The once prosperous areca nut and coconut farmers in Kerala are looking for government intervention to help them overcome the crisis.
Hit by steep fall in prices and mounting cost of cultivation coupled with acute shortage of labour, the once prosperous areca nut and coconut farmers in Kerala are looking for Government intervention to help them overcome the unprecedented crisis.
Areca nut and coconut cultivators, who once enjoyed an elevated status in society in northern Kerala, are now in utter disarray in the face of an all round increase in cultivation cost in tune with the general price rise and unremunerative prices for their produce.
The price of areca nut, which fetched Rs 160 a kg in 1999, has steadily fallen over the years and was now quoted around
Rs 60, against Rs 80-90 in the previous year, trade sources said.
Adding to the woes of the growers, the Rs 10 a kg subsidy provided through the CAMPCO outlets has been withdrawn by the Central Government.
If the areca nut cultivation cost registered a five-fold increase over the last 10 years, the market has shrunk to one third thanks to liberal imports forcing many farmers to switch over to other crops or even dispose of their land to clear mounting debts.
The per kilo extraction labour charge has gone up from Re one in 1999 to Rs six a kg now whereas the price has tumbled down, says M Ranjith, a farmer in Panathady village in neighbouring Kasaragod district.
The tendency among the youth to switch over to lucrative Urban jobs has only aggravated the crisis further, he said.
"Today, one can't find too many skilled farm workers, resulting in cultivators being often fleeced and forced to buy time and succumb to terms of the workers," he said.
The situation is similar for the coconut farmers in the land of 'Kera' as they face a bleak scenario with no takers for the produce in view of falling coconut oil price, said to be the direct fallout of unbridled import of other edible
oil.
The coconut yield of late has also drastically come down for want of timely tendering due to mounting labour cost and pest attacks. Farmers want the government to facilitate higher procurement prices, Rajmohan, who owns a small coconut farm, says.
While raw coconut fetches a farmer less than Rs eight a KG, the coconut oil price was hovering around Rs 4,400 a quintal.
The issue figured in the ongoing state Assembly session with the opposition members demanding that the government announce new procurement prices for copra.
Neighbouring Tamil Nadu and Karnataka have almost overtook Kerala in coconut cultivation and the state no longer enjoy monopoly in the north Indian market, farmers say.
The cultivation could be viable only if the farmer got a remunerative price of Rs 100 per KG of arecaunut and Rs 10 a KG for coconut, Ranjith said adding local MP P Karunkaran had submitted a memorandum to Union Agriculture Ministry listing out woes of the coconut and areca farmers.
Besides ensuring remunerative procurement prices, the government could also help farmers by extending services of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme to all categories of farmers by removing land ceiling to offset the mounting labour cost, Ranjith said.
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