honey on each harvest, which is then sold to Amfoang Jaya for Rp 200,000 per five liters.

'€œSince we are managed by the company, we have to sell the honey to them,'€ he said.