HIRUVANANTHAPURAM: For decades, the word ‘planter’ would bring up the image of an ‘affluent farmer’ in the minds of people. For the plantation sector was crucial to ensuring a livelihood for some of the most marginalised and vulnerable sections of the population in the high range areas. Plantation crops are cultivated in 7.12 lakh hectares across Kerala, which forms 27.5% of the total cultivated area in the state.
For the past couple of decades, however, the sector has been struggling to stay afloat because of reasons including rising input costs, climate vagaries and the implementation of the ASEAN agreement, following which the prices of domestic agriculture products declined. Be it coffee, tea, cardamom or rubber, the sector has only tales of losses to tell.
According to the Association of Planters of Kerala (APK), the current value of production of plantation crops is around 46% of the corresponding value in 2012-13. Rubbing salt into their wounds, the lockdown was enforced in successive years. For instance, the pandemic has worsened the plight of coffee growers in the state which contributes around 16% of the total coffee production in the country, with the European market accounting for two-thirds of this.
Thomas Jacob, former chairman of APK, said he used to press into service around 1,100 coffee bean pluckers, mostly migrant workers, every season. This time, he could employ only 600-700 labourers for harvest due to a shortage of workers. “As a result, there was a drop of around 100 kg of coffee beans per hectare,” he said.
Prasanth Rajesh, the president of the Wayanad Coffee Growers Association, said the slump in demand and the resultant price crash has dashed the hopes of growers. If one kg of coffee beans fetched around Rs 150 a decade ago, now it is down to Rs 124 per kg. At the beginning of the current season, the price hovered around Rs 115/kg and 70% of the produce was sold then as a majority of small and medium growers cannot afford to hold their stocks. While input costs have witnessed a year-on-year hike, the price of coffee has been sliding in the reverse proportion. The average yield per acre is 350 kg, although there are plantations which yield over 750 kg of coffee beans, for which the cost of operation is exorbitantly high and the input cost would range from Rs 50,000 to Rs 60,000 per acre. “It is difficult meet the input expenses with beans priced at Rs 124 per kg,” Prasanth said.
Further, there is no crop insurance for growers as coffee is not included in Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana. Though the state is providing a risk coverage, it is insufficient to compensate the risk in case of any exigency, the growers said.“The quality of coffee beans produced in the state is one of the finest in the world as it is grown at a high elevation. But to tap the international market, the post-harvest processing of coffee beans has to be raised to international standards. It requires better investment in the sector,” said Thomas.
Growers in the state currently sell their produce without any processing like washing of coffee beans. “They can’t make the venture profitable without any value addition. But small and medium growers cannot afford setting up processing plants. Though the state is not in a position to invest, a well-defined plantation policy and an investor and plantation friendly climate would bring investment from private players,” Thomas said.
‘NEED CHANGES IN TUNE WITH TIMES’
In the revised budget, the state has decided to allow crop diversification in the plantation sector, a long-pending demand of planters. P Indira Devi, agri-economist and former research director with Kerala Agricultural U, said the sector needs changes in tune with the times. “But we should undertake a study on the ecological impact of new crops as the state had recently decided to phase out trees like eucalyptus and acacia after their planting led to ecological imbalance,” she said.