AFFON Banke is the district chapter of the Association of Family Forest Owners Nepal, the umbrella body of smallholder family forest farmers formed in 2015. Its third-batch DGM Nepal sub-project cultivates black turmeric, Curcuma caesia, a perennial herb of the ginger family with distinctive bluish-black rhizomes. Black turmeric is grown and harvested much like ordinary turmeric but commands far higher prices, because its rhizome is valued in traditional and Ayurvedic medicine and in ritual use, and because supply is scarce. It has been heavily over-extracted from the wild across its range and is now treated as threatened in parts of South Asia, which makes domesticated cultivation both commercially attractive and conservation-positive. Grant funds are expected to cover rhizome planting stock, plantation establishment under shade or in agroforestry plots, boiling, drying and grinding equipment, and training. The crop suits family forest farmers cultivating beneath existing tree cover.