The Hindu Business Line : Paddy cultivation in Kerala: Waiting for revival

LAST week the Kalady Rice Millers Consortium Pvt Ltd (KRMC) organised a two-day seminar and workshop, which sought to address some fundamental issues in Kerala's agrarian sector. The theme of the meet was `Revival of agriculture in Kerala with special emphasis on value addition to paddy/rice.'

The theme could not have come at a more appropriate time, as the State struggles to get out of its relative economic stagnation through conventional industrial strategies.

More importantly, the organisers of the seminar had some impeccable credentials.

KRMC is a consortium of 39 rice mills in and around Kalady, the centre of Kerala's rice milling industry.

As a member of the Kerala Federation of Industrial Clusters (KFIC) and the Kerala State Rice Mill Owners Association, KRMC is well placed to provide some meaningful intervention to revive Kerala's paddy sector.

According to Mr N. P. Antony, Managing Director of KRMC, India is the second largest producer of rice in the world and though paddy cultivation is growing in every other State, Kerala reports the opposite trend for a variety of reasons.

Farmers in Kerala are turning away from agriculture, said Antony, pointing out that the total consumption of rice in the State is 40 lakh tonnes a year. However, the production of paddy in the State is only 8 lakh tonnes.

To fill the gap of 32 lakh tonnes, Kerala has to import rice from the neighbouring States.

As a wet tropical State with an annual rainfall of about 300 cm, spread over four to six months, and a hilly topography, Kerala's farmers cultivate rice in the terraced valleys between the hills, in coastal plains where water is drained out after monsoons, and in a smaller tract of semi-arid land where the climate is similar to that of the adjoining State of Tamil Nadu.

The supply-demand gap for rice in Kerala is not a new or recent phenomenon. Even in the late 19th century, Kerala was importing rice from other regions. Low profitability, militant agricultural trade unions, the anti-mechanisation temper and the growth of cash crops made Kerala's paddy farmers gradually but decidedly shift away from rice cultivation.

According to a study conducted by Mr V. Santhakumar and Mr R Rajagopalan of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Chennai, the increase in yields of paddy achieved by the high-yielding varieties (HYVs) promoted by the Green Revolution was found to be less than 40 per cent in Kerala. The increase achieved by the HYVs in Kerala was not enough to overcome the relative advantages of the traditional varieties, such as the higher amount of rice straw. The study, Green Revolution in Kerala: A Discourse on Technology and Nature, concluded that the so-called HYVs could increase the productivity of paddy in Kerala only marginally due to environmental factors. The effect of HYVs and chemical fertilisers was not significant compared to that of the previously used inputs such as pure-lime or traditional varieties and organic manure. Since their effect was not significant, the transition to the Green Revolution paradigm by the farmers critically depended on factors such as cost of cultivation. Based on farmers' data, one study observed that the cultivation using the new package increased the cost by 30 per cent, while the output increased only by 40 per cent. Thus, according to researchers, the genetic up-gradation in rice through the crossbreeding with exotic varieties was a not-so-successful attempt in Kerala.

It was in this context that in 1998-99 a group of researchers of the Kerala Agricultural University (KAU) initiated an action research programme called the Group Approach to Locally Adopted and Sustainable Agriculture (GALASA). Its objective was to find ways to increase paddy production in Kerala. GALASA's basic premise was that paddy productivity was low in Kerala mainly because available technology had not been utilised. Scientists estimated that scientific planting of good quality seedlings, adequate use of organic manure and integrated water and pest management would increase rice yield from the then rate of 3 tonnes/hectare to more than 10 tonnes/hectare. GALASA also stressed that intensive popularisation of these methods should be done under the field-level supervision of agricultural scientists, and implemented through group efforts of farmers. This, according to them, would help to double or triple the production of rice in Kerala.

If that were to happen in the near future, Kerala's paddy farmers can expect to see a resurgence of the good old times.

The writer can be contacted at kgkumar@gmail.com