The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Namakkal jaggery shandy, a boon to farmers

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Dec 20, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Others

Namakkal jaggery shandy, a boon to farmers

By L. Renganathan

NAMAKKAL, DEC. 19. At a time when the price of jaggery is fluctuating, the farmers' jaggery and brown jaggery shandy at Pilikkalpalayam near Paramathi Velur in Namakkal district has come as a boon to producers, cane growers and traders.

Started seven years ago by a group of jaggery merchants and farmers, the Pilikkalpalayam shandy functions twice a week throughout the year.

On Thursdays and Sundays, jaggery producers from several parts of Namakkal and from the neighbouring Erode bring their produce here.

Even agents of traders from Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh buy loads here and pack them off to the respective destinations.

Traders flock

"Previously we had to take the jaggery to Salem and Chitode in Erode for selling. But now many traders from those places come here and the region's producers and cane growers are benefited," says the president of the shandy, J.P. Ravi.

During the peak season between September and February, when at least 500 jaggery manufacturing units function in the region, the shandy, the only one of its kind in Namakkal, presents a busy sight.

However, traders and producers accept that if around 8,000 tonnes of jaggery (round and cast) and brown jaggery are traded in a week during the peak period, a similar quantum is being traded elsewhere in the region.

During off-season, about 4,000 tonnes are traded. Insiders say that those lots with lesser chemical content are exported to Australia and the U.S.

Asked about the steep fall in the price of quality jaggery from Rs. 26 per kilo to just Rs. 13-Rs. 14 now, a cross section of the traders confess that the present price line is not too low.

Only the drought for a particularly long period followed by rain for a month and then the Deepavali season had pushed up the price of jaggery then.

But with things having got stabilised, the price has only returned to the normal level, they say.

Awaiting Pongal

But the cane growers and jaggery producers are upset as from a good price for their produce, they could barely break even now. They hope that the Pongal season ahead would push up the price by at least Rs. 3 a kg.

Nevertheless, the Pilikkalpalayam shandy has been a boon to the cane growers (who could easily fix the price for cane depending on the market price of jaggery), jaggery producers and traders in that the public auction helps usher in transparency and help all share the benefits, point out the secretary of the shandy, S. Raju, and his partner, V.P. Arunachalam, who is also the secretary of the Chitode jaggery shandy.

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