A spice route sans Kerala
India, the largest producer of spices, accounting for 82 per cent of the global production, seems to be on song, with its spice produce rising from 58.34 lakh tonnes in 2013-14 to 61.88 lakh tonnes in 2015-16. Ruling the roost is Gujarat that accounted for about 10 lakh tonnes, while Kerala languished way below with one lakh tonnes.
A role reversal is quietly taking place in Kerala, still known as the Spice Garden of India, where the real story lies in its trade figures. A whopping 40,811 tonnes of spices arrived in the state by way of imports, a one-third rise since 2014. Meanwhile, exports from Kerala touched a three-year low last year.
Sure, the dip in production has been attributed to climatic changes, but low productivity is proving to be the real bane. Take the classic case of pepper: in 2015-16, Karnataka had 32,670 hectares under pepper cultivation, but produced 21,000 tonnes while Kerala could manage only 22,000 tonnes despite having 85,430 hectares under cultivation. In other words, Karnataka managed to get a yield that was almost on par with that of Kerala with only one-third the area of cultivation. Ask the hapless pepper growers in Kerala and they shrug it off saying Karnataka pepper is the future.
Even as Kerala continues to be a three-crop wonder, cardamom and nutmeg being the other major crops, around 40 spice items—raw as well as processed—continue to find their way to the state. Some of the countries that find the shores of Kerala attractive are Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Guatemala, China, Indonesia and Grenada.In 2014, exports accounted for 72,213 tonnes, going up to 81,966 tonnes in 2015, before crashing to 71,300 tonnes last year. Clearly, the writing is on the wall. Kerala urgently needs to set a few things right to ensure enhanced productivity. Perhaps, it could start with getting the farmers to believe that there can be no spice route in the world without Kerala on the map.