The Hindu : Kerala News : Rubber erasing cashew plantations in Kannur, Kasaragod state trends

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Kerala

Rubber erasing cashew plantations in Kannur, Kasaragod state trends

A. Harikumar

Kerala’s eyes are fixed on the fall in the area under paddy cultivation and paddy output, almost to the point of being blind to the fall in the cultivation and output of money-spinner crops such as cashew. With many an odd stacked against it, cashew is yielding place to more lucrative crops such as rubber in the cashew heartland of Kasaragod and Kannur.

KASARAGOD: During the boom days in the 1980s, cashew farmers of Kasaragod and Kannur were the cynosure of the political eyes.

The debate that raged in Kerala at the time on whether or not to have monopoly procurement of raw cashew nuts spoke of a crop that was up there in the priority list of administrators. But those heady days of cashew-centred political debates are a distant memory now. And cashew as a crop is on its way to the margins of Kerala’s agricultural landscape.

Consider this: In 1970-71, Kerala had 1,02,711 hectares of land under cashew cultivation, with an annual production of 1,15,240 tonnes of raw nuts. In 2006-07, the area has shrunk to 70,461 hectares and the production to 61,680 tonnes. The area fell by almost one-third of that in 1970-71 and the output by over 46 per cent.

It looks like an unfinished story as one surveys the cashew cultivation scene in Kasaragod, which, along with the neighbouring Kannur, accounts for almost 50 per cent of the total cashew nut production in the State.

Cashew estates in the district, once known for their superior quality nuts, are being replaced by rubber plantations.

Cashew plantations are found mostly in the hilly parts of the district which have hard laterite soil unsuitable for other crops.

Cultivation of cashew as a main crop became popular here in the early 1970s. At the time, many started cultivation on a commercial scale.

The advantage was that cashew trees needed little attention and considering the low maintenance cost, it provided reasonable incomes.

Processing facilities

Although the district produced a large quantity of cashew nuts, facilities for processing the raw nuts and manufacturing value-added products did not come up here.

The raw nuts from the district were procured mainly by private entrepreneurs in Kollam.

The State government procured nuts during the days of monopoly procurement, which was abandoned more than a decade ago. However, the golden days of cashew cultivation in the district did not last long.

The vagaries in the price of raw nuts in the market and the exploitation of farmers by middlemen who buy cashew from farmers and sell it to representatives of cashew factories left farmers with little to spare.

Endosulphan use

In the latter half of the 1990s, the cashew economy suffered a major blow with the outbreak of the controversy relating to the use of Endosulphan in the estates of the government-run Plantation Corporation of Kerala (PCK) Ltd.

Non-governmental organisations and local people in the areas adjacent to the plantations complained that aerial spraying of Endosulphan was proving to be a serious health hazard and leading to an ecological catastrophe.

The use of Endosulphan in the estates, spread over 6,000 acres, was banned in 2000, but without any adequate alternative measures to check attack by tea mosquito bugs and stem borer bugs.

The cashew groves in the two districts are now experiencing a serious fall in productivity.

Almost 15 per cent of the cashew trees of the corporation are dying out every year for various reasons.

The corporation is experiencing a shortage of labourers, as a result of which its losses are mounting with each passing year, says C.M. Thomas, general manager of the PCK’s Cheemeni estate.

“How can we go on cultivating a crop that gives us lesser and lesser yield as years go by,” asks Mohanan, a cashew grower at Panathur.

He says pest attacks and low prices for the raw nuts were eating into the viability of cashew cultivation and farmers have no option but to look for alternatives. And that alternative, he says, has come in the form of rubber, which currently commands a very high price in international market.

While the average annual income from an acre of cashew plantation is less than Rs. 25,000, it is much higher from a rubber plantation of similar area, Mr. Mohanan says.

Farmers as him are now turning to rubber cultivation in a big way and they have been joined by none other than the PCK.

As part of its diversification efforts, it has planted rubber saplings on around 100 hectares of land in its Muliyar estate. Several farmers have begun to fell cashew trees and plant rubber.

The corporation, Mr. Thomas says, proposes to plant rubber in roughly one-third of its estates.

Poor facilities

While the relative price advantages of different crops is something that the market determines, the falling fortunes of cashew has to do a lot with the official apathy spread over decades. Despite being major cashew production centres, the two districts do not still have adequate storage facilities.

This has been forcing the cashew growers to sell their produce to middlemen immediately after harvest at prices totally disadvantageous to them. Coupled with this is the absence of facilities to process the raw nuts in the district.

The farmer was often a pawn in the political games of the 1980s and 1990s.

In recent years, there have been attempts to start cashew processing units in the district considering the large-scale availability of the nuts.

The State government had encouraged such attempts in the hope that competition among purchasers would help farmers get better prices for their produce. Three private cashew factories have come up at Ambalathara, near Kanhangad, in the past few years, in addition to the two that function in Kasaragod.

The PCK, which had played a major role in promoting cashew cultivation in the region by introducing several high-yield varieties developed by the Kerala Agricultural University, is now trying to promote the use of double-grafted saplings to lift the sagging fortunes of cashew cultivation. Efforts are on to start production of value-added products of cashew nut and cashew apple in the district.

The district panchayat and the Kudumbashree Mission are teaming up to extend cashew cultivation in the fallow reaches in the district and to start cashew processing in a big way with the participation of farmers and the help of agricultural and marketing experts.

But all that could be a case of too little, too late unless there is a greater realisation about the potential that cashew holds in the global market.

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