MUMBAI: Farmers, predominantly small, have outdone corporates in growing exotic flowers in Maharashtra. Focusing on the domestic market they are even changing consumer tastes. Thanks to them, urban preferences are shifting from traditional jasmine and chrysanthemum to the exotic — roses, gerberas, gladiola and carnations.

However, corporates are not giving up the battle easily. Some have started to outsource growing of roses for export to the farmers with `greenhouses' to complement their own production.

State leading

This, knowledgeable sources say, could lead to a new farmer-corporate synergy in Maharashtra which leads other States in floriculture.

Of more than 370 acres under `greenhouses' — precise statistics are lacking with officials conceding their record-keeping is "poor" — the corporates' share is some 160 acres.

Corporates stepped in with intent only to export. Of the 77 who registered to grow exotic flowers in the country in the 1990s, as many as 49 were in Maharashtra. Of them only 14 are working.

Now that a Floriculture Park is coming up near Pune with common facilities like pre-coolers, some bigger farmers may `corporatise' their approach to directly seek to export.

Small holdings, which yield little gains from other crops, are shifting to floriculture, especially in Sangli, Pune, Satara and Kolhapur.

The acreage may seem misleadingly small but each square metre in a greenhouse annually yields 200 stems, peak season price per a cut flower being Rs. 3.It sinks to 20 paise in lean season.

With farmers coming to grips with shifts in preference cycles and gluts and scarcity, the sizes of the greenhouses have become larger from a standard 560 sq.m. to 1,000 sq.m. Locally they are called `polyhouses', because polyester sheets are used for canopy. "This is a remarkable growth trend," a Horticulture Department official said.

Corporate forays into floriculture were hurt by high overheads on the Rs. 2-crore to Rs. 3-crore investment per unit and longer gestation periods, though not all have given in.

Recently, Mody Exotica came in with a huge project to grow anthurium — a new variety here — but small farmers' focus on domestic markets at low prices helped them profit better and remain in business.

They even reach buyers in State transport buses to help grow the business at 11 to 12 per cent annually.

Horticulture Department official Vinayak Deshmukh says "if a farmer employs supervisors, he runs up his overheads; if he does his own work, he profits more."

Informal surveys have revealed that a self-employed farmer-floriculturist earns twice of those who employ others to do the work. He gets loans from cooperatives apart from up to Rs. 2.25 lakhs as subsidy for a 560 sq m `polyhouse.'

If his project breaks even in 24 to 30 months, the corporates need five years or more to reach that stage.

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